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Spanish filmmaker Basilio Martín Patino's interest in cinema can be traced back to his youth. While studying humanities at the University in Salamanca, Martín Patino founded a film society and established both the respected film journal Cinema Universitario and in 1955, "Conversaciones Cinematográficas de Salamance," a seminal conference in which Spanish filmmakers gathered to discuss the changing shape of the growing film industry. After earning a degree in direction from the Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematográficas in 1961, Martín Patino went to work in the advertising industry. In addition, he taught film editing at the Escuela Oficial de Cinematografía. Martín Patino became a feature-film director in 1965 with Nueve Cartas a Berta/Nine Letters to Berta; the film received much acclaim and has been heralded as one of the finest examples of the New Spanish Cinema. Martín Patino entered the television industry in 1970 after he was commissioned to adapt Cervantes' novel Rinconete y Cortadillo into a TV special, but the project was shelved before completion. Though finished in 1972, Martín Patino's politically inflammatory documentary on the real meaning of Franco's rhetoric, Canciones para Después de una Guerra/Songs for After the War, and other similarly themed documentaries were not released until after Franco's fall in the late '70s. Martín Patino left film direction in 1985 to concentrate on making experimental videos such as La Seduccíon del Caos/Fascintation of Chaos (1991).