‘Time of Silence and Destruction,’ About the Writer Who Dragged Spanish Novel Into the 20th Century, Pounced on by Filmax (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comJohn Hopewell Chief International Correspondent SAN SEBASTIAN — Barcelona-based Filmax has acquired international sales rights to “Time of Silence and Destruction,” a bio-doc feature about Luis Martín-Santos who, along with great friend Juan Benet, revolutionized the Spanish novel, as James Joyce and William Faulkner had achieved decades before outside Spain.
Martin-Santos’ “Tiempo de Silencio” (1962) and Benet’s “Volverás a Región” (1967) not only broke with conventional social realism but dragged the Spanish novel into the 20th century using stream of consciousness and shifting narrators and were hugely influential on younger writers active down to this day, shifting novel’s focus from chronicle to a high-style and language.
Led by Martín-Santos’ daughter Rocío and son Luis, who were just children the the writer died tragically in a car accident in 1964, “Time of Silence and Destruction” sees them open boxes of Martín-Santos’ unpublished papers as they talk to the few surviving friends and colleagues, situating Martín-Santos in his context, such as the Academia Errante, a group of free-thinking Basques in San Sebastián which crossed political divides.
A ground-breaking psychiatrist, Martín-Santos also became a leading member of Spain’s Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), which now governs in Spain.
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