Juan Antonio Porto, filmmaker, screenwriter and producer, dies at 84

The filmmaker and producer Juan Antonio Porto, a screenwriter among other works of the film ‘The crime of Cuenca’, died this Tuesday, February 16 in Madrid, he died this Tuesday, February 16 in Madrid, at 84 years of age, according to confirmed by the Film Academy. Juan Antonio Porto (A Coruña, 1937) was the scriptwriter of ‘El bosque del lobo’, ‘Beltenebros’, or ‘El perro’, among other films, and of the television series ‘La Regenta’ and ‘The forging of a rebel’. He was a great lover and popularizer of American cinema, with a predilection for artists such as Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford. In this sense, he was the author of numerous essays and texts on cinematographic subjects, being a reference in the greater knowledge of the seventh art in Spain. He was also a film critic, was a script teacher at the Film School and at the Faculty of Sciences of the Information of Madrid. Recognized with the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts, the screenwriter who worked with Pilar Miró, Pedro Olea and Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi, among other filmmakers, was also a regular speaker of ‘How great is the cinema.’ A year ago, Juan Antonio Porto went to the Film Academy, an institution of which he was a member, to speak with Antonio Muñoz Molina, author of the book on which the film by Pilar Miró, by Beltenebros, is based, whose script Porto signed with Miró and Mario Camus . The screenwriter Juan Antonio Porto, who signed, among others, the libretto for Beltenebros, The Cuenca Crime or The Wolf Forest, dies at 84 in Madrid. pic.twitter.com / XHksh7zxz0 – Academia de Cine (@Academiadecine) February 16, 2021 “The three of us really liked the book and we thought it deserved respect, but it was necessary to make modifications”, declared Porto, who highlighted “the reflections of the main character, whose real name we do not know, because they call him Captain Darman: they humanize him in a tremendous way ». The film ‘Beltenebros’ won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and a total of three Goya Awards – Best Editing, Best Direction of Photography and Best Special Effects- in the sixth edition of the awards. His daughter, the gallery owner María Porto, has highlighted the human quality of José María Porto, of whom she has said that “he has fought until the last minute, he has been an example.”