Tag: Otro cine español

The so-called ‘other’ Spanish cinema – Spanish films made on the margins – currently a rich seam of cinematic flair, inventiveness and experimentation.

Un impulso colectivo: the podcast

On By RebeccaIn Spanish CinemaLeave a comment

‘Un impulso colectivo’ [a collective impulse] is a regular section of Barcelona’s D’A Festival, and takes its name from a September 2013 article by programmer/critic Carlos Losilla in the magazine Caimán cuadernos de cine (he programmed the films in the section’s first iteration in 2014, and I believe has been responsible for doing so in the ten years since as well). In the previous version of this blog, I started off on the trail of el otro cine español (that link is the tag for related pieces on this site) but quickly found it to be a nebulous term that included such an array of filmmakers (for example, Caimán‘s list of 52 directors of ‘nuevo/otro cine español’) that it was difficult to know where to begin. I ended up starting a mini-project focussed on the films that appeared in the first edition of ‘Un impulso colectivo’ because I realised that it had been programmed so as to give an overview of the cinema being made on the margins/periphery in Spain. I wrote a summary of what I found in that initial collection of films, and then I went to the D’A Festival in 2015 (the various pieces/interviews I wrote about the films on that trip are collected on the old blog) because I realised that if I wanted to see films that pertained to this collective impulse, I needed to travel.

Continue reading “Un impulso colectivo: the podcast” →

10th Festival Márgenes, online 25th Nov – 13th Dec 2020

On By RebeccaIn Films1 Comment

Festival Márgenes poster

I won’t be viewing this year (I’m still watching the Catalan Film Festival at the moment), but the 10th Festival Márgenes is now underway. The selection of films from the Official section that are accessible to those outside of Spain can be found here (3€ for 11 films). There is a broader range of films available if you’re in Spain, including the highly recommended “Más allá del espejo” strand, which features quite a few films that I’ve watched / written about during my investigations into el otro cine español (including Costa da morte, No Cow on the Ice, Edificio España, and O futebol).

 

Catalan Film Festival, 19th Nov-6th Dec 2020

On By RebeccaIn Spanish Cinema1 Comment

Catalan Film Festival 2020

Well, this is something nice in 2020! Cinemaattic are simultaneously holding their Catalan Film Festival at various locations in Scotland and online between 19th November and 6th December.

The programme offers a range of new and classic features, four programmes of shorts, and a series of talks/Q&As – all of which will be available online. You can buy tickets for strands of films (the links are within the programme page), or a festival pass that covers everything will only set you back £10/11€. I have bought one of those – for more than two weeks of access, and the sheer number of films, that’s really good value.

It looks like an admirably diverse set of titles. I’m hoping that I will manage to catch Luis López Carrasco’s El año de descubrimiento (which I mentioned way back last year, and have already missed at least one chance of watching – I will confess that my patience with very long films is somewhat diminished of late but I’ll try not to let that put me off), and I’ve also heard good things about My Mexican Bretzel (dir. Nuria Giménez Lorang), and Las niñas (dir. Pilar Palomero – who also has a retrospective of her shorts). I will watch as many of the shorts as I can because they are something that I’ve missed since I stopped attending film festivals.

 

IX Festival Márgenes: free to view online, 20th Nov – 8th Dec 2019

On By RebeccaIn Films1 Comment

A collection of posters for films in this year's Festival Márgenes

I completely missed Festival Márgenes last year. I don’t remember exactly how that happened – it either took place earlier than previous years (I have a vague recollection of finding out after it was over), or it coincided with me having norovirus (which I have pretty successfully blocked from my memory, but it occurred at the same time of the year). Either way, I missed something that has been an annual event on the blog since 2014 – and I have always previously found something to spark my interest, that I might not have otherwise encountered.

The festival focuses on films without theatrical distribution (a lot of the films are documentaries and there are usually quite a few medium-length films included), made on the margins (or outside) of existing film industries in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and Ibero-America (Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Latin American countries). You can find an extended explanation / mission statement for the festival, here. I would characterise them as being interested in the world as it is and as it might be, openly seeking innovative forms of representation and expression, and shining a light on lives off the cinematic beaten track. A lot of the films that I’ve previously watched via Festival Márgenes feel personal to the filmmaker, like this is something that they have wanted or needed – or felt compelled – to explore and share in a visual format. Personal and collective histories have been a recurrent theme in those earlier films (although it could simply be that those were the ones that caught my attention because I’m interested in the interweaving of history and memory).

The festival’s programme is divided into several sections and takes place both online and in cinemas in Madrid. The online part – free to view, and taking place between 20th November and 8th December – focuses on the ‘Sección oficial‘. The festival summarises the selection as ‘Catorce películas de siete nacionalidades distintas que comparten un espíritu de profunda libertad y búsqueda incesante abordado desde preceptos muy dispares’ (Fourteen films of seven different nationalities, sharing a spirit of profound freedom and relentless searching approached via very disparate precepts). The films included are (links take you to the relevant streaming page – you need to register with the site to get started once the festival is live):

The films sometimes have restrictions as to which countries they can be viewed in, and they won’t necessarily have English subtitles (some have in the past). The answer re: subtitles will become apparent once the festival begins. If you speak any Spanish at all, it’s worth taking a chance anyway (and the non-Spanish language films usually have Castilian subtitles) – it doesn’t cost you anything, so you have nothing to lose, and you’ll watch something that’s unlikely to make it to a screen near you. I will be intending to at least catch the films by Xurxo Chirro (who I have previously interviewed in relation to his film Vikingland (2011)) and Affonso Uchoa.

 

Pronto: Spanish films due in 2019

On By RebeccaIn Spanish Cinema1 Comment
Caimán cuadernos de cine highlights forthcoming Spanish films

The current issue of Caimán cuadernos de cine includes a feature on 50 films to look out for in 2019 (not available online, hence the image of the page I want to emphasise); the vast majority are the (predictable) titles that will show up in such features irrespective of the geographic location of the magazine, but they’ve also highlighted some homegrown titles in the mix. Caimán was where I first heard/read mention of ‘el otro cine español’ so it’s perhaps not surprising that their emphasis is on filmmakers who fall into that loose archipelago of a ‘group’, but it is nonetheless welcome because I wouldn’t ordinarily hear about such films until they make a splash at a film festival.

By strange coincidence, six of the filmmakers featured appeared in one of my round-up pieces of my favourite films of the year (on the earlier incarnation of the blog that focussed solely on Spanish cinema) back in 2014 – although some of them have made at least one other film in the meantime, it’s somewhat depressing that it has taken 4-5 years for the others to manage to make another feature. Of those six earlier films, I saw four at film festivals and two on DVD (three of the festival titles have still not been released in a home viewing format), an indication that I may have to be willing to travel if I want to see these new ones. Putting Almodóvar’s Dolor y gloria to one side (because it should get a UK release), the films that I’m most interested in tracking down are:

  • Tempo vertical / Vertical Time (dir. Lois Patiño). That 2014 round-up piece sums up how I found Patiño’s Costa da morte / Coast of Death (2013) (also reviewed by me here) to be a visually overwhelming experience in the cinema, and I am intrigued by the description of the new film as ‘una película fantasma’ where ‘time appears to be still while nature continues living’ [my translation of the text in the image] because that sounds like a kind of companion piece to his eerie short film Noite sin distancia / Night without Distance (2015) (reviewed by me here).
  • El año de descubrimiento / The Year of Discovery (dir. Luis López Carrasco). López Carrasco’s previous film, El Futuro / The Future (2013), specifically took place in 1982 (the film opens with the audio of Felipe González’s victory speech in the aftermath of the PSOE’s triumph in the 1982 election) [I wrote about the film – and also Costa da morte – in this festival report focussed on Spanish films that screened at Bradford International Film Festival] and the new one is apparently 1992. Yes, that’s ten years later but 1992 was a significant year for Spain (my PhD thesis covered 1992-2007 and the choice of starting year was not happenstance) so I’ll be interested to see how López Carrasco treats the potent cultural currents of that year (for example, is the title a reference to the anniversary of Columbus’s voyage across the Atlantic [the mention of shipyards in the description is what has made that connection in my mind]? Or something completely unrelated, in the lives of characters in the film? [side note: the Columbus connection is relatively minor in terms of what was going on in Spain in 1992, but it was what the title suggested to me])
  • Longa Noite / Long Night (dir. Eloy Enciso). Enciso’s Arraianos (2012) [my review is here] shares Costa da morte‘s rootedness in the Galician landscape – although Enciso’s film also maps itself into the musicality of the Galician language as well – and this new film likewise seems to have a strong connection to that borderland region.
  • Reservado al personal / Staff Only (dir. Neus Ballús). I’ve only written about Ballús’s La plaga / The Plague Year (2013) in the context of that round-up piece. But I’m interested to see how her filmmaking style has developed given that the description suggests that this is also a docu-fiction, and that – although it focuses on a father-daughter conflict during a family holiday to Senegal – it also seems to retain her interest in people living/working in in-between spaces, this time encompassing the darker side of the tourism industry.
  • La virgen de agosto / The August Virgin (dir. Jonás Trueba). I haven’t written much about Trueba’s films to date – the round-up piece is the only place I’ve written about Los ilusos / The Wishful Thinkers (2013), and his earlier Todos las canciones hablan de mí / All the Songs Are About Me (2010) featured in my equivalent post from 2011. ‘Dreamy / romantic chronicles of Madrid’ could broadly summarise those of his films I’ve seen so far (I’ve not yet caught up with Los exiliados románticos / The Exiled Romantics, which looks like ‘dreamy / romantic chronicles outside of Madrid’), and the description suggests that this one also falls within that realm. Given that his last film (La reconquista / The Reconquest (2016)) has ended up on Netflix UK, there might be an outside possibility that this will do likewise but I’ll not bet on it if the opportunity to see it at a festival appears (I’ll continue tapping my foot while waiting for Los ilusos to get a DVD release).

I guess that there’s a possibility that one or some of these films might feature within Edinburgh’s focus on Spanish cinema (given that it’s the contemporary strand that hasn’t been announced yet). Fingers crossed!

*The English titles given above are my literal translation of the titles, so they may end up being called something else in English if they circulate. The exception is Neus Ballús’s film, which had that translated title when it screened in Berlin.

EIFF Country Focus 2019: Spain

On By RebeccaIn Spanish Cinema2 Comments
Arrebato

I spotted via Eye for Film the announcement that the Edinburgh International Film Festival’s 2019 Country Focus (a recurring strand of the festival’s programme) will be Spain. What they’ve announced so far is the retrospective part of the strand: an overview of ‘modern Spanish cinema’; a selection of ‘cult Spanish cinema’; and a filmmaker retrospective of Icíar Bollaín.

Bollaín is based in Edinburgh, so that element kind of makes sense. I like a lot of her films (I haven’t seen the two most recent ones), and I admire her commitment to exploring social issues through cinema, and her recurrent focus on the lives of women in varying circumstances. It’s a little strange that they don’t seem to be screening Te doy mis ojos / Take My Eyes (2003); it is effectively an encapsulation of her interests and cinematic style. Personally, I think that it’s her strongest film. But, that said, perhaps it is relatively well known and they’re aiming to highlight films that haven’t had distribution over here (although También la lluvia / Even the Rain (2010) and El Olivo / The Olive Tree (2016) are included)? I would recommend Flores de otro mundo / Flowers of Another World (1999), Even the Rain, and En tierra extraña / In a Foreign Land (2014) if you get the chance to see them.

Voyeurism connects the three cult titles (‘home movies’ / the terrible lure of the camera is another strong link between two of them). Arrebato (Zulueta, 1980) is the lesser-known in the UK (the other two are both available on UK DVD) and is definitely worth checking out if you get the opportunity (I’ve written about the spellbinding nature of Zulueta’s film maudit previously).

But ‘the retrospective celebration of modern Spanish cinema’ is just…odd. I don’t mind the films individually – although I was among the minority that didn’t overly like La piel que habito / The Skin I Live In (Almodóvar, 2011) – but they are not collectively a good illustration of ‘modern Spanish cinema’ in its actual diversity (yes, the selected films span multiple genres, but that isn’t what I mean by cinematic diversity – i.e. a range of voices, styles, and budgets). ‘[S]ome of the finest Spanish cinema of recent times’ is making that ‘some’ do a lot of heavy lifting. ‘Films that have been nominated for Goyas in the last decade’, perhaps. Putting Tarde para la ira / The Fury of a Patient Man (Arévalo, 2016) to one side because I still haven’t watched it (aiming to over Christmas) and I have only heard good things about it, I think that there are more interesting, distinctive, and/or innovative films that have been made in Spain in the last decade (off the top of my head, Diamond Flash (Vermut, 2011), L’accademia della muse / The Academy of Muses (Guerin, 2015), De tu ventana a la mía / Chrysalis (Ortíz, 2012), many films within the Novo Cinema Galego, El Futuro / The Future (López Carrasco, 2013), La distancia / The Distance (Caballero, 2014), Dead Slow Ahead (Herce, 2015), for starters). Those films might not be for everyone (I’m wracking my brains trying to think of a ‘recent’ Spanish film I’ve liked that’s had an A-to-B-to-C style narrative structure, or otherwise been a box-office smash, so I accept that the films that interest me tend to be outside of the mainstream [although not exclusively]) but innovation and different perspectives should be celebrated alongside mainstream commercial cinema, especially at film festivals.

Anyway, I’ll keep an eye out for them announcing the ‘separate programme of contemporary Spanish cinema’ (which may not be until the full programme is revealed in May). Personal wish list (although I won’t hold my breath): Petra (Rosales, 2018); Entre dos aguas (Lacuesta, 2018); Quién te cantará (Vermut, 2018); Trote (Baño, 2018); Viaje al cuarto de una madre (Rico Clavellino, 2018); Carmen y Lola (Echevarria, 2018); and Apuntes para una película de atracos (Siminiani, 2018).

Reprint: A Collective Impulse

On By RebeccaIn Spanish Cinema1 Comment

This piece was originally published on the old blog in April 2015; it was a culmination of my investigations into ‘el otro cine español’ thus far, and also a form of preparation for attending the D’A Festival later that month. An earlier post – this one – explains why I was looking at this particular set of films. When I first started this new blog, I wrote a post outlining where I was up to with my ‘otro cine español’ project but not much has happened since (although if you click on the ‘otro cine español’ tag at the foot of this post, you will be able to see other connected pieces). My trip to the D’A Festival in April 2015 mainly stemmed from a realisation that if I wanted to see these films (and their newer incarnations), then I would need to travel to festivals because it is difficult to cross paths with them otherwise. But I’ve had to accept that I don’t currently have the resources for festival trips, and have put the project to one side for the time being – although I keep an eye on the various Spanish online platforms that might host such films. For now, this piece and the one written specifically for this blog are a summation of the project.

I haven’t attempted to update the main part of the text (I haven’t stayed up to date with the saga of Spanish film finance, although I don’t expect that the situation has improved at all – if anything, it’s likely to have got worse) but I am rejigging the postscript because the availability status of several of the films has changed (so that info is current as of August 2017).

 

Un impulso colectivo

Marginal cinemas – or cinema being made on the margins, outside the norms of a given industrial context – are nearly always present, if not always widely visible. In the past few years in Spain, specific actions by the Rajoy government (for example, dismantling the existing film finance infrastructure without putting anything in its place, and in September 2012 raising the IVA [VAT] on entertainment (including cinema tickets) from 8% to 21%), in combination with the dire economic situation, have thrown film production in Spain into disarray and further undermined confidence in the Spanish film industry – an industry that was already habitually said to be in near-perpetual crisis. These circumstances have exacerbated the financial precariousness of those filmmakers already operating on the margins; the current reliance on self-funding and / or crowdfunding is not sustainable in the long term, and nor does it afford people a secure way of making a living. At the same time, the visibility of these films on the margins has increased because their success at film festivals abroad has raised their profiles at home. This international recognition is often presented by the press as a fillip for a beleaguered industry that these filmmakers nonetheless remain outside of.

From an outsider’s perspective (i.e. mine), there seem to be two events that crystallised the growing attention directed at goings-on on the margins: the September 2013 issue of Caimán Cuadernos de Cine, which was dedicated to ‘el otro cine español’ (the first time I had seen these films presented as being related to each other, despite their disparities), and the ‘Un impulso colectivo’ [A Collective Impulse] section (which takes its name from programmer Carlos Losilla’s Caimán article) at the D’A – Festival Internacional de Cinema D’Autor de Barcelona in April 2014. That’s not to say that these types of films weren’t being supported and championed elsewhere – many screened abroad and / or at festivals such as San Sebastián and Seville prior to these two events – but Caimán and the D’A Festival drew attention to the films and filmmakers as a group in a way that seems important to me because cinema is not created in a vacuum, and the idea of a group (however nebulous) foregrounds that these films are not isolated or unrelated occurrences.

A brief outline of each of the 14 films in ‘Un impulso colectivo’ can be found here. In this post I am going to consider the films as a group in order to highlight some areas of commonality across the programme.

Form follows content –
The ‘Un impulso colectivo’ programme offered a panorama of marginal cinema(s) in Spain, encompassing a range of financial models (including self-financing, crowdfunding, local grants and subsidies) and diverse genres and styles (a deadpan sci-fi, a musical-comedy, essay films, documentaries, and social dramas among them). The films collectively demonstrate that lack of money does not equate with a lack of ambition or signify a lower standard of visual or technical competence. For example, in El triste olor de la carne (dir. Cristóbal Arteaga) the use of one continuous take in conjunction with recurring diegetic sound (Mariano Rajoy’s 2013 national address plays on radios in cars and on the bus, making the architect of Spanish austerity almost omniscient within the narrative) reflects the way in which financial disaster pursues, and is closing in on, Alfredo (Alfredo Rodríguez); the visual and the aural are combined to position the viewer inescapably alongside Alfredo throughout his ordeal, and create an emotionally draining experience.

There are distinct forms and structures in operation across the programme. For example, Vidaextra (dir. Ramiro Ledo) and Une histoire seule (dir. Xurxo Chirro & Aguinaldo Fructuoso) create dialogues with other texts (Peter Weiss’s The Aesthetics of Resistance and the work of Jean-Luc Godard respectively) in order to expand on a worldview or explore the filmmakers’ own experiences. In other films, the actual process of telling a story becomes central to the form they take: in different ways, Uranes (dir. Chema García Ibarra), Árboles (dir. Colectivo Los Hijos [Javier Fernández Vázquez, Luis López Carrasco, Natalia Marín Sancho]), Ilusión (dir. Daniel Castro), Los primeros días (dir. Juan Rayos), and Sobre la marxa (dir. Jordi Morató) all make storytelling, or the play of artistic creation, part of their structure and exploration of broader themes. In Los primeros días, the rehearsals are interwoven with cast interviews and footage of later performances; we see the text take on new meaning for the children as they live the experience, but the juxtapositions in the structure also reinforce the theme of life’s transient nature. Filmmakers also utilise Spain’s past (in the form of Spanish colonialism and the Transition) to draw parallels and highlight connections with events in contemporary Spain in Árboles, Ilusión, and El Futuro (dir. Luis López Carrasco).

‘The crisis’ and human connections –
The economic crisis and its fallout is perhaps unsurprisingly the most persistent theme, and is manifested in various guises. Most straightforwardly, Edificio España (dir. Víctor Moreno) inadvertently captures the moments leading up to the construction bubble bursting and the subsequent sense of paralysis, while El triste olor de la carne takes up the economic theme on the level of personal devastation. In a more comedic mode, Ilusión shows economic circumstances impinging on the personal (pursuing an artistic dream) and the industrial (the film industry’s unwillingness to take a financial risk) in Daniel’s quixotic quest to make a musical about the political pacts that formed Spain’s democracy. The crisis also plays out via generational discontent, as seen in Las aventuras de Lily ojos de gato (dir. Yonay Boix) and Vidaextra where people in their late-twenties / early-thirties are stuck in a kind of arrested development, unable to fulfil the expectations of adulthood, at least in part because of social precarity and the impossibility of reliably supporting themselves. There is an undercurrent of frustration and anger – and in some cases the sad weariness of defeat – in many of the representations of contemporary social circumstances.

While several of the films – Uranes, Cenizas (dir. Carlos Balbuena), Sobre la marxa – focus on individuals in solitude (whether by preference or otherwise), the majority show informal communities held together by either friendship or shared experience. Several of these – for example, Edificio España and Paradiso (dir. Omar A. Razzak) – centre on a specific locations, and spaces in danger of desertion; the observed absences in those spaces serve to highlight the connections between those still present. But in the films where these communities represent support networks, there is an emphasis on physicality and the tactility of human interactions – whether the young immigrants playing football and larking about in Slimane (dir. José A. Alayón), the children throwing and dancing each other around the stage in Los primeros días, or the alcohol-induced flirtations and bonhomie in Las aventuras de Lily ojos de gato. Similarly, the conversation at the centre of Vidaextra explores the need for a sense of belonging, to feel part of something bigger than yourself, but also for the society you live in to in some way reflect your values and ideals. Most of the films in ‘Un impulso colectivo’ are rooted in a specific social context – with varying degrees of explicitness, they say something about Spain today – but in the parallels drawn between past and present, many of the filmmakers also suggest the possibility of (or more pointedly, the need for) change and a collective resistance to a continuation of the status quo.

I’ve only skimmed the surface, but taken together these films underline that the richness of cinema is to be found in its plurality; ‘Un impulso colectivo’ gave a taste of a multitude of styles and voices (although notably few women) standing together in the current ‘otro cine español’.

 

Availability

As far as I can tell, Árboles, Une histoire seule, and Vidaextra are not currently available in any format. Back in 2015 most of these films were tricky to access, so I’d like to repeat my thanks to 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.

DVD: Edificio España, Ilusión (no subtitles), Paradiso, Sobre la marxa. [the links take you to the most straightforward way to buy them if you’re in the UK, but they may be available elsewhere as well]

Filmin: Cenizas, El Futuro, El triste olor de la carne, Los primeros días, Slimane, Sobre la marxa. [although Filmin can be viewed from anywhere, it will only allow you to purchase a subscription if you are in Spain – either do as I do (buy the subscription while visiting Spain), or find a friendly Spaniard to purchase on your behalf]

Márgenes: their VOD catalogue is currently down for maintenance, so I can’t link to specific films, but they have previously had Edificio España, El triste olor de la carne, and Slimane. When their catalogue is back up, I will look for links.

Vimeo: Las aventuras de Lily ojos de gato (no subtitles), Paradiso (with subtitles), Uranes (with subtitles).

Montaña en sombra / Mountain in Shadow (Lois Patiño, 2012)

On By RebeccaIn Spanish Cinema

Mountain in shadow from lois patiño on Vimeo.

One of my favourite short films from the last few years has been put up on Vimeo by its director. I saw Lois Patiño’s Montaña en sombra / Mountain in Shadow on the massive IMAX screen at the Bradford International Film Festival in 2014 where it accompanied Patiño’s feature debut, Costa da Morte / Coast of Death – in my 5-star review of the latter, I mention the short in the last paragraph. I feel privileged to have seen it in an ideal viewing environment originally, but it’s also nice to have the opportunity to watch it again (even on a small screen).

 

Stella Cadente (Lluís Miñarro, 2014)

On By RebeccaIn Spanish Cinema

stella-cadente2

Lluís Miñarro’s opulent and riotous Stella Cadente (which means ‘falling star’) is being released on DVD in the UK next week courtesy of Second Run.

On the surface an account of the short reign of King Amadeo I of Spain in the early 1870s – although this is a film where surfaces can be deceptive – Stella Cadente also functions as a metaphor for contemporary Spain and its ongoing state of crisis. But this is far from being a fossilised heritage drama – the afore-mentioned deceptive surfaces are manifested via a state of Wonderland-like limbo within the walls of the palace, and Miñarro laces the film with perverse humour and surreal juxtapositions (if I recall correctly, Àlex Brendemühl’s Amadeo is dancing to the anachronistic sound of 1970s French chanson in the above image). I was rather bemused by the ‘busy-ness’ of the film when I saw it at EIFF in 2014 (my Eye for Film review can be found here) but liked it sufficiently to import the Spanish DVD the following year – its chief pleasures are sparky performances by Brendemühl and Bárbara Lennie (who plays Amadeo’s wife, María Victoria), and the sense of reality being challenged by illusion in the layered theatricality created by Miñarro (for me, this confusion of reality versus illusion – in combination with the royal milieu – brought Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño / Life is a Dream to mind, although the director didn’t seem overly keen on the comparison when I asked about it during the Q&A). As I noted in my review, the film also includes my favourite subtitle of that year: “Set these rabbits free!”

Second Run’s presentation also includes one of Miñarro’s documentaries, Familystrip (2009) – while his parents have their portrait painted, the director converses with them about their lives, respective childhoods, raising a family in post-War Spain, and the social changes undergone by the country during their lifetimes. It combines oral history with a deeply affectionate cine-portrait of his family. You can buy the DVD directly from Second Run (it is also available from other retailers).

5th Festival Márgenes: free to view online 13th-31st December

On By RebeccaIn Films, Spanish Cinema1 Comment

Festival Margenes 2015

The first online festival in Spain specifically dedicated to films without a commercial release or without access to the normal methods of distribution, Festival Márgenes is now in its fifth year and continues to celebrate and support filmmakers and films committed to offering alternative perspectives on both cinema and society. The full list of criteria that the films have to meet can be found here – but essentially they have to be more than 40 minutes long, to have not been distributed, and to originate from a specific set of countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela). The films can be of any genre, although it’s noticeable that documentaries tend to feature strongly.
The festival takes place in cinemas in Madrid, Monterrey, Barcelona, Montevideo, Córdoba, México DF, and Santiago de Chile from the 3rd December and then moves online from the 13th until the 31st. The films are all available to stream for free (although there are a couple that aren’t viewable outside of specified locations – noted below). There are Spanish subtitles on films that aren’t in Spanish, but as far as I’m aware there are no English subtitles this year. But even if your Spanish is rudimentary, I’d encourage you to give it a go – a) because cinema communicates through visuals (and non-verbal sound) at least as much as it does through verbal interactions, b) you have the chance to watch some films that you possibly won’t encounter elsewhere.
I haven’t had time to start watching the 2015 selection yet, but I wrote about the 4th edition last year and saw several films that I really liked – namely África 815 (Pilar Monsell, 2014) [UPDATE Oct 2016: the film is available to rent on the Márgenes VOD platform – there’s no indication whether subtitles are included], El gran vuelo / The Great Flight (Carolina Astudillo, 2014) [UPDATE Oct 2016: also available to rent – likewise, no indication of subtitles], and Propaganda (Colectivo MAFI, 2014). Hopefully I’ll manage to watch more this year. The festival prizes have already been awarded (indicated below – but see the website for full details / jury citations and the breakdown of what the prizes entail), so I will prioritise those titles but I also want to see Revolução Industrial [Industrial Revolution] (which I’m sure I read about last year in relation to other festivals), Transeúntes (which was recently at the Seville Film Festival), and the special bonus film (not part of the competition) Ragazzi (Raúl Perrone, 2014) – I saw Perrone’s Favula in Barcelona earlier in the year (my review) and would like to see if his other films maintain the fevered rarity of that one. So basically I need more hours in the day between now and the end of the year.
It’s also worth pointing out that Márgenes has its own VOD catalogue outside of the festival – a mixture of shorts and features (some viewable for free, others pay-per-view for a modest fee) and all at the more original and idiosyncratic end of Spanish production, including several films I’ve written about previously (for example, Edificio España (Víctor Moreno, 2013) and Branka (Mikel Zatarain, 2013)).

Anyway, the full list of films in the 2015 official selection is below – clicking on the title will take you to the streaming page for that film. I will post something further when I’ve managed to watch some of the films. UPDATE (28/12/15): I’ve started watching the films and will add * next to the title if I find that they have English subtitles (note: I’m only going to have time to watch a few, so if you’re interested I suggest that you try streaming them to see whether subtitles appear). UPDATE (Oct 2016): several of the films from this collection are now available to rent on the Márgenes VOD platform – note that subtitles aren’t mentioned, although that doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t any (that was also the case during the festival period and all of the ones that I watched had subs).

Alexfilm (Pablo Chavarría, 2015), Mexico, 60 min.
As cidades e as trocas (Luísa Homem and Pedro Pinho, 2014), Portugal, 139 min.
El corral y el viento* (Miguel Hilari, 2014), Bolivia, 55 min. BEST FILM
La extranjera (Miguel Ángel Blanca, 2015), Spain, 70 min [only available in Spain].
La maldad* (Joshua Gil, 2015), Mexico, 74 min. SPECIAL MENTION BY THE JURY
La sombra* (Javier Olivera, 2015), Argentina, 72 min. CAMIRA PRIZE
L’Esma del Temps (El Sentido del Tiempo) (Alexandra Garcia-Vilà, Marta González, Marta Saleta, 2015), Spain, 54 min. HONORARY MENTION
Microbús (Alejandro Small, 2014), Peru, 44 min.
Navajazo (Ricardo Silva, 2014), Mexico, 75 min. [only available in Spain, Mexico, Chile & Uruguay].
Next (Elia Urquiza, 2015), Spain / USA, 72 min.
Revolução Industrial (Frederico Lobo and Tiago Hespanha, 2014), Portugal, 72 min.
Tú y Yo (Oriol Estrada and Natalia Cabral, 2014), Dominican Republic, 85 min. EXHIBITION PRIZE
Transeúntes* (Luis Aller, 2015), Spain, 101 min.

Crumbs (Miguel Llansó, 2015)

On By RebeccaIn Spanish Cinema

01_Crumbs

This is another film seen earlier in the year in a festival context – D’A Festival in Barcelona – and it’s one of my favourite films of 2015. I’ve spotted that it’s getting a US release today but it’s also going to be at Leeds Film Festival next month (ticket details can be found here).

I wrote about the film in the aftermath of going to Barcelona. My review of Crumbs (*****) is over at Eye for Film (here – fair warning: I’ve probably included too many plot details, so maybe hold off reading it until you’ve seen the film), where you can also find the interview I did with director Miguel Llansó (Part 1 and Part 2). I hope to revisit the film before the year is over – when I do, I will write a bit more about it on here.

Curtocircuíto – Santiago de Compostela International Short Film Festival 2015

On By RebeccaIn Films, Spanish Cinema

Curtocircuito_poster

I have been covering Curtocircuíto from home in North East England rather than venturing to North West Spain – covering festivals from home always feels slightly fraudulent, as if I’m cheating, but travel and accommodation are costly aspects of going to film festivals and so on this occasion I had to be practical and forgo the festival atmosphere and focus on the films. The festival very kindly gave me access to most of the programme (the line-up can be found here), and I have managed to watch a fair range of what was on offer (and I may yet also delve into the filmography of Jørgen Leth – subject of a retrospective – because I’ve discovered that a lot of his films are available on DocAlliance). I will be writing a report on the festival this week (probably with a focus on the Galician films, given that Novo Cinema Galego is an interest of mine), which I will link to on here once it is up. In the meantime, I’ve written a round-up of the award winners.

I have also reviewed five of the films from across the programme – as usual, links to be added once they are online:

Becoming Anita Ekberg_03

Becoming Anita Ekberg (Mark Rappaport, 2014) – an essay film (or film essay?) exploring the formation of Ekberg’s star image.

 

In the Distance_02

In the Distance (Florian Grolig, 2015) – an animated take on isolation in time of war.

 

Neither God_01

Ni Dios ni Santa María / Neither God nor Santa María (Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado, 2015) – witchery and voices from the past.

 

Night Without Distance_03

Noite sem distância / Night Without Distance (Lois Patiño, 2015) – the film that I was most eager to catch up with (regular readers will know that Patiño’s Costa da Morte was my favourite film last year). Another investigation of the Galician landscape, this time in the form of a smuggling operation across the Galicia-Portugal border and utilising a colour negative image.

 

Ulterior_01

Ulterior (Sabrina Muhate, 2014) – an essay film on death and life and our bodies in those states. Unnerving (although admittedly I am squeamish) but I think that this is a director with her own voice (and eye).