Antonio Ribas on AllMovie

Spanish director Antoni Ribas is best known for his lavish epic La Ciutat Cremada/The Burnt City (1975), an account of contemporary Catalonian history strongly inspired by Luchino Visconti. Though filmed in Spanish, the film was seminal in the creation of Catalonian cinema and was later dubbed into the regional language. Ribas began his directing career in the early '60s when he made a series of educational films designed to teach Spanish, La Familia Fernández, for Encyclopedia Britannica. Prior to that assignment, Ribas had earned degrees in economics and law. He made his feature-film directorial debut with Las Slavajes en Puente San Gil/The Wild Girls at Puente San Gil in 1967. Despite the promise of La Ciutat Cremada, Riba's next effort, the three-part extravaganza Victoria! (1983), failed at the box office. Later in his career, Ribas co-founded the Institut de Cinema Català.