León Klimovsky

Who was León Klimovsky?

León Klimovsky was an Argentine film director.

A trained dentist, born in Buenos Aires, his real passion was always the cinema. He pioneered Argentine cultural movement known as cineclub and financed the first movie theater to show art movies. He also founded Argentina's first film club in 1929.

After participating as scriptwriter and assistant director of 1944's Se abre el abismo, he filmed his first movie, an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Player. Other highlights from this time period include the adaptations of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo and Ernesto Sabato's The Tunnel.

During the 1950s, Klimovsky settled in Spain, where he became a full-time "professional" director. He directed many spaghetti westerns and exploitation films, filming in Mexico, Italy, Spain and Egypt. Horror film fans best remember him for his contributions to Spain's horror film genre, beginning with La Noche de Walpurgis, the film that is said to have started the Spanish horror film boom of the 1970s.