Berlanga's Blue Division notebooks { the late Spanish filmmaker on the Russian front}

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http://www.elpais.com/articulo/english/Berlanga/s/Blue/Division/notebooks/elpepueng/20111114elpeng_15/Ten


Notes, drawings and a self-portrait from Luis García Berlanga's diaries.- LUIS SEVILLANO

Just taken out of the safe and on top of a table to be photographed, they could just be old bits of paper and nothing more. However, they might also be considered a Rosetta Stone of Spanish cinema. They are the diaries written by the 20-year-old Luis García Berlanga during his time on the Russian front with the Blue Division, the group of Spaniards who volunteered to serve alongside the German army during World War II.

Inside are the filmmaker's first characteristic scribblings, his political writings marked by a romantic vision of the Falange, film criticism, a novel, dozens of drawings... and above all poems, a lot of poems, almost all of them dedicated to the love of his youth, Rosario Mendoza, who was actually one of the reasons he enlisted in the Blue Division.

"Because deep down, Luis wanted to be a poet," says Basilio Rodríguez, owner of the Sial publishing house and responsible for the publication of these notebooks. Last Sunday marked a year since the death of the Spanish filmmaker, and this is the first time that these diaries have been made public.