Cuban film director Juan Carlos Tabío remembered at the 2021 Goya Awards gala

March 10, 2021

The Goya Awards gala held last Saturday at the theater in Málaga -without public attendance due to coronavirus- remembered Cuban filmmaker Juan Carlos Tabío in the 'In memoriam' section, dedicated to professionals who have passed away since the previous edition.

The event, in which the awards of the Academy of Arts and Cinematographic Sciences of Spain are presented, celebrated its 35th edition this Saturday in a gala hosted by renowned Spanish actor Antonio Banderas and television presenter María Casado.

As is already tradition in this type of event, from the Oscars ceremony to the Havana Film Festival, the Goya gala dedicated a few minutes to remembering all the personalities and professionals from the audiovisual world who are no longer with us.

This year it fell to singer Vanesa Martín to host this emotional moment, performing live the song Una nube blanca accompanied by the Málaga Symphony Orchestra.

Among the professionals remembered, Cuban filmmaker Juan Carlos Tabío was mentioned, author of a vast filmography highlighted by films such as Se permuta (1983), Plaff o demasiado miedo a la vida (1988) and El Elefante y la bicicleta (1994) and the co-direction shared with Tomás Gutiérrez Alea in the multi-award-winning Fresa y chocolate (1993), which was even nominated for the Oscar awards, and Guantanamera (1995).

Tabío, National Film Prize winner in 2014, is recognized internationally as one of the most outstanding and award-winning Cuban film directors of recent decades. Between 1989 and 1990 he was a professor of screenwriting and film direction at the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños, and taught numerous workshops on screenwriting, direction and dramaturgy in several countries, including Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama.

He passed away in the early morning of January 18 at the age of 77. His death caused profound sadness among those who knew him and valued his work as one of the most solid within Cuban cinematography.

At the Goya gala, other artists known to the Cuban public were also remembered, such as singer-songwriter, painter and filmmaker Luis Eduardo Aute, who passed away on April 4 at the age of 76. Withdrawn from public life and the stage, after suffering a serious heart attack that kept him in a coma for two months in 2016, Aute tried to restore his health in several hospitals, one of them Cuban.

In a year marked by the pandemic, it was not surprising that Spanish cinema said goodbye to one of its representatives during Saturday's gala. This was the case of actress Lucía Bosé, mother of singer Miguel Bosé, who died on March 23 at the age of 89 after experiencing respiratory problems just at the beginning of the first wave of coronavirus that ravaged Spain.

Nor could Mexican singer-songwriter Armando Manzanero overcome coronavirus infection, who died at the end of December at the age of 85 in Mexico City, where he remained hospitalized and intubated due to respiratory and kidney complications, which fatally took his life. Also known as the King of Romanticism, Manzanero is considered one of the greatest composers in the Spanish language in the history of music.

Also shocking was the news of the death of young Spanish actor Jordi Mestre, who died at age 38 following a motorcycle accident. A performer with a solid career on Spanish television, the Spanish heartthrob worked in the series La Vía Augusta, Entre líneas and Cuéntame cómo pasó, but gained his greatest popularity with the series Centro Médico, in which he played Doctor Hamman Dacaret since 2015.

Other film personalities related to Cuban culture remembered at this Goya gala were writer and journalist Juan Marsé, author of many novels adapted to film such as El embrujo de Shanghai (Fernando Trueba, 2002), Últimas tardes con Teresa (Gonzalo Herralde, 1984), or La muchacha de las bragas de oro (Vicente Aranda, 1980).

Furthermore, Marsé was a great friend of Cuban filmmaker and photographer based in Barcelona and also deceased this year, Germán Puig, who passed away at the end of January this year. Recognized as the founder of the Cinematheque of Cuba and pioneer of male nude photography in Europe, Puig died in Spain at the age of 92.