28/11/2012 - In just two days, on November 23 and 24, director and producer José Luis Borau and actor Tony Leblanc have both died

In just two days, Spanish cinema has lost two giants. On November 23, director, producer, screenwriter, and film critic José Luis Borau (photo) died in Madrid aged 83, while the next day actor and director Tony Leblanc died aged 90.

Borau’s presence in Spanish cinema extends much further than his films, even if abroad he is mostly known for his films, especially Poachers, which he wrote, directed, and produced in 1975 and with which he won a Golden Shell in San Sebastian. Between 1994 and 1999, he was president of Spain’s Academy of Cinematic Arts and Sciences, and in November 2008 he became the second academic at the Spanish Royal Academy to have come from the world of cinema, a post that he kept until his death.

As for Madrid-born Tony Leblanc (whose real name was the much more mundane Ignacio Fernández Sánchez), he was one of the most popular comedians in Spanish cinema until the 1970s. The following films stand out in his filmography: K.O. Miguel (1957), The Swindlers (1959), andHistorias de la televisión (1965). In 1975 he decided to quit cinema, until in 1998 Santiago Segura offered him a secondary yet key role in the first part of Torrente (thanks to which he won a Goya for Best Supporting Actor).

Although neither was very present on the current film scene (Borau directed his last film, Leo, in 2000), Spanish cinema is much poorer for their loss.

(Translated from Spanish)