Feliciano Manuel Vitores

Biography

Feliciano Manuel Vitores (Belorado, Burgos) was a Spanish film entrepreneur, producer, screenwriter and sound recordist. As the owner of the Phonofilm patent in Spain, he produced the country's first sound film, El misterio de la Puerta del Sol (1929). In 1928, Vitores bought the rights to the Phonofilm patent for Spain from Lee De Forest and called it “Fonofilm”. That same year, he made the documentary short, Discurso del Marqués de Estella, in which he shows a speech by the former dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera talking about the advance of sound films in Spain; and the comedy short El orador o La mano, a monologue by Ramón Gómez de la Serna, filmed in the Retiro Park in Madrid, which deals with a digression about the faculties that a good orator should present and has a surrealist character. It has been catalogued as one of the first recorded documents of the humor monologue genre. He produced a series of humorous short films directed by Manuel Marín, starring the Spanish comedian and clown Ramón Álvarez Escudero (Ramper): Cuando fui león (1928) En confesionario (1928) and Va usted en punto con el banco (1928). They are all short pieces of about seven minutes in length. In 1929, he produced the first sound film released in Spain, El misterio de la Puerta del Sol. It premiered at the Coliseo Castilla in Burgos, on January 11, 1930.This film, in spite of the technical advance it implied, had logistical difficulties in its distribution due to the complex projection system it required. It was screened in a small number of cinemas and was not a commercial success. This project led to the ruin of the businessman and his abandonment of the film industry. After 50 years of disappearance, his daughter sold the film El misterio de la Puerta del Sol to the Filmoteca Española in 1995. After a restoration process, it was re-released in 2001, in the last session before the closure of the now defunct Gran Teatro de Burgos.