Marisol Carnicero

Marisol Carnicero was born in Berlangas de Roa, a small town in the province of Burgos, Spain. She began her career in television and film production while still very young, as a production secretary for RadioTelevisión Española, the state television network. (Until the introduction of private television in Spain in 1990, RTVE was the only television network.) Soon Marisol was working for one of the network's star producer-directors, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, and she made the transition to feature films on his film, "La Residencia". After working in continuity and as assistant director, she decided on production management. In 1977, she became Spain's first female production manager on "Vámonos, Bárbara", directed by Cecilia Bartolomé, followed by Luis García Berlanga's film "La Escopeta Nacional" also shot in 1977. Although she worked for many different directors and production companies throughout her career, she considers the era when Alfredo Matas produced scripts written by Rafael Azcona and directed by Luis García Berlanga to have been a sort of Golden Age of Spanish cinema. ("La Escopeta Nacional", "Patrimonio Nacional", "La Vaquilla", for example.) Matas also felt the need for a Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for film professionals, and Carnicero was both coordinator as well as a founding member of the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España, established on January 8, 1986. Marisol Carnicero is still active as a production manager. Her latest feature film is "Maktub" (2011), written and directed by Paco Arango, now in production. On a personal note, she shared her life with producer Tadeo Villalba Rodríguez for thirty-five years until his death in December 2009. They collaborated on specific movie projects on few occasions, as they preferred to keep matters of the heart separate from matters of the Big Screen. But both the Academy and the ECAM (Madrid School of Cinematography and the Audiovisual), where Carnicero taught production for 12 years, were joint adventures in the development and future of the Spanish film industry. Marisol says she learned almost as much about film from Tedy as she did about human beings.