EIFF: Llévate mis amores and Viento aparte

    The first of my reviews of films in the Focus on Mexico strand at EIFF 2015 have now gone online:

• Llévate mis amores / All of Me (Arturo González Villaseñor, 2014) - a documentary about the tenacity of a group of women who, on a daily basis, attempt to feed the hundreds of migrants onboard the train known as "The Beast" as it passes through the village of La Patrona. Recommended. My review is here.
• Viento aparte / A Separate Wind (Alejandro Gerber Bicecci, 2014) - a sibling road movie in which two adolescents have to make a 2,500 kilometre journey across Mexico on their own. My review is here.

Still to come in terms of my Eye for Film reviews are the two classics: María Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, 1944) and Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1960). I will also be writing blog posts about two other Mexican films - 600 Millas / 600 Miles (Gabriel Ripstein, 2015) and La danza del hipocampo / The Dance of the Memory (Gabriela Domínguez Ruvalcaba, 2014).

EIFF Focus on Mexico: Gabriel Figueroa (1907 - 1997)

Dolores del Rio in The Fugitive (John Ford, 1947), the film that Figueroa believed contained his best work.

    I’ve only had time to watch a handful of Gabriel Figueroa’s films, and I’m writing this before seeing María Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, 1944) and Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1960) in Edinburgh – so this is a general introduction to some of Figueroa’s (relatively early) work, but I hope to track down some of his other films in the future. I’ll say something more about the two films showing at EIFF once I’ve seen them.
    Gabriel Figueroa was born in Mexico City in 1907. Orphaned and without financial support, he and his brother had to go out to work at a young age, but he began his professional career as a stills photographer before using a moving camera for the first time in 1933 when Howard Hawks and James Wong Howe went to Mexico in order to shoot exteriors for Viva Villa! (Jack Conway, 1934). Two years later Figueroa went to Hollywood as part of a government-funded initiative to develop Mexican cinema, and with the aid of a letter of introduction from the Mexico-based cinematographer Alex Phillips he was taken on by Gregg Toland as his student. Although Figueroa returned to Mexico in 1936, he and Toland remained in contact, with the (only-slightly) older man continuing to serve as Figueroa's mentor up until Toland’s early death in 1948. Such was Toland’s regard for his protégé that when Samuel Goldwyn refused to release Toland to work with John Ford on The Fugitive (1947), Toland suggested Figueroa as his replacement – and when Toland died, Goldwyn offered Figueroa his contract (he declined). In fact Figueroa would find it difficult to work in the US as due to the combination of his union work (he co-founded the STPC - 'Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Producción Cinematográfica' [Union of Cinema Production Workers], the first such independent union in Mexico, in 1944) and a refusal to answer questions from US officials about his political affiliations, he was blacklisted during the McCarthy era and couldn’t get work permits (in an 'every cloud has a silver lining' situation, this did however mean that he was free to work with Luis Buñuel in Mexico throughout the 1950s and 60s).

Requiem / Under The Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa – Art and Film from Fotográfica Fundación Televisa on Vimeo.

    In 1941 Figueroa co-founded the production company Films Mundiales, which became the starting point for the team he was part of with director Emilio ‘el Indio’ Fernández and actors Dolores del Rio and Pedro Armendáriz. Figueroa and Fernández made 23 films together over the course of 13 years and the relationship is central to the kinds of images that the cinematographer is associated with. Figueroa said in interviews that Fernández was one of only four directors (the other three being John Ford, Roberto Gavaldón, and Ismael Rodríguez) who would instruct him as to the effects that they wanted the scene to achieve but then allow him to design the scene’s composition as he wished. Other directors with whom he is associated – such as Buñuel (they made 7 films together, including Los Olvidados (1950) and The Exterminating Angel (1962)) – expected him to change his style to suit their requirements, and he did not have the same sort of artistic freedom on all of the 200+ productions he worked on. In terms of world recognition, the Fernández/Figueroa partnership’s breakout film was María Candelaria, which not only jointly won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1944 (an award that would later become known as the Palme d’Or) but also won Best Cinematography (the first of many major prizes for Figueroa).

Emilio 'el Indio' Fernández / Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa - Art and Film from Fotográfica Fundación Televisa on Vimeo.

    What does a cinematographer do, and why is the style of certain films ascribed to Figueroa rather than their respective directors? Exploring the concept of 'authorship' in relation to cinematic images, Lieberman and Hegarty outline the responsibilities of a cinematographer:

[...] there are several duties that can generally be ascribed to the cinematographer: (1) devising a lighting strategy and supervising its implementation; (2) making choices regarding lenses, filtration, film stock, camera, and lighting equipment; (3) determining exposure, contrast, focus, and depth of field; (4) orchestrating and executing (or supervising the execution of) camera movement; (5) collaborating with the director on framing and all aspects of shot composition as well as on the breakdown process in which the scene is divided up into individual shots; (6) participating, oftentimes, in positioning the actors on the set and blocking their action; (7) placing, moving, or removing set dressing, and (8) consulting on wardrobe, makeup, location choice, and production design. In all of these ways, and many others, the cinematographer contributes to the authorship of the image, making creative decisions that [...] inscribe his or her sensibilities and vision onto the finished work [...] (2010: 33)

Certain visual commonalities across a significant number of the films Figueroa photographed highlight his own cinematic signature. Lieberman and Hegarty's article (which is very interesting but not available online without a subscription - the full reference is below) compares the 'technical and aesthetic convergences' between Figueroa and Toland - unsurprisingly, given that one was the pupil of the other, their work shares certain characteristics (most obviously deep focus compositions and chiaroscuro lighting - for example, several scenes in The Fugitive take place in near complete darkness apart from an outline of light around Henry Fonda's priest on the run) although that is also indicative of their shared influences (German Expressionism and Renaissance painting, for example). 
    But their analysis reveals that despite these similarities, 'both cinematographers used virtually every one of their overlapping techniques to quite different ends' (2010: 37) - for example, if in Toland's work deep focus / the use of multiple focal planes is used to convey shifting power relations, Figueroa (who composed scenes with shallow and medium focus as often as he did deep focus) was instead more likely to utilise it to connect characters with their environment, and likewise their respective use of low angles conveys distinct things about the onscreen characters (power versus empowerment and ceilings versus skies). The article goes into a lot of detail with the comparisons and interpretations. Figueroa's influences were also rooted in Mexico in the form of Dr. Atl (a.k.a. painter Gerardo Murillo), who had multiple vanishing points in his landscape paintings (which informed Figueroa's distinctive use of curvilinear perspective - creating a spherical, or three-dimensional, visual space), and Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished 1931 film Que viva México (which is out of copyright and viewable here - the commentary is in Italian, but it's the images that are important).  

Noche / Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa - Art and Film from Fotográfica Fundación Televisa on Vimeo.

    As I say, I've only watched a few of Gabriel Figueroa's films so far, so I can't expand on the topic any further at the moment. But I'll be reviewing María Candelaria and Macario, so when I link to those reviews on here I'll possibly write a bit more - but whether I return to him as a focus on the blog or not, I will be seeking out some of the films seen in these videos (there are more - each arranged around a different theme - here).


I've read a few good articles / interviews with Figueroa as their focus - 

These ones aren't freely available online but you should be able to access them via a library:

• Dey, T. (1992) - 'Gabriel Figueroa: Mexico's Master Cinematographer', American Cinematographer, March, pp.34-40.
• Feder, E. (1996) - 'A Reckoning: Interview with Gabriel Figueroa', Film Quarterly, 49:3, pp.2-14.
• Lieberman, E. and Hegarty, K. (2010) - 'Authors of the Image: Cinematographers Gabriel Figueroa and Gregg Toland', Journal of Film and Video, 62:1-2, pp.31-51.

Online texts:

• Figueroa's official website  
• Higgins, C.R. (2007) - Pulling Focus: New perspectives on the work of Gabriel Figueroa, unpublished PhD thesis, Durham University - a critical evaluation of his cinematography (I've not read it yet, but it's the only substantial piece of work on the cinematographer that I've come across in English).
• A special issue of Luna Córnea dedicated entirely to Figueroa. I've only flicked through it so far but it seems to cover all aspects of his career (it is in Spanish, however), and the images are sumptuous.  
• Pinkerton, N. (2015) - 'Sky's the Limit', Artforum, 6th March - on the current retrospective in New York.  

EIFF Preview: Focus on Mexico

    The Edinburgh International Film Festival traditionally has at least one strand of its programme focussed on the output of a specific country. The 69th edition of EIFF starts next week (running between 17 - 28 June) and - as part of the Year of Mexico in the UK - it will take Mexico as its country focus. Encompassing 19 films from different genres and eras, the strand includes short films, new feature films, and a variety of classics.
    I've seen some "contemporary" Mexican films - namely those by Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro González Iñárritu, and a handful of others (usually starring Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, or one or other (or both) of Demian and Bruno Bichir) - but I'd by no means consider myself up-to-date with current trends or familiar with up-and-coming names. So I'm looking forward to the window on Mexico and recent Mexican cinema that EIFF will offer, and also for the chance to see a couple of films from Mexican cinema's 'Golden Age' in the form of María Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, 1944) and Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1960) on the big screen.
    The full list of films in the Mexican strand (the links take you to the respective pages on the EIFF website):

• 600 millas / 600 Miles (Gabriel Ripstein, 2015) [trailer] 
• Bankilal / Eldest Brother (María Dolores Arias Martínez, 2014)  
• El comienzo del tiempo / The Beginning of Time (Bernardo Arellano, 2014)  
• La danza del hipocampo / The Dance of Memory (Gabriela Domínguez Ruvalcaba, 2014) [trailer]
• Llévate mis amores / All of Me (Arturo González Villaseñor, 2014) [trailer]
• Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1960)  
• María Candelaria (Xochimilco) (Emilio Fernández, 1944) 
• Me quedo contigo / I Stay With You (Artemio Narro, 2014)  
• Las oscuras primaveras / The Obscure Spring (Ernesto Contreras, 2014)  
• Santa Sangre (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1989) 
• La Tirisia (Jorge Pérez Solano, 2014) [trailer]
• Veneno para las hadas / Poison for the Fairies (Carlos Enrique Taboada, 1984)
• Viento aparte / A Separate Wind (Alejandro Gerber Bicecci, 2014) [trailer]  
• Shorts: Mirroring Mexico - Ramona (Giovanna Zacarías, 2014), Bingo (Andrés Borda, 2014), Ballad of the Living Dead (César Villareal, 2014), The Solitude of Memory [¿Por qué el recuerdo?] (Juan Pablo González, 2014), The Letter [La carta] (Ángeles Cruz, 2014), Cipriana (Maruani Landa, 2015).  

Pedro Armendáriz and Dolores del Río in María Candelaria

    I won't manage to see all of them. I'm reviewing Llévate mis amores, Macario, María Candelaria, and Viento aparte (and films from other parts of the programme) for Eye for Film - so I'll link to those reviews on here. But I also hope to catch at least four more (I'm definitely aiming for 600 Millas, El comienzo del tiempo, La danza del hipocampo, and La Tirisia - and I'd also like to see the shorts) and I'll write about those either on here (in one of my periodic broadenings of the blog's remit) or elsewhere. I'm also thinking of writing something about Gabriel Figueroa - he links Macario and María Candelaria (the latter is one of many films he made with Emilio Fernández), but was also DoP for the likes of Luis Buñuel (seven times, by my count), John Huston, and John Ford. He's currently the focus of a retrospective at Film Forum in New York in conjunction with the exhibition 'Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa - Art and Film' at El Museo Del Barrio. I'm not sure what form my piece will take yet, but it will probably be dependent on me managing to see a range of his films (given that he has more than 200 credits to his name, I'll probably stick to a selection of b&w ones). To be continued... 

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.

Iberodocs, Glasgow: N-VI Vanishing Roads and Humano

    My reviews of two films showing at the 2nd weekend of the 2015 edition of Iberodocs are now online:

• N-VI Vanishing Roads (Pela del Álamo, 2012) - a portrait of the abandoned N-VI road between Madrid and Galicia, presented through the people who still live alongside it. My review is here.
• Humano (Alan Stivelman, 2013) - 25-year-old Alan sets off on an existential journey in the Andean mountains, searching for answers to fundamental questions about what it is to be human. My review is here.

Pela del Álamo's film continues the festival's 'Focus on Galicia' strand and looks at what happened to the communities alongside the N-VI road when it was superseded by the A-6 motorway. The film accumulates a sense of loss and isolation as it progresses but also captures the stubborn endurance of those people left on the wayside - it's well worth catching if you get the chance. Humano is not really my cup of tea as films go, but if you're more open to adventures in spiritual enlightenment than I am, you may find something of interest in director Alan Stivelman's Andean quest.

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: Xurxo Chirro

Vikingland

    I contacted director Xurxo Chirro a couple of months ago when I was writing about 'Un impulso colectivo' and needed to track down a way of seeing Une histoire seule. So, when I realised that his film Vikingland (which I had already seen) was screening at Iberodocs, I contacted him again and asked whether he had the time to answer some questions about the film via email - he kindly agreed, and the resulting interview has been published over at Eye for Film (here).

    Where I've had the opportunity to interview directors in the past month, besides asking about the specific film they're promoting, I've also asked about 'el otro cine español' (obviously a topic of ongoing interest for me). In this case, I also asked about a more regional phenomenon - New Galician Cinema (Novo Cinema Galego). I've seen a number of films pertaining to this group but they were presented in isolation, so I don't know very much about the group collectively or how it came into being - i.e. why has there been this cinematic flourishing in the region. So the interview was enlightening for me in that context. But Xurxo's comment about 'el otro cine español' being like an archipelago with filmmakers either working alone or in smaller clusters (rather than a collective movement) also chimes with what I observed in Barcelona, and some of what filmmakers there said in response to similar questions on the general topic (in essence, I think there was another collective cluster detectable among certain films at the D'A Festival this year, in terms of filmmakers who are actively collaborating with each other and who share perspectives and cinematic attitudes). 
    As I've said on here before, I find the overall shape of 'el otro cine español' (as it is written about in Spanish publications) difficult to approach in an analytical way because the range of filmmakers included is broad and unwieldy. My method of breaking it down into a manageable starting point has been to concentrate on the documentaries, but I'm now wondering whether it might be more useful to identify a few of the concentrated clusters of filmmakers and use them as a starting point. I don't think this particularly contradicts what I've written so far on the subject; it is a refinement of my perspective and methods. But I will ponder this some more while I write up things from Barcelona - and I also have a specific topic I want to explore in relation to documentaries by filmmakers such as Víctor Moreno and Pablo Llorca, among others - so this won't be an immediate change in focus, but I may start to change my approach.

Iberodocs, Edinburgh: Arraianos and Vikingland

    The first of my reviews relating to Iberodocs have now gone online. Both films are part of the festival's 'Focus on Galicia' strand drawing attention to both the phenomenon of New Galician Cinema and a particular trend for documentary fictions.

• Arraianos (Eloy Enciso, 2012) - a poetic portrait of the borderlands between Galicia and Portugal. My review is here.
• Vikingland (Xurxo Chirro, 2011) - footage filmed by a Galician sailor who was working on a ferry between Germany and Denmark in the early 1990s is arranged to echo Melville's Moby Dick. My review is here.

Neither is a straightforwardly conventional film and would be rich texts to explore if you were considering issues of identity (personal, regional, and national), work, metaphysics, the natural world (and our place in it), and emigration - they have enough going on that I could write another review of each, focussed on entirely different elements. Both are worth seeking out if you get the opportunity. Arraianos is available on DVD (with optional English subtitles) directly from the people who made it - here.
    My other Iberodocs reviews will be of films screening in Glasgow, so I will write a separate post for them next weekend. I'll also write another post later today, to link to the interview I did with Xurxo Chirro.

Iberodocs 2015

    My coverage of the D'A Festival is still ongoing (see my previous post), but the 2nd edition of Iberodocs starts this week in Scotland - it takes place in Edinburgh from this Thursday and moves to Glasgow the following weekend. I've written a preview for Eye for Film, which you can read here. 
    If you're able to go to either weekend, I can recommend Vikingland (dir. Xurxo Chirro), Arraianos (dir. Eloy Enciso), and La plaga / The Plague (dir. Neus Ballús) - plus, Arraianos is screening with Lois Patiño's short film Montaña en sombra, which I found breathtaking when I saw it in Bradford last year alongside Patiño's Costa da Morte (my favourite film last year, as if you need reminding). I'll be reviewing some of the films showing at Iberodocs over the coming fortnight, and I also have an interview with Xurxo Chirro about how Vikingland came to be and what New Galician Cinema is all about. I will post the links on here as and when they exist.

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.