..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

February 22, 2003

Translation
Alex de la Inglesia Speaks
Of His Love Of Cinema In Los Angeles
_________________________________

Los Angeles, U.S.A. (AFP) - The film 800 Bullets, that this Saturday is being released in the Current Spanish Cinema Series at The American Cinematheque of Los Angeles, "speaks of the love that I have for the cinema", affirms its director, Alex de la Ingelsia, confessing to having lived the best moments on his life in front of the great screen.

"We are not a generation in which we can speak of our experience in The Mexican Revolution, or of the years that we spent selling newspapers on the streets of Manhattan or fighting on a pirate ship", the 37-year-old director explained to the AFP, of 37 years. "We must speak of the things that we have lived and that our generation has lived more than anything else in the cinema", he suggests.

"The best moments than I have had in my life have to be seeing films; my head is full of films, more than of personal experiences even," the director of 800 Bullets adds.

The film was made in Almeria, where the old scenery of the west has for 60 and 70 years served as a set for filming movies like "The Good,. The Bad & The Ugly or The Magnificent Seven.

Although for decades no film has rolled there, a group of cinema specialists continue living in the old town, where they subsist making pathetic action spectacles for the confused tourists who still visit the zone.

"Here is a people group who has lived in a wonderful time during which they had access to a series of idols of the screen and came to believe that they were part of that fantastic world", affirms de la Inglesia. "That world disappears and they are left in the desert living in the scenery, a ruinous facade, in a ghost town of the west and some become crazy", he adds.

As in his preceding films, the sixth big screen work of the Basque producer focuses on losers, people who've been socially uprooted.

"The winner is not a cinematographic personage", says the director. "Protagonist" in Greek means "the one that suffers." The spectator identifies more greatly with what the protagonist undergoes", he adds.

The director of the delirious Action Mutante (1993), The Day of The Beast (1995), Perdita Durango (1997), Dying Of Laughter (1999) and La Communidad (2000), Alex de la Inglesia returns to the comedy of the absurd to narrate a human drama.

"I perceive life like a frightful drama, a continuous fight against the absurd and the only tool that we have to fight it is comedy. I can only defend myself from the horror by laughing", assures.

The film, which will be released next in Latin America, has not managed to obtain distribution in the United States.

"This festival is a fantastic platform to teach the film to the people of the international markets, as well as to the North American industry", affirms the film director.

In his tenth edition, the cycle "Recent Spanish Cinema", one of the main showcases with which the Spanish cinema account to be Hollywood and to try to find distribution in the difficult American film market, is celebrated February 21 to February 9 February in connection with the American Film Market (AFM).

A major market for world cinema, the AFM is celebrated annually in the month of February in Santa Monica, where deals for production and distribution are valued in the hundreds of million dollars.

"A film that is spoken in another language comes to the United States to a minimal exhibition circuit, of art houses, and does not have the capacity to reach the great commercial circuits", affirms de la Inglesia, nevertheless he feels that "films made in Spain are now better understood and better appreciated outside".