Juan Piqueras Martínez

Juan Piqueras Martínez (1904 – July 1936) was a Spanish film critic, film historian and journalist.

Biography Born into a family of day laborers, Piqueras went to school irregularly due to the poor economic conditions of his family and was mostly self-taught. He entered the intellectual and literary circle of Valencia as a poet, and soon became interested in cinema from 1919. He left for Madrid, and became a prominent name in the film circles of the Generation of '27.

In 1925, he founded with Ernesto Giménez Caballero and Luis Buñuel the first film club in the Spanish State at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, where he became close to Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. With Buñuel, he directed the film club of La Gaseta Literària. An ideological Marxist and admirer of Soviet cinema, he joined the Communist Party of Spain in 1930. At the beginning of June 1930, Juan Piqueras prepared his move to Paris, as a correspondent and contributor from abroad to Popular Film, Mirador, La Gaceta Literaria, El Sol, La Semana Gráfica, Crónica, among other leading publications of the time. He was René Clair's assistant in A Nous la Liberté. In 1932 he created the magazine Nuestro Cinema, which would achieve notable international prestige.