Spanish Cinema Now is one of the Walter Reade Theater’s longest-running series, first presented in October 1992. Since then, annual film production in Spain has moved from about 40 movies per year into the triple digits. Audiences in Spain are not only growing, they are considerably younger nowadays, while the links between Spanish and Latin American cinema are stronger than ever. Latin American actors, directors and technicians are enriching the Spanish industry, and co-productions are at an all-time high.

Our series opens with the new film from Nacho Vigolondo (Timecrimes): Extraterrestrial, his smart, much-anticipated take on the alien invasion movie, in which a man and a woman wake up to a Madrid dotted with spaceships, the night after a tryst. Regional cinemas continue to produce strong work, as seen in the fascinating Catalan documentary Barcelona Before or the magic realist Galician film Crebinsky. A new generation of Spanish comedy is well represented in the selection, with everything from box-office superstar Santiago Segura’s latest Torrente film to Daniel Sánchez Areválo’s guy comedy Cousinhood. Don’t miss the Spanish-Portuguese co-production José and Pilar, an engaging, revealing portrait of the final years of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago and his Spanish wife Pilar del Rio.

They also offer a 10-film tribute to Luis García Berlanga, one of Spain’s greatest directors, who sadly passed away in November 2010. Together with Juan Antonio Bardem, Berlanga revolutionized the Spanish cinema in the Fifties and early Sixties with such masterworks as Welcome Mr. Marshall!, Plácido, and The Executioner.