Marisol Carnicero was born in Berlangas de Roa, a
small town in the province of Burgos, Spain.
She began her career in television and film production while still very
young, as a production secretary for RadioTelevisión Española, the
state television network. (Until the introduction of private television
in Spain in 1990, RTVE was the only television network.)
Soon Marisol was working for one of the network's star
producer-directors, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, and she made the
transition to feature films on his film, "La Residencia". After working
in continuity and as assistant director, she decided on production
management. In 1977, she became Spain's first female production manager
on "Vámonos, Bárbara", directed by Cecilia Bartolomé, followed by Luis
García Berlanga's film "La Escopeta Nacional" also shot in 1977.
Although she worked for many different directors and production
companies throughout her career, she considers the era when Alfredo
Matas produced scripts written by Rafael Azcona and directed by Luis
García Berlanga to have been a sort of Golden Age of Spanish cinema.
("La Escopeta Nacional", "Patrimonio Nacional", "La Vaquilla", for
example.) Matas also felt the need for a Spanish Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences for film professionals, and Carnicero was
both coordinator as well as a founding member of the Academia de las
Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España, established on January
8, 1986.
Marisol Carnicero is still active as a production manager. Her latest
feature film is "Maktub" (2011), written and directed by Paco Arango,
now in production.
On a personal note, she shared her life with producer Tadeo Villalba
Rodríguez for thirty-five years until his death in December 2009. They
collaborated on specific movie projects on few occasions, as they
preferred to keep matters of the heart separate from matters of the Big
Screen. But both the Academy and the ECAM (Madrid School of
Cinematography and the Audiovisual), where Carnicero taught production
for 12 years, were joint adventures in the development and future of
the Spanish film industry. Marisol says she learned almost as much
about film from Tedy as she did about human beings.
