Julio Cortázar

Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984) was an Argentine, nationalized French novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an entire generation of Spanish-speaking readers and writers in America and Europe. He is considered one of the most innovative and original authors of his time, a master of history, poetic prose and short story in general and a creator of important novels that inaugurated a new way of making literature in the Hispanic world by breaking the classical moulds through narratives that escaped temporal linearity. He lived his childhood and adolescence and incipient maturity in Argentina and, after the 1950s, in Europe. He lived in Italy, Spain, and in Switzerland. In 1951, he settled in France for more than three decades and composed some of his works there. Julio Cortázar was born on 26 August 1914, in Ixelles, a municipality of Brussels, Belgium. According to biographer Miguel Herráez, his parents, Julio José Cortázar and María Herminia Descotte, were Argentine citizens, and his father was attached to the Argentine diplomatic service in Belgium. At the time of Cortázar's birth, Belgium was occupied by the German troops of Kaiser Wilhelm II. After German troops arrived in Belgium, Cortázar and his family moved to Zürich where María Herminia's parents, Victoria Gabel and Louis Descotte (a French National), were waiting in neutral territory. The ...

Blow-Up (1966)

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.  (more)

DIRECTION:  Michelangelo Antonioni
CAST:  David Hemmings  •  Vanessa Redgrave  •  Sarah Miles  •  John Castle

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.  (more)

DIRECTION:  Michelangelo Antonioni
CAST:  David Hemmings  •  Vanessa Redgrave  •  Sarah Miles  •  John Castle

Mario y los perros (2019)

An account of the childhood and youth of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, and how the hard experiences he lived during these formative years led him to write and publish his first major work when he was only 26 years old.  (more)

DIRECTION:  Chema de la Peña
CAST:  Mario Vargas Llosa  •  Alfredo Barnechea  •  Jorge Edwards  •  Rosa Regàs

An account of the childhood and youth of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, and how the hard experiences he lived during these formative years led him to write and publish his first major work when he was only 26 years old.  (more)

DIRECTION:  Chema de la Peña
CAST:  Mario Vargas Llosa  •  Alfredo Barnechea  •  Jorge Edwards  •  Rosa Regàs

Cortázar (1994)

A portrait which explores the legacy and impact of novelist Julio Cortazar's art, perceptively examining it within the context of shifting tides of Argentine culture and politics. The author reads his own texts in this poetic documentary.  (more)

DIRECTION:  Tristán Bauer
CAST:  Julio Cortázar  •  Alfredo Alcón  •  Hugo Carrizo  •  Aguston Goldschmidt

A portrait which explores the legacy and impact of novelist Julio Cortazar's art, perceptively examining it within the context of shifting tides of Argentine culture and politics. The author reads his own texts in this poetic documentary.  (more)

DIRECTION:  Tristán Bauer
CAST:  Julio Cortázar  •  Alfredo Alcón  •  Hugo Carrizo  •  Aguston Goldschmidt

The Padilla Affair (2022)

Havana, spring 1971: The poet Heberto Padilla has just been set free and appears before the Cuban Writers' Union where he pronounces a statement of "heartfelt self-criticism", declares himself to be a counterrevolutionary agent and throws accusations of complicity ...  (more)

DIRECTION:  Pavel Giroud
CAST:  Heberto Padilla  •  Fidel Castro  •  Gabriel García Márquez  •  Julio Cortázar

Havana, spring 1971: The poet Heberto Padilla has just been set free and appears before the Cuban Writers' Union where he pronounces a statement of "heartfelt self-criticism", declares himself to be a counterrevolutionary agent and throws accusations of complicity ...  (more)

DIRECTION:  Pavel Giroud
CAST:  Heberto Padilla  •  Fidel Castro  •  Gabriel García Márquez  •  Julio Cortázar