08/04/2013 - After secretly battling leukaemia, the Barcelona director, one of the most personal filmmakers in Spanish cinema, passed away

An unexpected and painful earthquake shook Spanish cinema on Friday, April 5 when the death of Barcelona-based director Bigas Luna was announced. He was 67 at the time of his passing and had managed to keep his leukaemia secret, to the extent that filming for his next film, Segundo origen, was set to get underway shortly.

Luna, as famous for his body of work as for his personality and his capacity to discover new acting talents, was a central figure in Spanish cinema, to which he gave an incomparable level of imagination centred around his passion and pleasure, with distinctive Iberian style.

Luna started off as a director in 1976 with Tatuaje, an adaptation of private detective Pepe Carvalho, by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. His first pieces of work made it clear that he was no ordinary director. He became famous for his Iberian Trilogy, which first instalment Jamon Jamon (1992), won the silver Lion in Venice. The film made Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz famous.

The trilogy was completed by Huevos de Oro (1993), which won the special jury prize in San Sebastian, and La teta y la luna (1994), which won the Osella prize for best screenplay in Venice. The rest of his filmography, with its qualities and faults, showed great personal character with films like Bambola (1996), The Chambermaid on the Titanic (1997), with which he won his only Goya for best screenplay adaptation, Son de mar (2001) and Yo soy la Juani [+see also:
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The production of Segundo origen, an ambitious project on the environment in 3D geared towards a young public, will keep to its schedule with shooting beginning this summer, according to fellow screenwriter and producer Carles Porta, quoted in El País.

(Translated from Spanish)