Movie on post war Spain big winner of Goya cinema awards (Roundup)

Feb 14, 2011, 8:45 GMT

Madrid - Director Agusti Villaronga's Pa Negre (Black Bread) emerged as the big winner of Spain's top cinema awards, the Goya prizes, at a gala night early Monday.

The post-civil war childhood drama describing a society where the poor ate black and the rich white bread had hardly been distributed outside the north-eastern region of Catalonia, where it was made.

Pa Negre nevertheless took nine awards, including best movie, best director, best actress for Nora Navas, best supporting actress for Laia Marull and best promising actors for Francesc Colomer and Marina Comas.

The film's director and its producer described Pa Negre as a movie with an emotional rather than customs-and-manners perspective, filmed in a classical style and showing 'the moral devastation that war produces on a civilian population.'

Javier Bardem won the Goya for best actor for his role in Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful, for which he has also been nominated for an Oscar.

Bardem dedicated the award to his wife Penelope Cruz and the couple's new-born son 'who awaken my heart and smile every day.'

Karra Elejalde was picked as best supporting actor for his role in Iciar Bollain's Tambien la Lluvia (The Rain Too), a movie on a conflict over water in Bolivia.

Tom Hooper's The King's Speech won the Goya for best European movie, after also taking the British Bafta award on Sunday. Chilean director Matias Bize's La Vida de los Peces (The Life of the Fish) was awarded the Goya for best Hispano-American movie.

The gala night marked the 25th anniversary of the Goya prizes, which are awarded annually by the Spanish Cinema Academy.

A few weeks before the ceremony, the academy's director Alex de la Iglesia had announced that he would resign after the gala over the so-called Sinde bill.

The law, which is named after Culture Minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, would impose measures aimed at protecting copyrights from internet downloaders. It still needs to win final approval by parliament.

At the Goya ceremony, de la Iglesia held a speech calling for a market model which respected the rights of internet users as well as artists.

The movie director urged the movie industry not to 'be afraid' of the internet which is 'the salvation of our cinema.'

About 200 opponents the Sinde law meanwhile demonstrated outside Madrid's Teatro Real opera, where the gala was held.

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