Javier Castro

Javier Castro had his first professional encounter with the audiovisual world as a photographer, shooting regularly for weekly magazine Sábado Gráfico in the early 1980s, and freelancing for other journals and magazines. He moved to film distribution in the late 80s, founding his first company, Filmart Distribution, S.L., which handled a catalog of classic and art films -Vidor, Huston, Wilder, Fassbinder, Sayles, Verhoeven, Thome, Monicelli, Visconti, Murnau...-, introduced films from countries underrepresented then in the market (Danzón, Halfaouine, etc.), had exclusive distribution rights for Virgin films in Spain and provided theatrical distribution services to Sogecable, the production arm of Spanish multimedia conglom PRISA (owner of the daily El Pais). In 1992 he co-wrote and co-directed the documentary El tiempo de Neville (1990) Tiempo de Neville, premiered at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, and subsequently released in cinemas and broadcast by Canal Plus. In 1996 he produced his first feature film, Taxi (1996) Taxi, directed by Carlos Saura, which won the special jury award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and was sold to over thirty countries. The following year he produced Little Bird (1997) Pajarico, also by Carlos Saura. Since then he has produced and directed films and documentaries. Javier Castro graduated at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Imaging Science. He holds a Media Programme EAVE Master in audiovisual production, studied business administration at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and co created the Master in business administration for the film industry at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.