Tag: short films

Rapture on celluloid: Glimmers of light and other divergences in Spanish cinema

On By RebeccaIn Spanish CinemaLeave a comment

Arrebato en celuloide. Destellos de luz y otras divergencias del cine español from Instituto Cervantes on Vimeo.

During November, on its Vimeo channel, the Instituto Cervantes has a programme of Spanish films titled Arrebato en celuloide. Destellos de luz y otras divergencias del cine español / Rapture on celluloid: Glimmers of light and other divergences in Spanish cinema. Programmed by Ángel Rueda, director of the (S8) Mostra Internacional de Cinema Periférico in A Coruña (which focuses on experimental films and always seems to have an interesting line-up), the season takes “an eclectic tour of the different expressions with which the traditional 16 mm and Super 8 formats have taken shape in Spain’s cinematographic panorama in recent years. […] The programme will also reveal the sensory relationship that analogue film brings to these filmmakers’ productions. It is a tactile, light-sensitive medium that gives an intimate view, amplifying the themes they deal with in their films” (text taken from (S8)’s email newsletter). Each of the films will be available for free for 48 hours from 8pm (GMT+1) on the dates indicated – audio in Spanish with subtitles in Spanish, French, English, Italian, and Portuguese.

The films included are (the links currently require a password to access):

The only one I’ve seen previously is Sin Dios ni Santa María (which I reviewed back in 2015 – recommended).

 

IberoDocs 2022: 6th-17th April

On By RebeccaIn Documentary

IberoDocs’ 9th edition will take place 6th-10th April for in-person events (in Edinburgh and Glasgow) and 11th-17th online, with seven feature documentaries and a shorts programme. Their opening film will be Neus Ballús’s Sis dies corrents / The Odd Job Men – which is on my want-to-see list, although I’ll have to wait as it’s one of two films that aren’t included in the online programme.

The theme connecting the chosen Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American films is ‘territory, belonging, and migration’. You can find further details of the films in the programme/schedule, which can be downloaded here. The prices for the online presentation are either £10 for a single film, or £20 for a full pass.

 

Catalan Film Festival, 25th Nov – 12th Dec 2021

On By RebeccaIn Spanish Cinema

Images from films playing at the 2021 Catalan Film Festival

The Catalan Film Festival is back for another edition, with Cinemaattic again utilising a hybrid model of in-person screenings in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dundee, and an online version running in parallel. The programme can be found here and there are also further details on their website.

The online festival is hosted on FestHome, and has almost all of the films from the in-person sessions. There are two programmes of shorts and five feature-length films, including the latest features by the two filmmakers in focus this year, Clara Roquet and Meritxell Colell. You can pay for a programme of shorts, the focus on a specific filmmakers (which includes their short films), or an individual feature, but the festival pass (giving you access to everything) is a very reasonable 15€.

Iberodocs 2021

On By RebeccaIn Documentary

Iberodocs 2021 banner image

Iberodocs returns in an online format for its 8th edition, 19th April – 2nd May. Accessible to viewers in the UK and Ireland, the 21 participating documentaries (features and shorts) can be viewed with a festival pass costing £15, or individually for £5. Full details are available on the festival’s website.

I have written about some of the films shown in previous editions in the past (as far back as the 2nd edition on the old blog!), and always found the programme to be a thought-provoking exploration of current documentary practice by Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American filmmakers.

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.

 

Newly Streaming Films

On By RebeccaIn Films, Spanish Cinema

Courtesy of David Cairns signposting that his film Natan (co-directed with Paul Duane) was now streaming online, I discovered a new (to me) streaming platform: IFFRUnleashed. It hosts a veritable cornucopia of esoteric titles from the festival circuit, reasonably priced at 4€ for a feature and 1€ for a short.

There are a number of films that I’ve seen at festivals but not encountered elsewhere, including a range of works by Spanish directors – such as El Futuro (Luis López Carrasco, 2013) and L’Accademia delle Muse (Jose Luis Guerin, 2015 – I might finally get to watch it with English subs!) – but also short films by directors like Radu Jude, Mark Rappaport, and Benjamín Naishtat. I’m going to link to a handful of titles that I’ve previously written about:

In other Spanish film streaming news, Carlos Vermut’s Quién te cantará (2018) has just popped up on Netflix UK, which is unexpected (I may have given an involuntary yelp when I spotted it in ‘Recently Added’) but welcome (the forthcoming Spanish DVD release – which I’ve pre-ordered – doesn’t have any English subs UPDATE: It does have English subs [despite the listings details showing no sign of them]). Netflix UK continues to add very recent Spanish films and TV series, offering a much broader range of Spanish titles than was ever seen in terms of UK DVD releases in the past.

Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings & Stewart McAllister, 1942)

On By RebeccaIn Films

Listen to Britain09

Mubi currently have Listen to Britain in their collection (here), as part of a strand of films recommended by Paul Schrader. I reviewed the documentary short for Eye for Film back in 2016 (when it screened at the AV Festival).

If you don’t have a Mubi subscription, you can watch the 20 minute film for free on the BFI Player.

7th Festival Márgenes: free to view online, 2nd-23rd December 2017

On By RebeccaIn Films

I’ve written about each edition of Festival Márgenes since 2014, usually in the form of an overview but sometimes going into a bit of detail about films I’ve particularly liked (click on the year for the relevant post: 2014, 2015, 2016). The festival focuses on films without distribution, 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). Standouts from previous editions include África 815 (Pilar Monsell, 2014), El gran vuelo (Carolina Astudillo, 2014), La sombra (Javier Olivera, 2015), No Cow on the Ice (Eloy Domínguez Serén, 2015), and Pasaia bitartean (Irati Gorostidi, 2016).

The films included in the 2017 edition (links take you to the relevant streaming page – you need to register with the site to get started):

The Luis Ospina retrospective includes 20 films (shorts and features), also free to view. No indication is given about subtitles, but generally those films not in Spanish have (Castillian) Spanish subtitles and often a lot of the Spanish-language films have English subtitles – but as I’ve said in relation to previous editions, they’re all free to view, so it won’t cost you anything to just click on one and see if subtitles appear.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I’m intending to watch the films by Gabriel Azorín, María Cañas, and Luis Macías as a starting point. But my experience of Festival Márgenes is that they always have a really strong line-up – I usually only manage to watch a handful of films from a given edition but I’ve never watched a dud – so although some of the films might not be your kind of thing, you should be able to find something interesting that you would not otherwise get the chance to see.

Watched in September

On By RebeccaIn Films

Plus Piazza Vittorio (Abel Ferrara, 2017) (which doesn’t seem to have a poster), via Festival Scope’s Venice Sala Web – having pointed out the selection in last month’s post, I then only managed to watch one film there myself. I also missed all of Mubi’s Argentine cinema season, apart from La mujer de los perros / Dog Lady (Laura Citarella & Verónica Llinás, 2015). I’ve not really been in a film-watching mood.

I am intending to watch Ken Burns & Lynn Novick’s documentary series, The Vietnam War, which is available on the BBC iPlayer during October if you’re in the UK (the first episode is here) – David Thomson reviewed the series in the London Review of Books (note: the version being shown in the UK is the 10-hour international cut, rather than the 18-hour version being shown in the US).

Watched in June

On By RebeccaIn Films

A slower month.

Tijuana Tales (Jean-Charles Hue, 2017) is one of a collection of shorts from Cannes available to view on Festival Scope until 7th July.

‘The Carlos Saura Challenge: 1962-1979’ will start tomorrow with an introductory post, to be followed on subsequent days by posts on each of the thirteen films from this first period of the director’s career.

6th Festival Márgenes: free to view online, 11th – 31st December

On By RebeccaIn Films, Spanish Cinema

6th-margenes-festival

I have previously written about the 4th and 5th editions of this Spanish online festival. Specifically dedicated to films – from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and Ibero-America (Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Latin American countries) – whose form, style, or duration mean that they will struggle to access the normal distribution routes or obtain a commercial release, Márgenes initially takes place in key cities in Spain, Mexico, Chile and Uruguay at the start of December, before moving online during the second half of the month. Documentaries and experimental films tend to dominate the selection.
The online side of the festival makes the films free to view. Sometimes there are rights restrictions on specific titles in certain countries – at the moment Generación Artificial and Santa Teresa y otras historias aren’t visible to me, but I don’t know if that’s a rights issue or just a glitch on the website. Films that aren’t in Spanish tend to have Spanish subtitles, but in past years the majority of the Spanish-language films have had English subtitles. The subtitles aren’t listed on the website – I’ve put a * next to the trailer links below where the festival has used a trailer with English subtitles, which is often a good indication of there being subs on the film as well [UPDATE: this hasn’t been a good indicator this time around]. But given that the films are free to view, you aren’t going to lose anything by starting a film to see whether subtitles appear. I never manage to watch everything, but I will update this post to indicate the presence of subtitles on any films I watch [UPDATE: I’ve watched two and looked at a third – I’ve added the subtitle info below].
The previous editions I’ve explored have revealed gems such as África 815 (Pilar Monsell, 2014), El gran vuelo / The Great Flight (Carolina Astudillo, 2014), and La sombra (Javier Olivera, 2015) (the latter was my favourite in last year’s festival). I can recommend No Cow on the Ice (I reviewed it earlier this year) and personally will be aiming to at least catch Pasaia bitartean, Santa Teresa y otras historias (if it’s available), and Las letras (on the basis that I’ve read positive things about them in relation to other film festivals). The festival announced its prizes yesterday – I’ve marked the winners below as well.
This is the line-up of titles in the 2016 official selection (clicking on the title will take you to the streaming page for that film):

> Arreta (Raquel Marques and María Zafra, 2016, Spain – 60 min) *trailer
> Generación Artificial / Artificial Generation (Federico Pintos, 2015, Argentina – 62 min) *trailer
> Historias de dos que soñaron / Tales of Two Who Dreamt (Andrea Bussmann and Nicolás Pereda, 2016, Mexico/Canada – 82 min) *trailer
> CAMIRA PRIZE: Il solengo (Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, 2015, Italy/Argentina – 66 min) trailer
> Inadaptados (Kikol Grau, 2015, Spain – 41 min)
> BEST FILM: Las letras / The Letters (Pablo Chavarría Gutiérrez, 2015, Mexico – 77 min) [with English subtitles] trailer
> SPECIAL MENTION BY THE JURY: No Cow on the Ice (Eloy Domínguez Serén, 2015, Spain – 63 min) *trailer
> Panke (Alejo Franzetti, 2016, Argentina/Germany/Burkina Faso – 46 min) *trailer
> NUMAX EXHIBITION PRIZE: Parábola del retorno (Juan Soto, 2016, Colombia – 41 min) trailer
> Pasaia bitartean (Irati Gorostidi, 2016, Spain – 51 min) [Castilian Spanish subs] *trailer
> Placa Madre / Motherboard (Bruno Varela, 2016, Mexico/Bolivia – 54 min) trailer
> Santa Teresa y otras historias / Saint Teresa and Other Stories (Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, 2015, Dominican Republic/USA/Mexico – 65 min) [no subs] *trailer
> Yo me lo creo (Terrorismo de Autor, 2016, Spain – 40 min) trailer

The Márgenes Festival 2016 also includes a retrospective of the work of Lluís Escartín, titled ‘no tengo nada que decir, prefiero escuchar. 30 años documentando lo invisible‘ [I don’t have anything to say, I prefer to listen: 30 years documenting the invisible], and a cycle dedicated to Chilean director José Luis Torres Leiva, ‘Un lugar en el mundo‘ [A place in the world] – they are likewise free to view online until 31st December.