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.

Speaking Truth About Power: Documentary, Censorship, and Rocío

Rocío (Fernando Ruiz Vergara, 1980), a.k.a. the rabbit hole I fell down during August.
    It started with a book review. I was working my way through a backlog of film magazines, when a book review (by Antonio Santamarina) for El caso Rocío: La historia de una película secuestrada por la transición (edited by Ángel del Río Sánchez, Francisco Espinosa Maestre, and José Luis Tirado) caught my eye in the May edition of Caimán Cuadernos de Cine. 'A film hijacked by the Transition' piqued my interest, as did the fact that the film was a documentary (yes, that is what I'm supposed to be looking into at the moment) and that the book came with both a copy of the uncensored version of the film and a documentary, El caso Rocío (José Luis Tirado, 2013), about the making of Rocío and its subsequent legal troubles. And then I watched it. In fact, I think I've watched Rocío half a dozen times now, but I can't really explain why it has drawn me in as it has.
    I set myself challenges on here, or start projects, in an attempt to give myself a structure to write within. I'm someone who thinks through writing (anyone who has spoken to me immediately after a film viewing will know that I'm rarely coherent in my thoughts at that stage), but it's not often that I write due to a sense of compulsion - Rocío is, however, one of those instances. I wrote because the film was stuck in my head, because I couldn't find anything written about it in English (beyond a New York Times story about the trial), because in the emphasis placed on the censorship of the film people seem to have avoided writing about it as a film (which is a shame because it is an incredibly rich, and visually distinctive, piece of filmmaking), and because it tapped into the sheer enjoyment I get from properly delving into an unfamiliar film and working out how it 'functions'. I decided to focus on the two aspects that pulled me down the rabbit hole - the story of the injustice suffered by Fernando Ruiz Vergara and Rocío, and the visual components of the film itself.
    What I've written is over at Mediático.

Note: the censored version of the film is available on YouTube with English subtitles.

Bradford International Film Festival: The 'Other' Spanish Cinema

El futuro

    The 20th edition of the Bradford International Film Festival ran between the 27th March and 6th April 2014 at the National Media Museum with a diverse programme of films from around the world, including retrospectives of James Benning, Brian Cox, and Sally Potter, and Close-Up sections on producer/distributor Charles Urban, and the crime films of Yoshitarõ Nomura. I managed to catch a bit of (almost) everything but had timed my visit specifically to see the three Spanish films playing at the festival: Un ramo de cactus / A Bouquet of Cactus (Pablo Llorca, 2013), El futuro / The Future (Luis López Carrasco, 2013), and Costa da Morte / Coast of Death (Lois Patiño, 2013).  

   You can read the rest of my report on the 'other' Spanish cinema that screened in Bradford over at Mediático.

    I am intending to write about all three films here as well, probably starting with Luis López Carrasco's film (it's 67 minutes long, but I only scratched the surface in that report) at some point in the next couple of weeks.