Category: Once Upon a Time in Almería
Almería Western Film Festival 2025
The Almería Western Film Festival is a unique kind of film forum. Hosted by the town of Tabernas, the festival celebrates both the Western genre and the local legacy of filmmaking. The surrounding desert landscape has appeared in countless movies over the years, particularly Westerns, including, of course, Sergio Leone’s […]
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Dead Souls
Alex Cox’s new film ‘Dead Souls‘ is now making the festival circuit. Loosely based on Nikolai Gogol’s novel of the same name, the protagonist, named Strindler (and played by Cox himself), travels through the American southwest seeking to buy the names and details of Mexicans who have died while encountering […]
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Claudia Cardinale in Almería
In Sergio Leone’s epic ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968), Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale) arrives at Sweetwater Ranch after a long journey by train and horse-drawn carriage through the Western landscape (including some shots of Monument Valley). She plans to join her new husband and his children, but […]
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Alex Cox’s Last Movie in Almeria 1
Alex Cox is currently at work on what he is calling his ‘last movie.’ And, of course, it involves shooting in Almería. Last month I had the extraordinary opportunity to visit the set.
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2024 Almeria Western Film Festival
Western film fans and curious onlookers gathered last week in Tabernas for the 14th Almeria Western Film Festival.
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Spartacus in Spain
At a time when Hollywood studios and independent producers were looking to shoot overseas to save costs and highlight exotic locations, Spartacus was supposed to show that an epic film could be made without leaving California. But Director Stanley Kubrick insisted on shooting the battle scenes in Spain. Kubrick envisioned […]
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Anthropology of the Moving Image
A new book looks at movie landscapes: Arnd Schneider, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo has published widely on contemporary art and anthropology. His latest book, Expanded Visions: A New Anthropology of the Moving Image, brings together a set of essays on anthropology, ethnography and film. One […]
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The Story of El Condor 1
I put together this short video about one of my favorite film sets in Almería, which appears in “Once Upon a Time in Almeria: The Legacy of Hollywood in Spain” (Daylight Books 2017).
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El Astronauta
This 1970 Spanish comedy follows Pepe (Tony LeBlanc), a small town dreamer who, after watching the US moon landing on television, decides to build his own rocket to the moon. Amazingly, after numerous setbacks, he finally blasts off into space before coming to a rough landing in a desolate lunar […]
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Candice Bergen on Almería: “It was the most romantic location of my life.”
Candice Bergen was unfortunate enough to be kidnapped not once but twice along the southern coast of Spain in Almeria. It first happened in the 19th Century Old West (The Hunting Party, 1971). An outlaw (Oliver Reed) abducted her outside the schoolhouse, unaware she was the wife of a powerful […]
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