Tribute to the great master Chicho Ibáñez Serrador, Goya of Honor 2019, at the nominees' party

The Film Academy celebrates at the Teatro Real in Madrid the traditional party of nominees in which the veteran director Narciso 'Chicho' Ibáñez Serrador has received the Goya of Honor.

The Royal Theatre of Madrid This Monday was the setting chosen by the Film Academy for the now traditional nominees party in which the professionals who opt for a Goya share impressions and "warm up" for the awards gala that will take place on February 2 in Seville.

The best-placed films in the running for the Goya Awards, in a year in which for the fifth consecutive time Spanish cinema has exceeded one hundred million in box office takings, are: The Kingdom (13 nominations), Champions (11), Carmen and Lola and Everyone knows it (8), Who'll sing to you (7), The shadow of the law (6) and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and Yuli (5).

The event was attended by most of the nominees, who were accompanied by Mariano Barrosoand Rafael Portela, president and first vice-president of the institution, respectively.

Barroso opened the event by thanking "the 168 nominees for the desire, the effort, the enthusiasm with which you carry out your job and the dignity with which you represent us all".

The high point in this nominees party has been the presentation of the Goya of Honor 2019 to Chicho Ibáñez Serrador, the filmmaker, director, screenwriter, theatre director and actor who contributed to popularising horror and fantasy cinema in Spain.

Javier Fesser, which leads the pools to win the Goya for best director and best film for Champions, assured that "forFor those who did not go to a Film School, Chicho was the best teacher."

Barroso, who described Ibáñez Serrador as Teacher of generations of filmmakers, stressed that "although Chicho directed only two films, they are the tip of the iceberg of his entire legacy in Spanish fiction.
From these films, several generations of filmmakers have been trained and many of us have discovered genres and languages that we continue to use and vindicate today".

"He has taught us the power of silence, and of screaming too, of expectation and fright. but also of entertainment as a high form of creation," he said.

In an ironic tone, Barroso added: "Even today we wonder who can kill better than Chicho."

For his part, the veteran director recalled how at the beginning of the Goya Awards ceremony he was called by the Film Academy to contribute ideas for the creation of the statuette. However, when he was shown the first "prototype" he was horrified to see a bronze by Goya in which on the back a button activated a pop-up fan that came out of the head of the brilliant painter accompanied by a little music.

"I stared at that Goya, I left... and I didn't come back. Maybe that's why, this is, and I appreciate it, the first night I return to this home of professionals," he acknowledged.

Chicho, the man who scared, amused and made the audience think

Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (1935, Montevideo, Uruguay) is the only child of the actor couple Narciso Ibáñez Menta and Pepita Serrador. Raised between tours and stages, due to an illness he suffered as a child he became an avid reader and developed his intellectual vocation.

In the fifties, already in Spain, he worked as an actor in his mother's theater company and, shortly after, he moved to theater direction. In 1957 he returned to Argentina and, together with his father, began a successful collaboration in theater, radio and television. Ibáñez Serrador became a renowned professional as an actor, director and screenwriter on Argentine television, signing his texts many times with the pseudonym Luis Peñafiel.

With theatre being his origins, – "my school, my university, my ancestors", in his own words – he discovered that directing and writing attracted him more than acting, becoming what he called "author who directs" or "author who performs".

He arrived in Spain in 1963, with tapes of his work in Argentina that he presented on Spanish Television, to which he transferred everything he had learned in America, revolutionizing and modernizing the television of the sixties in our country with series such as Mañana puede ser verdad or La historia de Saint Michel, but especially with Historias para no dormir (1966). To these are added the titles for the small screen El último reloj, El asfalto, Historias de la frivolidad and El televisor (1974). Specialized in literary adaptations and biographies of famous people, especially in his Argentine stage, it was nevertheless his science fiction and horror stories that had the greatest impact on the public.

This genre was also cultivated in cinema, giving birth to emblematic titles of Spanish fantasy and horror: The residence (1969) and Who can kill a child? (1976), of which he was screenwriter and director.

His hallmark also included humor, with the previous presentations he made in Stories to keep you awake or in the cycles of My favorite terrors, to which he added a touch of irony and comedy. In the career of this popularizer of the classics of the genre, there are also radio soap operas and the plays Approved in Chastity, The Hole and The Eagle and the Fog.

He founded the production company Prointel in 1970 to develop his own productions in film, television, theater and advertising, among which are the mythical program A two, three, answer again.

The career of the "shy" man who scared, amused and made the public think was recognized with the National Television Award in 2010, the Maestro del Fantástico Award at the Nocturna Festival, the Ondas Award for Best Program for Let's Talk About Sex, Antena de Oro awards, Iris Award and Feroz Honorary Award, among other awards, to which is now added the Goya of Honor 2019.

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