Born October 5^th, 1952 in Liverpool, very near Penny Lane, the street to which The Beatles dedicated one of their most famous songs, Clive Barker is a writer, essayist, playwright, filmmaker and painter. In his words, he acknowledges “My artistic ideal is Jean Cocteau he made movies, wrote novels and plays, painted pictures... But what he said was it’s all one business, it´s all one process: it’s all being a poet”. Some of his outstanding theater pieces are Frankenstein in Love, or The Love and Death (1982) and The Eye of the Beholder: Goya and Colossus (1983), while his extraordinary literary works include Books of Blood (1984-1985), Cabal (1988) and Tortured Souls (2001). He has also directed three cult movies, Hellraiser (1987), Nightbreed (1990) and Lord of Illusions (1995).

Born January 10^th, 1942 in Long Beach (California), Walter Hill is one of the key figures in late seventies and early eighties North American film, in his triple facet as a screenwriter, director and producer. His cinema is a rough, nihilistic action cinema, halfway between western and film noir, between epic poetry and tragedy, always featuring men on the fringes of the law, at the limit of their abilities, fighting against everything and everyone. Some outstanding movies in his filmography as a director are Driver (1978), The Warriors (1979), The Long Riders (1981), Extreme Prejudice (1987), Wild Bill (1995) or Last Man Standing (1996). As a producer, the Alien tetralogy and their subsequent “crossover”, Alien vs. Predator, or the prestigious television series Deadwood (2004-2006), winner of eight Emmys.

Park Chan-Wook (August 23^rd, 1963) is undoubtedly one of the most acclaimed and prestigious filmmakers and screenwriters in his country, South Korea, as a result of the international success of his peculiar military thriller Joint Security Area (2000). But it wasn’t until his so-called “Vengeance Trilogy”, consisting of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005), and which launched him on a triumphal circuit around different worldwide specialized festivals, that Park Chan-Wook would be acknowledged as one of the best on the international film scene. His cinema combines stories of ambiguous, extreme morals with an unusual poetic delicacy, thanks to a wide-ranging color palette, a very studied mise-en-scène full of plasticity, and a masterly use of music.

Called “The Godfather of Gore” by audiences and critics, Herschell Gordon Lewis was born on June 15^th, 1929 in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), and along with his partner, David F. Friedman, he specialized in the production of exploitation movies like Living Venus (1961), B-O-I-N-G! (1963) and The Adventures of Lucky Pierre (1961), which combined comedy, drama and nudity, were shot in just one week and had budgets of approximately 8,000 dollars (!). His international success came thanks to his bloody horror movies, filmed in color, Blood Feast (1963) —considered history’s first genuine gore movie— 2,000 Maniacs! (1964), Color Me Blood Red (1965) and A Taste of Blood (1967).

Films like Tetsuo, the Ironman (1989), continued with Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) and Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009), have made it to the top as cyberpunk classics for their electrifying visual exploration of the man-machine duality from a radically subjective point of view, thanks to the very personal creative universe of their director, Shinya Tsukamoto. Born January 1^st, 1960 in Tokyo, Tsukamoto usually performs diverse functions in his films —actor, director of photography, editing, production design…—, something that has to do with his early love of cinema: when he was just 14, his parents gave him a Super 8 camera. “I didn’t have any equipment or anything like that. It was just me. So when I became a professional filmmaker, I was already used to working like that”, he said.

No one would have imagined that Ivan Reitman (October 27^th, 1946, Komarno, Slovakia), director of a bunch of mythical eighties comedies —Meatballs (1979), Stripes (1981), Ghostbusters (1981)—, was also the producer of David Cronenberg’s first and most disturbing works —Shivers (1975), Rabid (1977)—, of a violent rape & revenge flick that was very much commented on in its day, Death Weekend (William Fruet, 1976), or of a popular exploitation movie like The Tigress (Jean LaFleur, 1977). A multifaceted, versatile movie man, Reitman continued cultivating “fantastic” comedy with Junior (1994) and Evolution (2001).

Born Malcolm John Taylor on June 13^th, 1943, in Leeds (Great Britain), Malcom McDowell went down in film history as the sociopath Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971), despite having a long career as an actor in over a hundred movies and TV movies. Thanks to his grotesque, disturbing appearance and his intense interpretative style, McDowell always stood out in difficult, conflictive roles, full of nuances, like If.... (Lindsay Anderson, 1968), Royal Flash (Richard Lester, 1975), Time After Time (Nicholas Meyer, 1979), Cat People (Paul Schrader, 1982) or Disturbed (Charles Winkler, 1990).

Born December 17^th, 1953 in Casablanca (Morocco), in 1978, along with his brother Victor, Samuel Hadida founded the Metropolitan Filmexport company, which became the most successful independent distribution company in France, with movies like The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1982), Rampage (William Friedkin, 1987), Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992) or Dark City (Alex Proyas, 1998). Afterwards, in 1990, he set up a new company, Davis Films, dedicated to production, the origin of big hits like True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993), An American Werewolf in Paris (Anthony Waller, 1997), Brotherhood of the Wolf (Christophe Gans, 2001), Domino (Tony Scott, 2005) or Black Dahlia (Brian De Palma, 2006).

Producer, screenwriter and director, José Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi (Madrid, 1927) moved to Barcelona when he was very young, a city where he received his profession training when he got a job as an office boy at the Emisora Films production company; there he was promoted until achieving the category of editor (1947-1954) of films directed by Ignacio F. Iquino. After his directing debut with Relato policíaco (1954), Antonio Isasi’s movie career went through two very different stages. The first started with the filming of La huida (1955) and is characterized by the predominance of crime and action movies, like Pasión bajo el sol, un drama rural (1956), Rapsodia de sangre (1957) or Sentencia contra una mujer (1960). Later would come his successful international co-productions, with outstanding films like entre Estambul 65 (1965), Las Vegas 500 millones (1964) or El perro (1977), movies where the qualities of a great classical filmmaker —in other words, magic, story, lesson—, tend to merge in an impression of unique and invigorating splendor.

Before devoting himself to cinema, José Ramón Larraz Gil (Barcelona, 1929), was a comic book artist, a fashion and photoromance photographer, and illustrator of “El coyote” (1954) and “Florita”. He studied Art History in Paris (1956-1959) and later moved to Great Britain, where he began his extraordinary English career as director of horror films, sick thrillers and exploitation flicks, thanks to titles that are mythical today among fans: Whirlpool (1970), Deviation (1971), Vampyres (1974) and Symptoms (1974). Back in Spain, he made several turbulent-erotic films of varying interest — El mirón (1977), La visita del vicio (1978), La ocasión (1978), Los ritos sexuales del diablo (1982) —, until, hand in hand with producer José Frade, he became an artisan, possibly somewhat less inspired, with Juana la loca... de vez en cuando (1983), Rest in Pieces (1987) and Edge of the Axe (1988).

Jordi Llompart Mallorqués is a journalist born in Barcelona on October 11^th, 1962. Well-known for having directed Telenotícies (TV News) and different news programs for Televisió de Catalunya (TV3 and Canal 33), he began his professional career as director of the municipal radio station Ràdio Cubelles and was responsible for the news services at Ràdio Avui-Cadena 13. He has also contributed to the newspapers “AVUI” and “La Vanguardia”, among others. Since early 1994 until late 1996 he directed the L'oblit del passat project, a documentary series revolving around the preservation of Humanity’s Cultural Heritage. He also directed Mystery of the NileAdventure on the Nile (2005), The Nomad Experience (2006) and Magic Journey to Africa (2009), documentary films that have established him as a pioneer of large format cinema in our country.

Born in Hernani (Guipúzcoa), October 27^th, 1934, Elías Querejeta is one of the most important producers in Spanish cinema. He has also worked as a screenwriter and documentary maker and in his youth he was a footballer for Real Sociedad, a team he played with in the Spanish league’s First Division (1952-1958). Since 1963, the year he created his own company, he has produced over fifty films, many of which contributed to the renovation of subjects and forms in Spanish cinema during the late part of Franco’s regime and the transition. But his most important contribution to movie making was undoubtedly his work for Carlos Saura, Víctor Erice, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Julio Médem, Fernando León de Aranoa, his daughter, Gracia Querejeta. Among the awards he obtained is the gold medal from the Spanish Academy of Film Sciences, that he was given in 1998.

Oregon, USA, 1936. With his attractive, photogenic face, George Brown Randall always knew that the movie world was for him. What he could never imagine is that under the artistic name Jack Taylor, and despite his American nationality, he would wind up becoming one of the most popular actors in Spanish film and an icon of the fantastic genre.

A quick review of his career places its takeoff in Hollywood and television to go on to become a professional movie actor with several Mexican genre films shot at the orders of Federico Curiel. 1962 was the year that, thanks to his contacts with a theater company, he would wind up visiting Spain, the country where he would definitively move to and where he would round off a filmography of over eighty movies (not counting his many other TV productions) directed by Amando de Ossorio, Jesús Franco, León Klimowsky, Carlos Aured, Juan Piquer Simón and José Ramón Larraz, among many others.

He is still active today and has many projects for 2009; among them, stopping into Sitges to receive the Nosferatu Award, well deserved for his life work and his proven passion for fantasy and horror movies.

Select filmography:
La Maldición de Nostradamus (Federico Curiel, 1959), Necronomicon (Jesús Franco, 1967), Count Dracula (Jesús Franco, 1969), Doctor Jekyll and the Werewolf (León Klimowsky, 1971), The Mummy’s Revenge (Carlos Aured, 1973), Journey to the Center of the Earth (Juan Piquer Simón, 1977), Pieces (Juan Piquer Simón, 1982), Conan the Barbarian (John Milius, 1982), Serpiente de mar (Amando de Ossorio, 1984), Rest in Pieces (José Ramón Larraz, 1987), The Ninth Gate (Roman Polanski, 1999)Screened movies: El Buque Maldito
(Amando de Osorio, 1974); The Knight of the Sorcerers (Amando de Osorio, 1973)

Born in Manhattan, New York (USA) to a Danish father and an American mother, his family later moved to Argentina, where Mortensen lived until he was 11. He devoted a few years to theater and afterwards began his film career with his performance as an Amish farmer in the movie Witness. It wasn’t until 1997 that he got his big break when he received Peter Jackson’s offer to work in the project that would change the destiny of his professional career. Despite the fact that at first, Mortensen hesitated to accept the role of Aragorn in the movie trilogy The Lord of the Rings, his son, a loyal fan of J. R. R. Tolkien’s work, convinced him to participate in it. After becoming an acclaimed star, he subsequently played another leading role in David Cronenberg’s movie A History of Violence, and later he was Alatriste, the literary character created by the journalist Arturo Pérez-Reverte. With an Academy Award nomination behind him, he is presently one of the most renowned actors on the international film scene.