José María Berzosa's Biography

"Poor Clerics of the Mother of God. High School. School of Law, of course. Second lieutenant; military service in Morocco. Discomfort. Confusion. Half-hearted attempts to work as a lawyer. Poker games, tons of them. Anti-Franco resistance from the guts that gradually reaches the mind. Minor political incident in the provinces: (legal) flight to Paris in 1956, where he’s lived ever since, stubbornly waiting for a miracle that never happens.’ This is how Jose María Berzosa summarised his own life on the occasion of a programme dedicated to him at the Spanish Film Library in 1981.

Going into exile in France in 1956 as a staunch anti-Franco intellectual, Berzosa worked as a film critic, an assistant director to Jean Renoir, a scriptwriter for French TV and a renowned documentary maker with a long career behind him. A regular contributor to educational TV in France, he shot several fiction films as well, where he masterfully brought fiction and reality together. He was also a teacher at such film schools as La Fémis in France and San Antonio de los Baños in Cuba.

In 2005, José María Berzosa was part of the 1st Punto de Vista Festival with his feature film Pinochet et ses trois généraux, an ironic, uncompromised portrait of the Chilean dictator and his deputies.

Selected filmography:

• Le musée de la police (1967)
• La realidad supera a la ficción (1967)
• Miguel Ángel Asturias: un maya a la cour du roi Gustave (1967)
• Alberto Giacometti (1968)
• Luis Buñuel tourne ‘La Voie lactée’ (1968)
• Festival Theatral de Nancy (1969) Dubuffet (1969)
• Giacometti (1969)
• Jorge Luis Borges: Le passé qui ne menace pas (1969)
• Jorge Luis Borges: Les journées et les nuits (1969)
• Matisse (1970)
• Le malentendu du design (1970)
• Daumier (1970)
• Brouillon d’un reportage en 1970 autour Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1970)
• Julio González (1970)
• Colette/Sido (1971)
• Fernand Leger (1971)
• Le christianisme au Portugal (1971)
• Francis Bacon: l’ultime regard (1971)
• Musique de l’exil (1972)
• Rouge Greco Rouge (1972)
• Charles Fourier (1972)
• L’amour et la charité (1973)
• Zurbarán: la vie de moine et l’amour des chosas (1973)
• Espagnes (1973)
• Retour au Portugal I: Lourdes Castro de Madere (1974)
• Retour au Portugal II: Les intelectuels (1974)
• ¡Arriba España! (1975)
• Chili Impressions (1976)
• Les candidates de Sant-Amour (1977)
• Des choses vues et entendues (1978)
• Import Export (1979)
• Coupez les cheveux de quatre mouches entre midi et quatorze heures (Magritte/Maldoror) (1979)
• Joseph et Marie: les mots et les gestes (1979)
• Quatre adresses pour Viollet-le-Duc (1980)
• Eduardo Chillida (1981)
• Haïti I-II-III (1982)
• Antonio Saura, quelques rêveries d’un promeneur solitaire (1983)
• La leçon de cinéma de François Truffaut (1983)
• Entre-Temps (1983)
• De la sainteté I-II-II-IV (1985-86)
• Juan Carlos Onetti (1989)
• Iconoclasme (1990)
• Montaigne aimé autour de nous (1992)
• Le diable (1994)
• Le Châteaux de Liechtenstein et le Paternoster de Prague (1995)
• Franco, un fiancé de la mort (1996)
• Rafael Alberti (1998)
• Pinochet et ses trois generaux (2004)