MURCIA. Film director, screenwriter and writer Benito Rabalson of actors Paco Rabal and Asunción Balaguerwill present in The Union his book of Memories, Thank you for my lifethis Friday May 17 (6:30 p.m.) in the
Assembly Hall of Mining Museum from the Murcian townwithin the activities of the II International Literature Festival ‘Iluro’. It is worth remembering that both Benito and his sister Teresa Rabal are leading a movement so that the Madrid town hall of Alpedrete restore your parents’ name in the public spaces from which you have removed them.
The book is an emotional portrait of this aquiline family of artists, which is also a journey through the History of Spain in the 20th century through which Luis Buñuel, Orson Welles, Pablo Picasso, Rafael Alberti, Juan Antonio Bardem, Carlos Saura, Mario Camus, Miguel Delibes, Fernando Rey, Fernando Fernán Gómez… and many other figures from the world of culture and politics.
“Growing up under the flag of love, alongside two people who have broken their destiny, teaches you to see the world differently. You understand that life does not consist of a long-distance race in which to achieve goals that lead you to future happiness, but rather ensuring that this is present in every moment,” explains Benito Rabal.
“The value of a human being does not lie in the success he or she has achieved or how much he or she is capable of accumulating, but in the goodness and appreciation of his or her dignity. Never lose innocence, know that every day, no matter how many years pass, you still learn; eat life in bites and enjoy it; believe in a more just world and fight to achieve it; know that everything is permissible except living off the suffering of others. That is my inheritance, the gift of your legacy, the solid foundations on which. that I have tried to build my life,” writes the filmmaker, Teresa’s brother and Liberto’s father.
Thank you for my life It is not only a tribute to his parents, but also to cinema and theater. Rabal Balaguer tells how his vocation arose: “It was probably because of seeing my father’s performance that I attended the screening of the film, which was still unfinished. The landscapes, the camera movements, the interpretive duel, the way the plot was developed , were a revelation for me. Something stirred inside me, I don’t know how to explain why. Suddenly, I felt like the nineteenth-century explorer who discovers a lost city in the depths of the jungle. path of the mystics, he appeared to me to reveal my vocation. As soon as I left the room, I faced my father: I want to do the same, tell stories like that, with cinema.
Benito Rabal worked as an assistant director and second unit director with several of the best national and foreign directors on films such as The holy innocents, The crack, Start over, Beehive, Bicycles are for summer, Sorcerer either The escape from Segovia. Among his works as a director it is worth highlighting God’s Bastard Brother, The van, Nazca, Paco, my father, Curro Jiménez II, Francisco by Paco or short films you deserve to live and You will see. In Thank you for my life He remembers his personal life and his film career, to which in recent years he has added his role as a writer, with the collection of poems southern notes and the novel Yesterday tomorrow.
“They are still by my side. I miss them, but I don’t feel nostalgic for either of them. It is in those moments that one would like to believe that there is another life in which we can meet again. But for what? Haven’t we enjoyed in this? When you thank him so much, saying goodbye, it doesn’t matter,” reflects the author from Águilas, the Rabals’ homeland. “I think about what theirs would have been like if it had been prolonged. Without breathing, my father. My mother without being able to work, with the pandemic at the door, without receiving visits from so many whom she loved so much. As for me, if I returned to be born I would do exactly the same, the same successes and the same mistakes. I only hope that I can fulfill their last teaching, follow their example and, as they say to each and every one, thank you, thank you, thank you very much.
