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.
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.
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 London Spanish Film Festival's 5th Spring Weekend runs this Friday to Sunday - the programme and schedule can be found here. I don't have time to write up anything new this week, but I can recommend the three films from the line-up that I've seen - Todos están muertos, 10,000 Km, and La isla mínima. I haven't written about the latter yet, but the other two featured in my top 10 new Spanish films of 2014 and I also reviewed 10,000 Km last autumn. If - like me - you can't make it to London to see the films, El Niño got a UK DVD release before Christmas and the other four are all available on DVD in Spain (the three that I've seen all have optional English subs).
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.
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.
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...
The Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival at the Cornerhouse in Manchester has had a change of format this year - instead of its usual two weeks in March, they're doing three 'weekenders' throughout the year. I'm hoping that this is simply because they're currently in the process of moving building, and not a permanent change. This weekend has been the first one (programme), the next will be in June with a focus on Mexican cinema (given that this coincides with the Edinburgh Film Festival - and this year they're taking Mexico as their main country focus - I presume that there will be an overlap with the films screening in Edinburgh), and third will be at some point in the autumn. The range of films and times of day they were shown for this first weekend meant that it wasn't worth me travelling down to Manchester, but I have reviewed Os Fenómenos / Aces (Alfonso Zarauza, 2014) - the only Spanish film in the line-up that I had been looking out for - for Eye for Film (here).
View the full size poster (with screening details) here
The Glasgow Film Festival begins this week (18th February - 1st March). Unfortunately I won't be going, but I thought I'd highlight a few of the Spanish-language films that'll be screening. Two films I've seen:
10,000 Km (Carlos Marques-Marcet, 2014) I reviewed this directorial debut last September (for Eye for Film - here) and it ended up in my list of favourites of the year. The film is a relationship drama in which the two leads (Natalia Tena and David Verdaguer) are kept apart for most of the narrative - communicating via various forms of telecommunications and social media - but they nonetheless successfully create and maintain a palpable emotional connection. It works because Marques-Marcet has the imagination and ingenuity to circumvent the limits of his low budget (and it is one of the few films I've seen to represent technology in a way that is both believable and immersive for the viewer), and both actors (the only people we see - the film could function as a stage play) deliver nuanced and engaging performances.
La Isla Mínima / Marshland (Alberto Rodríguez, 2014) I watched this thriller on DVD at the end of last week and I'm disappointed that I won't get the chance to see it on the big screen because the recurring aerial shots of the unusual landscape make this a visually distinctive film (it also won 10 Goya awards just over a week ago - including Best Film, Director, and Leading Actor). In 1980, two detectives - Pedro (Raúl Arévalo) and Juan (Javier Gutiérrez) - are sent from Madrid to investigate the disappearance of two teenage sisters in the marshlands of Guadalquivir in southern Spain. This was a time of political transition in Spain and the two men effectively represent the old (Juan) and the new (Pedro), and the compromises that Spain would have to make in order to move towards democracy. That makes the film sound more schematic than it is, as Rodríguez is more interested in the grey areas of overlap than black and white demarcations, and he also keeps the crime story moving along at a cracking pace. I'll be writing something about it for the blog - it should be up within the next week. Two films I'd like to see:
Relatos salvajes / Wild Tales (Damián Szifron, 2014) An Argentinian-Spanish co-production (and I consider anything with El Deseo's name on it worth checking out), Wild Tales is a series of six short stories threaded together through the common theme of the worm that turns. I have yet to read a bad word about it (I'm talking general impressions - I've avoided reading details because the tales are apparently quite twisty), and most people who have seen it seem to want to see it again (and you can't get a much higher recommendation than that). It also has a top-notch case: Darín! Sbaraglia! Grandinetti!
Jauja (Lisandro Alonso, 2014) Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival, Jauja is the first of Alonso's films to be made with a screenwriting partner (Fabian Casas) and a professional cast (headed by Viggo Mortensen). The basic outline is that a 19th-century Danish military man (Mortensen) is searching for his runaway teenage daughter across the wilds of a South American landscape and goes on a metaphysical journey in the process. Again, I've avoided reading too many of the details about the film (Keyframe did a round-up of critics' opinions during Cannes and the New York Film Festival, should you wish to know more) but although critical reception was by no means unanimously positive, this is definitely one I'd like to catch up with.
The blog's birthday always seems to catch me unawares - for some reason I remember it as starting later in the month than it did. Anyway, that's my excuse for not having a special post ready for Nobody Knows Anybody's fourth birthday. So what happened in 2014? There were ups and downs, but overall it was a marked improvement on 2013. In the negative column, I'm still in the same job as I was this time last year. Staff morale has continued in steady decline since the restructure in 2013 but has noticeably nosedived even further in the last six months. The smallish team (14 of us) I'm in moved to an open plan basement office (with approx. 55 people in there) in the summer and I've discovered that I don't much like spending my entire day underground with strip lighting and in such close proximity to other people that there is no middle distance to gaze into. I know that a decline in working conditions / environment seems to be being rolled out worldwide, with the Powers That Be apparently in a race to the bottom in terms of how they treat their workforce - and I know that many others have it far worse than me [plus, y'know, a job is a job *repeats ad infinitum*] - but it makes going to work more of a grind than it needs to be. In an effort to see more sky, towards the end of the year I started walking to and from work (about 3 miles) - at the moment I mainly see night sky, but I figure that if I can stick with it during the cold and dark, then the warm (ha!) and light should be a doddle. Anyway, it was a combination of the ongoing crappy working conditions and my being tied to home outside of working hours (a family member had multiple surgeries) during 2013 that made me determined to do more of the things I enjoy, but also to get out and about more in 2014. Film festivals combined both of those things. I started off small with a daytrip to Manchester in March to catch a double bill at the 20th Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival, and I also saw several documentaries in the same month as part of the AV Festival in my home city (Newcastle). Then I found out that three of the 'otro cine español' titles I was investigating were screening at Bradford International Film Festival (April), so I headed off there (I wrote about those films for Mediático - Costa da Morte ended up being my favourite film of the year). Three days in Edinburgh (June) followed, another three in Berwick (September), a 24-hr return to Edinburgh for the inaugural Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival in October, and finally four days in Leeds (November). Although Spanish films featured at most (but not all) of those festivals, as I said in my birthday post last year I wanted to broaden the range of films I was watching, so the Spanish titles were not necessarily the main reason for attending a given festival. I'm no better at negotiating large groups of people I don't know in a festival context than I am in a conference setting, and I didn't explore places as much as I should have, but I saw some good films - many of which I might not get the chance to see anywhere else. I'll be continuing with my film-seeking travels in 2015 and will hopefully also head beyond the UK at some point this year as well. The other thing that I said that I wanted to do in 2014 was consider other forms / arenas of publication. That's something I'm still working on (I think I need to broaden the scope of what I write about before I approach some of the publications I've been thinking of), but I considerably upped the amount of writing I was doing last year, which was a challenge given that I work full-time but I think that my writing improved through more consistent application and effort. The much-mentioned (by me) Javier Bardem article morphed into something else entirely, but it was published as part of The Cine-Filesspecial issue on acting. I wrote two short 'Lost Classics' pieces for The Big Picture Magazine website (the first on Entre tinieblas (Pedro Almodóvar, 1983), the second on Overlord (Stuart Cooper, 1975)) and two articles for Mediático (the already-mentioned one about the Spanish films at BIFF, and one on censorship and Spanish documentary - the latter being the piece of writing I was happiest with last year). But the main part of my new output has been reviews, primarily for Eye for Film (45 reviews) and a handful for Take One (7 reviews). Writing reviews has allowed me to write about non-Spanish films for the first time in years - and I wrote at least one review for each festival I attended (around 30 of the Eye for Film reviews are for Spanish films - mainly because I covered the London Spanish Film Festival in September (from the comfort of my own home because a lot of the films were available on DVD or VOD) and the Spanish retrospectives at Leeds - ordinarily I don't think I would see so many Spanish films on the festival circuit in one year). As I trundle on into the fifth year of writing this blog my plans are not much changed from those of a year ago. My 2014 project of researching this ever-mutating 'otro cine español' continues, although I am much more focused on documentaries than I was at the start, and I have also been watching a variety of (non-Spanish) documentaries for a broader context. Hopefully I'll reach a point this year where I work out exactly what the nub of what I'm going after in this research is and what shape the writing needs to take. The Carlos Saura Challenge has (finally) restarted and I'll be trying to keep momentum going with that - I need to watch at least two of them a month to be in with a hope of finishing the challenge this year, so we'll see how I go. I'll be going to more festivals and writing more reviews, but also thinking about different ways to write about both festivals and the films I see there. I'd like to learn how to make a video essay. And I think I should aim to write something in Spanish. Maybe. I've currently got a backlog of viewing unrelated to the blog, so I need to work through that during the next couple of weeks - but after that I hope to fall back into a regular pattern of writing on here too.
