Javier DeLaTorre was born in Granada on February 24, 1964. Cindy Crawford, Javier Bardem, Sharon Stone, Benicio del Toro or Elizabeth Taylor are also pisces.
Since he was little, very little, his caregiver, an inveterate movie buff, and always hidden from the wishes of his mother – who begged her to walk him under the radiant Andalusian sun of Almuñécar – immerses him in the world of cinema, taking him to those unforgettable cinemas that were the Coliseum and the Gerardo, to see his first films. So much so, that the first memory he retains of his childhood is a (wide) shot of Marisol with El Dúo dinámico. His destiny seemed to be already taking shape.
In this way, cinema and what cannot be talked about are mixed in such a way in him that this will leave a visible mark in his future work. When, very soon, he moved to Granada, the cinema virus was already circulating through his veins, feeding through mainly two activities that he integrates into his customs: the first, the Príncipe cinema, where auteur film sessions took place every thursday of the month, a weekly penance for his parents. Over there he will go from Marisol’s universe and horror films like Dracula to the sophisticated films by filmmakers such as Cassavetes, Pialat, Rohmer, Zulawski, Godard or Wenders. The second activity takes us to the sunday afternoon sessions in the Don Bosco film club, of the Salesianos of Granada. There he meets for the first time with the cinema of Bergman, Fellini, Bertolucci or Fassbinder. Quite a crush.
When one afternoon he watches Arrebato (Rapture) and sees the sequence with Cecilia Roth dressed as Betty Boop, the decision is made: he will go to Madrid to study film direction in order to become, as he likes to say, a maker of images. So he graduates from the Facultad de Imagen y Sonido de la Complutense, he specializes in direction in the T.A.I., he studies doctoral courses at the Université Paris 8 (scholarship from the Board of Andalusia in expansion of higher artistic studies), where they would produce his first short film, Couleur Absante, winner of the award for best short film of the P.N.R. (Platform for New Directors) and point of departure of his career as a filmmaker. This will be followed by titles such as El grito de Munch, ¿Iguales?, Ya lloré lo que tenía que llorar and Esos dos. In them he directs actors like Aida Folch, Athenea Mata, Daniel Freire, Alberto Amarilla, La Prohibida, Marta Fernández Muro, Valentín Paredes, Ramón Esquinas, Jesús Gallo or Roma Calderón.
And the time has come for his first feature film: it all begins in the parking lot of El Corte Inglés of Preciados, when chance literally put the actress Myriam Mézières in his path, He dared speak to her, starting a fruitful artistic collaboration that would also lead them to a close friendship. They work together on what is his first film, Cuidate de mí, which also stars actors such as Athenea Mata, Adriana Davidova, the journalist-actress Gema López, Carolina Bona, Norma Martínez, Daniel Huarte, Ramón Esquinas or Cecilio de la Torre. Premiered in the ZonaCine of the Malaga Festival, it is also screened in the Festival de CIne Pobre de La Habana or at the I mille occhi Festival internazionale del cinema e delle arti de Triestre, the PNR Festival de Cine Experimental de Madrid and at the Festival de Mujeres de Granadal. The title would remain without distribution until today, although predictably for a short time.
While all that was happening, he worked as director on television networks, first Telemadrid and later, Canal Sur. There, he spends his time in shows as disparate as Sucedió en Madrid, Con T de tarde, Cortos en Madrid, Mamma Mia ( where he participates in the Tamara phenomenon, for which he will direct the story of La Cerillera or the musical clip En mamma mia. This collaboration will give rise to the short film – that he also produces – La ratita Mara presumida, with the singer-actress Tamara and actors like La Dolly or Eduardo Aldán. Born more to direct and write than to produce and distribute, the small film Cuidate de mí remains in a drawer. He ends his Telemadrid era with the cultural program Escenario Madrid. It is time to participate as a director in the change of format of the morning news program on Canal Sur, a pleasant experience that will run out in just over one year.
His entry into the world of theater will take place with Microteatro por dinero: its connection with this art began since his arrival in Madrid, when he participates in the Claudia Fres interpretation school to later specialize with another Argentine teacher, David Amitín. He is introduced from the beginning in the Microteatro Por Dinero experience, created by Miguel Alcantud. It will take shape in an old brothel on calle Ballesta, with his play Samantha – starring the current manager of the establishment, Verónica Larios – in which the character atoned for the emotional intricacies of his work as television worker, a world she abandoned to return to another, already known, as a prostitute. And it will be a year later, commanded again by Miguel Alcantud, that this very celebrated event will become the well-known space of theatrical reference Microteatro por dinero. This will be the place where he solidifies his experience as a playwright and stage director with productions such as La rana y el escorpión, Caperucitas y lobos, Un discreto polvorón (dramaturgy: Maite Castellano), Detrás de la puerta (playwriting: Ariel Capone), Esos tres (from a story by Elvira Navarro), Los amantes a la inversa, PutaVida, SuperDeneuve (Confesiones inconfesables de una mujer como Dios manda) or Chicas de Cabaret. In them he discovers current up-and-coming actress Olivia Baglivi and will work with others like Geli Albaladejo, Nerea Moreno, Tábata Cerezo, Miguel Hermoso, Jesús Gallo, Carlo D’Ursi, Patricia Gorlino, Paco Maldonado or Verónica Larios. In standard duration theatre, debuts Sexageración in La casa de la portera (along with Tomás Gayo) or Retablo de las bajas pasiones, in Sala Nudo. which he collects the texts already released in Microteatro Por Dinero. In other performing spaces he directs the musical show Amour fou and Dans tes yeux, performed by Myriam Mézières and that will travel through different latitudes, from Granada to Paris or Trieste.
He publishes, thanks to a scholarship awarded by the Fundación Autor (SGAE), a book of interviews with José Luis García Sánchez, El humor como bicarbonato, with a publisher specializing in film books, Notorious. Other publications are the original script of La mala sombra, published thanks to the aid for writing original scripts from the Comunidad de Madrid, as well as the Cajasol Foundation’s publication of the anthological collection of poems Una flor todavía (Antología I), prepared by the poet and writer Claudia Capel, in which he participates as a poet.
…And suddenly the appearance of an atypical brain meningioma keeps him away from the artistic world for a few years, a time in which he will return to his southern land. But after a magical intervention in Madrid in February 2024, the resurrection has been so optimal that he is already preparing his new project, this time and again, in the format of feature film. He will continue…