Teo Escamilla

Camera operator

October 23, 1940 (57 years)

† December 21, 1997

Sevilla, Spain

Biography

Teodoro Escamilla Serrano; Seville, 1940 - Matanzas, Cuba, 1997 Spanish cinematographer. In contrast to directors of photography who were concerned above all with creating their own style, Teo Escamilla was always in favor of a patient craftsmanship in cinematographic lighting that allowed him to adapt it, scene by scene, to the director's vision and to the specific story. He began his professional career as a photojournalist for publications such as Cine en 7 días, El Caso, the Madrid newspape…

Filmography

6.5

The Nest

In a town near Salamanca, an eccentric widower, aged 60, is captivated by an imp, a precocious 13 year old. Alejandro is wealthy and alone, passing time with music, chess, and his shotgun. Gregoria (Goyita) the daughter of a weak-willed policeman and his bullying wife, is a budding naturalist who conspires to meet Alejandro. Even though he knows the village is talking, Alejandro spends time with Goyita, on walks, horseback rides, and dinners. He's enchanted and tells his friend the village priest that he's living for the first time. Goyita makes new demands on Alejandro, and he must decide how to be true to his ethics and to this Platonic yet highly-charged relationship.

6.3

Horror Express

Mysterious and unearthly deaths start to occur while Professor Saxton is transporting the frozen remains of a primitive humanoid creature he found in Manchuria back to Europe.

6.4

Faster, Faster

Angela is a young waitress who turns her back on society when she meets and falls in love with Pablo, a reckless criminal delinquent. Along with Pablo’s gang of car thieves, the pair embark on a drug and disco-fueled robbery spree as they hurtle toward oblivion.

7.6

The Spirit of the Beehive

In 1940, in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a young girl living on the Castilian plain is haunted after attending a screening of James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein and hearing from her sister that the monster is not dead, instead existing as a spirit inhabiting a nearby barn.

7.5

Cria!

Ana, an eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her grandmother and two sisters, mourns the death of her mother.

5.3

Mi general

A group of generals of the army meet for a course about NATO and new weapons. In the beginning everything is normal but as the time passes they behave more and more like school children.

6.3

El Dorado

The story of an expedition down the Orinoco and Amazon rivers in 1560 by Spanish soldiers searching for the fabled city of gold, El Dorado.

6.5

Cut-Throats Nine

A group of ruthless convicts is led to prison through an inhospitable mountain range by a small cavalry detachment commanded by Sergeant Brown, who is accompanied by his young and beautiful daughter.

6.3

Mama Turns 100

Ana and her husband Antonio arrive in the manor in the countryside of Spain where she worked as a nanny many years ago, for the centennial birthday of the matriarch.

6.6

Juncal

The world of bullfighting seen through the unforgettable adventures of a likeable rogue. A serious goring forced José Álvarez "Juncal", a famous bullfighter from the 1950s, to leave the bullfighting world, but it left him with a distinguished limp.

4.8

On the Line

A Border Patrol agent is determined to catch his old nemesis, an American criminal who successfully smuggles illegal aliens across the border from Mexico.

5.4

Antonieta

Anna is a psychologist undertaking research about famous suicidal women. She takes a specific interest in the case of Antonieta Rivas Mercado, who killed herself in 1931 in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.

6.2

In Memoriam

In an anguished triangle of silences and unspoken words, a man secretly loves a woman who loves another man.

6.5

Elisa, My Life

Elisa has not seen her father Luis for nine years, but she receives a telegram from her sister Isabel in a moment of crisis in her marriage with Antonio telling that her father is ill. Elisa decides to travel to the countryside of Madrid with Isabel and her brother-in-law Julián and their two children to visit Luis for his birthday. Elisa decides to stay with her father when her sister returns to Madrid with her family and she gets closer to Luis, understanding why he left her mother years ago. Later she tells him that Antonio cheated on her with her best friend Sophie and their relationship has ended. When Antonio unexpectedly arrives in the house, Elisa makes a decision about her life.

6.6

Carmen

While rehearsing a flamenco ballet adaptation of Bizet's opera “Carmen”, Antonio, the choreographer, falls in love with the main dancer, Carmen, a fiercely independent woman. Antonio is slowly consumed by jealousy and possessiveness towards Carmen, just like Don José in the original opera, blurring the lines between fiction and reality.

4.6

The Witching Hour

César and Pilar tour the Spanish countryside with their bus, showing films and doing magic spectacles in small villages. In one of these trips they find Saga, a beautiful young woman who starts to travel with them and changes their lives in unexpected ways.

6.6

Peppermint Frappé

Julián, a middle-aged single doctor, is reunited with Pablo, a childhood friend who has just married Elena, a beautiful young woman.

5.6

Tata Mía

Elvira, daughter of a disgraced military, who entered a convent at a young age leaves him and returns home to settle in Madrid with his beloved nanny, seeking help to overcome their crisis. However, the country has changed so much in his years of confinement that has little or nothing to do with his childhood memories ...

6.9

The Stilts

After the death of his wife, Angel, a university professor and writer, he falls into a severe depression. He flees to his house in the country, but there the evil is accentuated, which leads him to an attempted suicide that Teresa, his young neighbor, saves him. Angel starts a relationship with her and her partner, Alberto. Soon he falls in love with Teresa and, through a passionate relationship, he frees himself from his torments. Teresa, Alberto and her theater group on stilts ask her to write a play to represent her in the town. Obsessed by Teresa, she is vivified with this experience with the young, but she soon moves away from him carnally. This rupture desperate and as Teresa disabuses him of any possibility of continuity, in the mind of Angel reappears suicide as the only solution

5.3

To an Unknown God

José, a fifty-year-old homosexual magician, feels the need to return to Granada, the place where he spent his childhood, perhaps to embrace the painful memory of tragic experiences, perhaps to bury it definitively.