Interview: Miguel Llansó

Photo taken from the Lanzadera Films website

    This is the last of the interviews that I conducted at D'A Festival in Barcelona back at the end of April. It was by far the longest of the three interviews I did there, which is why it's taken a bit longer to materialise - as I've said previously, learning to translate and simultaneously transcribe audio has been a bit of a sharp learning curve (I'm going to investigate whether there is such a thing as a phonetic Spanish dictionary) and it definitely gives my brain a workout - but given that I didn't have the time to do it when I first returned home, it made sense to hang on to the interview until Crumbs was screening somewhere in the UK. It is showing at the Hackney Picturehouse as part of the East End Film Festival tomorrow. Crumbs remains my favourite film of the year so far - I definitely recommend seeing it if you're in the area.
     In terms of the interview, the length means that it has been split into two parts. Part 1 went up today and I'll add an additional link to this post when the 2nd part is online:

• Subverting old tales from the future, part 1
• Subverting old tales from the future, part 2

Festival Report: D'A Festival 2015

    I've written a report about the 5th edition of D'A Festival and it's over at Mediático (click here). As I've reviewed most of the films that I mention elsewhere, I've gone into a bit more detail about the festival itself before highlighting some of the standout titles / groups. It was the first time that I'd been to a film festival outside of the UK and - although I had my doubts initially (mainly to do with the expense of travel and accommodation) - I had a great time and I hope that my enthusiasm in relation to the films I saw (and the experience I had) has come across in what I've written on the blog and elsewhere. It was an adventure, and I'm glad I went for it.
    There are a couple of outstanding pieces to be completed (or, indeed, started) in relation to D'A Festival - I still need to translate my interview with Crumbs director Miguel Llansó (lack of time since I've been back at work has been the delay on that one), and I'm intending to get that done by the start of July because Crumbs will be screening at the East End Film Festival (1-12 July). That's the only pressing thing that I need to get done. As I've said before, I'm intending to write about the (Im)Possible Futures films or recent Spanish sci-fi more generally, and at some point I also want to write a post about docu-fiction No todo es vigilia, which was a film I really liked but I didn't review it (because Eye for Film already had a review) and as a result it's ended up a bit left behind on my 'to do' list. But those things will have to wait until later in the summer because I'm now gearing up for the Edinburgh Film Festival (posts forthcoming) and I also have something about documentaries that has been developing in my mind for a while, so I'd like to write that one sooner rather than later (certainly it will be my priority after Edinburgh). So that's it for my coverage of D'A Festival 2015 for now.

Interview: Ion de Sosa and Chema García Ibarra

Sueñan los androides

    One slightly unexpected experience at D'A Festival was that I had the opportunity to interview people in person (I tried to interview someone at a film festival last year but wasn't insistent enough in following it up, and so the chance was lost). In this case, I had asked about the possibility of interviewing specific people before I headed to the festival but didn't find out whether or not I could until I arrived in Barcelona. The delay in me starting to write reviews while I was there was effectively the time I spent preparing questions (which had to wait until I had seen the relevant films as well).
    The first of these in-person interviews related to Sueñan los androides / Androids Dream and can be read over at Eye for Film - here. In fact, it was actually two interviews because I ended up interviewing director Ion de Sosa and co-writer Chema García Ibarra separately, but as I asked them the same questions - about Sueñan los androides and also Spanish cinema more generally - I've put their answers together in that piece. I will be returning to Sueñan los androides when I write something more detailed about the (Im)Possible Futures section - and I may expand that to be about Spanish sci-fi more generally, in which case I will also include Uranes (written and directed by Chema García Ibarra).
    Conducting interviews in person has been a learning experience, and one which will no doubt continue in the future. For example, in contrast to interviews conducted by email, I had the chance to respond to their answers with follow up questions, but in this instance I stuck to my original questions too rigidly. That was a confidence issue on my part given that we were speaking Spanish and it was the first time I'd ever interviewed anyone, in any language (yes, I decided to go for the full-blown baptism of fire). As I said to each of the people I interviewed in Barcelona (I still need to translate my interview with Crumbs director Miguel Llansó) - I can understand the majority of what is said to me in Spanish, but sometimes I can't find the right words when I want to express myself / respond. So that hindered me a bit - although they were all very patient when I did stray from the questions I had written down and had to grasp for the right words - but I think that I did the best I could, and I'm pleased that I went for it because I would have regretted it if I hadn't. Translating the interviews (I recorded them) has also been interesting from a language comprehension perspective because it's not enough to understand the gist if you're directly quoting someone (listening to myself speaking Spanish has also underlined that I should try to find some conversation classes again - I read or listen to Spanish on a daily basis but I don't have many opportunities to speak it), so I've had to work on both picking out their precise words (which is something I don't have to worry about when the interview is done via email because I receive the words in written form) and a more nuanced understanding of the specific words used.

Interview: Adán Aliaga and David Valero

The first of my interviews relating to films I saw in Barcelona at the D'A Festival is now online. I interviewed Adán Aliaga and David Valero about their comedy El arca de Noé / Noah's Ark via email - you can read the result here.

D'A Festival: short films

Avant pétalos grillados

    The D'A Festival had a varied programme of short films as part of the (Im)Possible Futures strand. I actually only saw one of them while I was in Barcelona (Chigger Ale played before the screening of Crumbs), but I've found quite a few of them online - Velasco Broca's films, including the three screened at the festival, are available to view for free on PLAT (his page on the site is here), Ángel Santos's Camiños de Bardaos is on YouTube, and Christelle Lheureux's La maladie blanche is available to rent on Vimeo. Only the last of those is available with English subtitles.
I've reviewed three of the shorts for Eye for Film:

• Avant pétalos grillados (Velasco Broca, 2007) - an atmospheric and experimental sci-fi tale of alien invasion.
• Chigger Ale (Fanta Ananas, 2013) - a precursor for Crumbs, this comic sci-fi tale sees a pint-sized Hitler go for a night out in Addis Ababa.
• La maladie blanche (Christelle Lheureux, 2011) - a tale of enchantment in the Pyrenees.

Those conclude the reviews I'll be writing in relation to the D'A Festival. I'm still transcribing the interviews I did, and have more to write about the festival in general and (Im)Possible Futures in particular. I'm back at work next week, so my pace may slow down a bit.

(Im)Possible Futures: Sueñan los androides, El arca de Noé, and Crumbs

The (Im)Possible Futures strand of the D'A Festival included six features and nine shorts. I am going to write something about the theme - I went to the festival's roundtable discussion on the subject - and the films as a collection, but in essence what they represent is 'low voltage' (or realist) sci-fi showing futures made plausible by their connections to our current realities. I'll be reviewing some of the shorts over the next few days, but these are my reviews of the three Spanish features in the section:

• Sueñan los androides / Androids Dream (Ion de Sosa, 2014) - an experimental and dream-like take on Benidorm in 2052. My review is here. I interviewed Ion de Sosa and co-writer Chema García Ibarra (director of Uranes, which was part of last year's Un impulso colectivo strand) in Barcelona, so that interview should also appear later in the week (depending on how long it takes me to transcribe/translate Spanish).
• El arca de Noé / Noah's Ark (Adán Aliaga and David Valero, 2014) - a sweet-natured comedy on inter-dimensional travel as a possible escape route from the economic crisis. My review is here.
• Crumbs (Miguel Llansó, 2015) - a surreal quest across the epic Ethiopian landscape in search of Father Christmas and answers relating to a spaceship. It was my favourite film of the festival and my review is here. I also interviewed Miguel Llansó at the festival, and that should likewise appear later in the week (my transcribing/translation skills permitting).

I will create a separate post with links to the reviews of the short films once I've started writing them, and the same for the interviews. In the meantime, Eye for Film is now collating all of my coverage of D'A Festival on one page - here.

Obra, Favula, and more...

My reviews from D'A Festival are continuing to go up over at Eye for Film. The first handful are:

• A misteriosa morte de Pérola / The Mysterious Death of Pérola (Guto Parente and Ticiana Augusto Lima, 2014), a Brazilian film that I almost walked out of - to find out why, read here.
• Favula (Raúl Perrone, 2014), a genuine oddity and visual one-of-a-kind (review).
• Obra (Gregorio Graziosi, 2014), another Brazilian film and one of my overall favourites of the festival - a visually and aurally distinctive film that I would like to see again. In the meantime, my review is here.

There are a couple more reviews already up, but because they're part of a group I'm waiting until they're all there before I link to them on here. I've got one more feature to review and then I'll take a look at a few of the shorts as well - the shorts were part of the (Im)Possible Futures strand, which I'm also going to write about as a collection.

D'A Festival - Getting Started

El Incendio / The Fire (dir. Juan Schnitman)

    My first review from D'A Festival - of Argentinian drama El Incendio / The Fire (dir. Juan Schnitman) - has gone up over at Eye for Film (here). I'm a bit behind with the reviews but I had the opportunity to interview some of the filmmakers in attendance, so I've prioritised that in the last couple of days. Those interviews - with Ion de Sosa, Chema García Ibarra, and Miguel Llansó - will (probably) appear next week.

    This is my last day in Barcelona and I still have two more films to see, but reviews are forthcoming for: Obra (dir. Gregorio Graziosi), No todo es vigilia / Not All Is Vigil (dir. Hermes Paralluelo), El arca de Noé / Noah's Ark (dir. Adán Aliaga and David Valero), Sueñan los androides / Androids Dream (dir. Ion de Sosa), Favula (dir. Raúl Perrone), Crumbs (dir. Miguel Llansó), A misteriosa morte de Pérola / The Mysterious Death of Pérola (dir. Guto Parente and Ticiana Augusto Lima), Chorus (dir. François Delisle), and Queen of Earth (dir. Alex Ross Perry). Most of them will be at Eye for Film (unless they already have a review for the film in question) but I will put up links here. I'll also be writing about the festival in general, and will look specifically at the Spanish films in the (Im)Possible Futures section.

Five films I want to see at D'A Festival

Crumbs

I thought I'd highlight a film from each of the five days that I'll be in Barcelona - not all of the films are Spanish, but that's a reflection of what I'll be watching. The details here are deliberately scant because I avoid reading too much about films before seeing them.

Monday 27th: A Misteriosa Morte de Pérola (Guto Parente, 2015)

I am also keen on catching El incendio (Juan Schnitman, 2015) but that doesn't start until 10pm - given that I'll have been at the airport from around 6am, there's a strong possibility that I won't manage to stay the course on my first day. So for my pick I'll settle on this Brazilian mid-lengther about which I know nothing other than the contents of this very creepy trailer (the foley artists are earning their keep here).

Tuesday 28th: No todo es vigilia / Not All Is Vigil (Hermes Paralluelo, 2014)

A love story of a long-married couple who are becoming too infirm to take care of each other, this film gained a lot of positive word of mouth on twitter - and glowing reviews - after screening at San Sebastián last year. The subtitled trailer can be found here.

Wednesday 29th: Sueñan los androides / Androids Dream (Ion de Sosa, 2014)

Directed by the cinematographer of El Futuro (and this trailer suggests some visual similarities with that film), this low voltage sci-fi takes place in Benidorm in 2052 and is one of the central films in the festival's (Im)Possible Futures section.  

Thursday 30th: Crumbs (Miguel Llansó, 2015)

Another (Im)Possible Futures film and another one that I first heard about on twitter (this time in relation to the Rotterdam Film Festival earlier this year). Crumbs looks like an Ethiopian cross between the journeys in the Baba Yaga fairytale and The Wizard of Oz. With Nazis and a bonus Father Christmas.

Friday 1st: Queen of Earth (Alex Ross Perry, 2015)

An examination of the friendship between two miserable women (Elisabeth Moss and Katherine Waterston) and a downward spiral into delusion and madness - sounds like perfect Friday night viewing and a great way to end my trip!

The next time I post, I'll be in Barcelona!

Preview: D'A Festival

    The fifth edition of D’A - Festival Internacional de Cine D'Autor de Barcelona (D'A Festival for short) starts in a couple of weeks and runs between 24th April and 3rd May. They announced their full programme on Friday, and I've written a preview piece over at Eye for Film - here. 
    I will be in Barcelona for five days during the festival. I had to book my flights a few weeks ago without knowing the full lineup or the actual schedule, so there are a couple of films that I'm disappointed to miss (namely Jonás Trueba's Los exiliados románticos / The Romantic Exiles (2015), although I'm fairly sure that will pop up over here at some point). But they've programmed a wide range of films that I've not seen before (both Spanish and otherwise - I'm looking forward to watching a Bulgarian film with subtitles in castellano) - and I'll also be checking out the listings for 'normal' cinemas too. 
    There will be stuff on the films I see - as well as the festival / Barcelona - appearing on here, and I'll also be writing reviews for Eye for Film. I'm not entirely sure how I'll set it out on here - it will probably depend on how much gets written while I'm actually there. To be continued...
UPDATE: There's now a handy PDF of the schedule available to download.

A Collective Impulse: an overview

This post has been moved to my new blog - you can find it here.

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I'd like to thank the following people for allowing me access to their work: Luis López Carrasco (twice over), Xurxo Chirro, Ramiro Ledo, Víctor Moreno (for giving me access to Edificio España before the DVD was available), Juan Rayos, Lourdes Pérez at Producción El Viaje (and Jonay García at Digital 104 for passing that request along), and Deica audiovisual.
If you click on the 'el otro cine español' label below, you will see posts relating to my ongoing, broader project.

Mini Project: Un impulso colectivo

    Since early 2014 I've been seeking out films that fall into the nebulous and ever-expanding category of 'el otro cine español' and thinking about how I might approach writing about them collectively. Documentary films within this category have been my main focus for more than six months now although I've also simultaneously drifted into looking at documentaries more broadly (i.e. outside of Spain and from a range of eras), which has made 'progress' slower than I'd intended. I have an idea of how to group a particular set of documentaries together in order to write about them, but I've still got a few more to track down and watch before I get started.
    I've also continued watching Spanish cinema generally (I will write something about La isla mínima, honest. No, really, I will) but also other 'otro cine español' films that don't fit within my current documentary focus (I'm hoping to get around to watching Magical Girl and Hermosa juventud in the next month). As I've said in previous posts, it's such a disparate and unwieldy collection of films and filmmakers that it's difficult to know where to begin (last July I explained why I've started with the documentaries) and how to break it down into more manageable sub-sections. But it recently occurred to me that the 'Un impulso colectivo' [A Collective Impulse] section at last year's D'A - Festival Internacional de Cinema D'Autor de Barcelona was precisely designed to give an overview of this cinema being made on the margins. So in the build-up to the D'A festival announcing their 2015 line-up (they have already said that there won't be a similar section this year but that homegrown films will feature across all sections of the programme), I thought I'd take a look back at the fourteen films programmed by Carlos Losilla (the section takes its name from his September 2013 article in Caimán Cuadernos de Cine) in 2014. Taken together the films stand as a panoramic snapshot of Spanish cinema(s) now on the move (collectively and as individual filmmakers). The fourteen films are [UPDATE 03/04/15 - I'm currently writing the overview piece but explaining what each film is about is cluttering it up. My solution is that I'm going to add a brief outline of each film below and include a link to this post at the start of the overview]:

• Árboles / Trees (dir. Colectivo Los Hijos [Javier Fernández Vázquez, Luis López Carrasco, Natalia Marín Sancho]). An essay film combining the storytelling surrounding colonialism with an exploration of different architectural spaces and how they relate to their inhabitants.
• Las aventuras de Lily ojos de gato / The Adventures of Cat-Eyed Lily (dir. Yonay Boix). Follows the eponymous Lily on a carousing night out with friends in Madrid as she tries to get herself together and resolve personal problems.
• Cenizas / Ashes (dir. Carlos Balbuena). A stunningly photographed, black and white, and near wordless tale of a man returning to his home town in the aftermath of a family funeral and exploring the surrounding area.
• Edificio España / The Building (dir. Víctor Moreno). A documentary recording the renovation of the monumental Edificio España, the international workforce carrying out the work, and the beginning of the economic crisis.
• El Futuro / The Future (dir. Luis López Carrasco). A house party in the aftermath of the 1982 Socialist victory with the generation who mistook that election for an end in itself.
• Une histoire seule (dir. Xurxo Chirro & Aguinaldo Fructuoso). Two friends join forces via Skype to make a film about Geneva inspired by Jean-Luc Godard.
• Ilusión / Hope (dir. Daniel Castro). Intending to give some hope to his fellow countrymen in such trying times, a writer-director aims to make a musical (Los Pactos de la Moncloa) about the political pacts made during the Transition.
• Paradiso (dir. Omar A. Razzak). A documentary about the day-to-day running of the Duque de Alba, the last Sala X (porn cinema) in Madrid, and the interactions between projectionist Rafael, soon-to-retire box-office operator Luisa, and the cinema's clientele.
• Los primeros días / The First Days (dir. Juan Rayos). A documentary recording the rehearsals and performances of a play written for adults but here performed by four ten year olds - over the course of two years they grow up before our eyes.
• Slimane (dir. José A. Alayón). When young immigrants come of age they're forced to leave the child care centres that have been their homes without any further assistance. Homeless, Slimane and his friends have to find safe places to sleep, money to get by on, and ways to kill time.
• Sobre la marxa / The Creator of the Jungle (dir. Jordi Morató). A documentary telling the story of a man who built his own jungle by the side of a highway, and how he rebuilt and destroyed it three times.
• El triste olor de la carne / The Sad Smell of Flesh (dir. Cristóbal Arteaga). Alfredo has been keeping up appearances since losing his job but over the course of one morning has to try to avert the repossession of his home and his family discovering the truth.
• Uranes (dir. Chema García Ibarra). A deadpan tale of extraterrestrials, grandparents, and dark goings-on in the countryside.
• Vidaextra / ExtraLife (dir. Ramiro Ledo). The September 2010 General Strike in Barcelona blends with Peter Weiss's The Aesthetics of Resistance to feed into an overnight discussion between five anonymous friends who are trying to oppose the state of things.

    I'm in the process of working my way through watching them (I actually saw four of them - El Futuro, Edificio España, Sobre la marxa, and Cenizas - last year). Some of them are available commercially (either as DVDs or VOD), but the majority aren't - in those cases, I've contacted the filmmakers or production companies in order to access them. At the moment I'm theoretically - one DVD has yet to arrive - able to (re)watch twelve of the fourteen (the missing two are among the ones I've seen previously). My intention is to write an overview of them as a group within the next couple of weeks, and then possibly write about individual films in more detail later on (it will depend on how they fit within the other things I'm researching). To be continued...