On March 7, 2020 at 11:00h in collaboration with the Royal TheatreThe XXIV Encuentro de la Luz took place, with the lighting and photographic designer Valentín Álvarez and the screening of the film “El Rey”, which he directed with Alberto San Juan.
El Rey’ is the film adaptation of the play written by Alberto San Juan that gives a different view of what happened during and after the Spanish Transition. With previous documentation work, the film narrates real events in the life of King Juan Carlos I with fictitious dialogues.
In 2014, Juan Carlos I abdicates and his son, under the name of Felipe VI, is proclaimed the new King of Spain. It is then that Juan Carlos I lives a nightmare, a dreamlike experience that runs through his whole life since he was 10 years old, when he arrives in Spain for the first time. During this experience, he meets a multitude of people who have marked his life and that of Spain: Franco, Carrero Blanco, Adolfo Suárez, Felipe González, Antonio Tejero, his younger brother Alfonso, etc.
Valentín Álvarez is a member of the AAI, has designed the stage lighting for many plays such as “Las Brujas de Salem”, directed by Andrés Lima; “La Cocina” by Arnold Wesker, directed by Sergio Peris-Mencheta; “El Jurado”, directed by Andrés Lima¸ “Medea”, directed by Andrés Lima, and “Rinoceronte”, produced by the CDN and directed by Ernesto Caballero, among many others. He has also been director of photography on several feature films, short films, documentaries, commercials and music videos. And throughout his career he has received numerous awards, among the most recent, the Ceres Award for Best Lighting Design 2014 for “Los Macbez”; the Max Theatre Award 2014 for Best Lighting Design for “Un trozo invisible de este mundo”, and the Best Cinematography Award Gold Panda at the Sishuan Film and TV Festival (China) 2011 for the film “How much does your building weigh, Mr Foster?”, among others.
