Gabriel García Márquez - Biography - Film

Film

Critics often describe the language that García Márquez's imagination produces as visual or graphic, and he himself explains each of his stories is inspired by "a visual image," so it comes as no surprise that he has a long and involved history with film. He is a film critic, he founded and served as executive director of the Film Institute in Havana, was the Head of the Latin American Film Foundation, and has written several screenplays. For his first script he worked with Carlos Fuentes on Juan Rulfo's El gallo de oro. His other screenplays include the films Tiempo de morir (1966) and Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes (1988), as well as the television series Amores difíciles (1991).

García Márquez also originally wrote his Eréndira as a third screenplay. However, this version was lost and replaced by the novella. Nonetheless, he worked on rewriting the script in collaboration with Ruy Guerra and the film was released in Mexico in 1983.

Several of his stories have inspired other writers and directors. In 1987, the Italian director Francesco Rosi directed the movie Cronaca di una morte annunciata based on Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Several film adaptations have been made in Mexico, including Miguel Littin's La Viuda de Montiel (1979), Jaime Humberto Hermosillo's Maria de mi corazón (1979), and Arturo Ripstein's El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1998).

British director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) filmed Love in the Time of Cholera in Cartagena, Colombia, with the screenplay written by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist). The film was released in the U.S. on November 16, 2007.

His novel Of Love and Other Demons has been adapted and directed by a Costa Rican filmmaker, Hilda Hidalgo, who is a graduate of the Film Institute at Havana where García Márquez frequently imparts screenplay workshops. Hidalgo's film was released in April 2010.