Archives
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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125 Years of Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca was born in 1898, and earlier this year marked the 125th anniversary of his birth. When he was 30 years old, Spanish newspapers covered a sensational story from a remote corner of Andalucia. Twenty six year old bride Francisca Cañadas Morales was due to marry a local […]
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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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WW84 in Spain
In Wonder Woman 1984, Diana Prince appears to be in semi-retirement, working at the Smithsonian Institution as an expert in ancient civilizations while playing mall cop in her spare time. But she is soon faced with a new challenge when an ancient Dreamstone shows up, granting wishes while creating havoc. […]
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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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Then and Now: The Attack on Aqaba
Compare the beach at Algarrobico on the southern coast of Spain then and now in the video clip above. The city of Aqaba was reconstructed here in 1962 for the filming of this classic scene from Lawrence of Arabia. Though nothing remains of the set today, just the hulk of […]
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Nelson Algren and Simone De Beauvoir’s Road Trip Through Franco’s Spain
Only a handful of photographs exist of Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren together from a love affair that persisted, mostly across the Atlantic ocean, for over a decade. Possibly the last photograph of them together is from a visit to Spain in May 1960. In the photograph, they stand […]
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