Julio Fernández, the pioneering founder of Barcelona studio Filmax and co-architect of itsFantastic Factory which galvanised Spain’s auteur genre production, died Nov. 17. in Miami. He was 78.
Born in rural Galicia, in A Fonsagrada in the province of Lugo, Fernández was typical of a region which emigrated for larger opportunities in Spain’s fast building cities. Few, however, had Fernández’s ambitions and eye for the main chance. If genre and animation are two of the current international market’s going concerns, Fernández anticipated this getting on for 30 years ago.
In 1987, Fernández bought Filmax, a Paramount library movie distributor in the 1960s, dedicated to video, but which Fernández and younger brother Carlos Fernández wanted to move into theatrical distribution. Buoyed by cinema theater results for “The Fourth Consul,” Filmax made another move, into production, and always with one eye on international markets, seeing vibrant international sales on young director Jaume Balagueró’s “Nameless” at 1999’s Mifed, bringing down the flag on a golden age of Spanish auteur genre.
A year later, Fernández officially launched the Fantastic Factory with Brian Yuzna. A unique attempt to replicate the shlock but also meta arch awareness of 1985’s “Re-Animator” in movies made in English in Spain mixing international and Spanish actors, the Fantastic Factory saw early success, with Lionsgate Entertainment acquiring all North American rights to four of its horror titles: Jack Sholder’s “Arachnid”; “Dagon,” from Stuart Gordon; and two titles from Brian Yuzna: “Faust: Love of the Damned” and “Beyond Re-Animator.”
In 2001, Fernández launched Filmax Animation in his native Galicia, a venture which yielded Goya-winning “El Cid: The Legend.” Filmax also upped its ambition. Bought by Dimension and released in 2004 two years after its Spanish bow, supernatural horror film “Darkness” – starring Anna Paquin, Lena Olin, Iain Glen and Giancarlo Giannini and a step-up in scale and step into English for Balagueró – grossed a breakout $34.4 million in U.S. theaters.
Also released in 2004, the Brad Anderson-directed “The Machinist,” starring Christian Bale, has become a cult classic. From Balagueró and Paco Plaza, “[REC],” which premiered in 2007, went on to be ranked by Bloody Disgusting at No. 11 of its Top 20 Horror Films of the 2000s.
In 2010, Carlos Fernández took over the reins of the company as its president, consolidating TV production, scoring a huge success with series “Polseres Vermelles” (“The Red Band Society”) remade by Fox in the U.S. and one of Spain’s most successful TV fiction formats ever. He and Filmax co-head Laura Fernandez, Julio Fernández’s daughter, have also fully-diversified Filmax into a full-blown studio.
Julio Fernández was a born entrepreneur, working in sectors from real estate to cured sausages, the latter in Galicia.
From 2010, he increasingly turned to other enterprises. His legacy remains, however. The Fantastic Factory underscored the possibilities of genre as a business and an art-form in Spain. It may be no coincidence that when Guillermo del Toro set out to shoot “Pan’s Labyrinth,” still reckoned by many as his best film, he shot and majority financed it in the country. The seeds of Spain’s modern genre film industry had already been sown.
