20TH LAS PALMAS DE GRAN CANARIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL – 20 FICLPGC (APRIL 9TH TO 18TH)
Ajitpal Singh’s film, Fire in the Mountains, wins this 20th Film Festival’s Silver Lady Harimaguada
The Mexican feature Mixteca Knot wins the Audience Award; Kumi Takiuchi receives the Best Actress Award for her role in A Balance while Chandan Bisht receives the Best Actor Award for his role in Fire in the Mountains
French director Alexe Poukine’s work Palma wins the Best Short Film Award
The Canarias Cinema Awards have been granted to the feature White on White, by Théo Court, and the short film Versions, by Claudia Torres
The short film Point and Line to Plane, by Sofia Bohdanowicz, wins the Band à Part Award
CIMA grants its awards to the feature A Balance and to the short film Motorcyclist’s Happiness Won’t Fit Into His Suit
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Saturday April 17, 2021.- The 20th Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival announces its most special edition’s awards. The jury has granted the Golden Lady Harimaguada to the film This Rain Will Never Stop (Ukraine, Germany, Latvia, 2020, 103 min.), by Alina Gorlova. The jury announced the awards in a ceremony held at Edificio Miller this Saturday morning. Ten features and twelve short films competed in the Official Section for its awards. The Official Section Jury awarded the European coproduction “for its director’s ability to make a film about war without depicting it but instead capturing the effects it has on people, as well as for using its photography to discover reality’s complexity.”
The second award of this 20th edition, the Silver Lady Harimaguada, has been granted to the film Fire in the Mountains (India, 2021, 83 min.), by Ajitpal Singh. Likewise, the jury highlights in this feature “its ability to portray contradictions in contemporary India and its dilemma between tradition and modernity with apparent simplicity while expressing its characters’ complexity.” The jury has also granted a second award to the Indian film, the Best Actor Award, to Chandan Bisht.
Another of this edition’s awarded titles has been the Japanese film A Balance (2020, 153 min.), by Yujiro Harumoto, which has won for its lead actress, Kumi Takiuchi, the Best Actress Award.
The Official Section Jury, formed by Josep María Català Domènech, Nele Wohlatz, and Mathieu Bonpoint, has also awarded a Special Jury Mention, among the ten titles competing in the feature section, to Mixteca Knot (Mexico, 2021, 96 min.), by Ángeles Cruz, “for its director’s courage in offering an intimate and profound vision of her community’s problems and how they are solved.” A film that won, too, the Audience Award of this Film Festival’s twentieth edition.
Best Short Film Award
In the short film category, the award has been granted to director Alexe Poukine’s work Palma (France, 2020, 39 min.), a decision the jury has made for “being a short film that shows its characters’ authenticity through a crude and close intimacy filtered in pictures and which has distanced itself enough in between what we want to feel and what we would’ve liked to be. A work capable of measuring affections between people that got broken long ago and now are trying to put together the pieces in a film mosaic that breathes, rests and lies in its dear characters’ conscience.”
Likewise, the Official Short Film Jury, formed by Calmin Borel, Domènech, Javier Acevedo and Oana Ghera, decided to award a Special Jury Mention to Blue Affair (Japan, 2020, 13 min.), by Kosuke Okahara, “for a work capable of delving into the identity light over shade and shade over light in a complicated and satisfactory tribute to the power of film language. Between its white and black we can appreciate a great variety of ideas and motives capable of making us lose ourselves in its textures only to finally found ourselves thanks to honest and timeless pictures.”
Band à Part Award
The jury of Band à Part, a new section of this twentieth Film Festival, granted its award to the short film Point and Line to Plane (Canada, 2020, 18 min.), by Sofia Bohdanowicz. For the jury, made up of Vanina Saracino, Rosa Franquet and Justin Jaeckle, Point and Line to Plane is “a film that becomes an object through its story, experience and form’s reflection, forging circular connections between magical thinking and plasticity.”
Canarias Cinema Awards
The Canarias Cinema Jury, formed by Miren Aperribay, Rodrigo Díaz and José Manuel Zamorano, three professionals widely known for their commitment to culture and the spreading of film as an art form while working as distributors, programmers and producers, has granted the Richard Leacock Award for Best Feature Film to White on White (Spain, Chile, Germany, 2019, 100 min.), by director Théo Court, “for the undeniable expressive ability present throughout the film and for a powerful staging that combines a reflection on and a condemnation of a historical conflict yet in need of justice while questioning art’s role and use in justifying and covering up certain actions.” The jury has also granted the Richard Leacock Award for Best Short Film to Versions (Spain, 2019, 14 min.), by Claudia Torres, “for its emotional appealing ability based on the intimate and private pictures its director manages to transcend, thus creating a disturbing and intriguing tale of family depths.”
The short film by the Canarian Claudia Torres also won the Digital 104 International Distribution Award, announced last Tuesday, “for its suggestive ability of transcending the intimacy of home recordings, getting the audience to question the reality hidden behind all systems of representation.” Jonay García, Jairo López and Domingo J. González, filmmakers and founders of the Canarian production company, formed the jury that granted this last award.
The Canarias Cinema Jury granted a third award, in this case to Andrea Zoghbi, lead actress of the short film Ocean, by Fernando Alcántara, “for her expressive, intimate and almost silent ability to show contemporary urban spaces’ vital alienation,” as well as a special mention to The Infinite Confinement (Spain, 2020, 5 min.), a short film by Canarian filmmaker Víctor Moreno, of which they highlighted “its constant search from an ironic and creative standpoint in a staging that explains our current reality.”
CIMA Awards
In this twentieth edition, the Film Festival has counted again on the Association of Women Filmmakers and the Media CIMA to award a feature and a short film included in the competition. Writer, psychologist, editor and filmmaker Susi Alvarado, creator and location expert Lourdes Rojas, director, screenwriter and CIMA’s president Cristina Andreu, creator and screenwriter Virginia Yagüe and prize-winning producer Chelo Loureiro have recognized in this twentieth edition some works that contribute to gender equality’s awareness and social commitment.
CIMA has granted its Best Feature Film Award to A Balance (2020, Japan, 153 min.), by Yujiro Harumoto, “because this film has been paradigmatic in choosing a protagonist, exceptionally played by Kumi Takiuchi, who portrays an autonomous, professionally competent, committed-to-her-environment empathic woman that puts in question through her conflict her moral principles and grows throughout the story without falling to stereotypes. A proof of the fact that a film under those premises can be written and filmed by a man and that ir our commitment to equality we walk in alliance.”
CIMA’s members have also awarded the short film Motorcyclist’s Happiness Won’t Fit Into His Suit (Mexico, 2021), by Gabriel Herrera, “for its discursive originality, its esthetic language and its irony when capturing colonial history and recovering its beauty.”
AWARDS
Golden Lady Harimaguada
This Rain Will Never Stop (Alina Gorlova, Ukraine, Germany, Latvia, 2020, 103 min.)
Silver Lady Harimaguada
Fire in the Mountains (Ajitpal Singh, India, 2021, 83 min.)
Best Actress Award
Kumi Takiuchi, for her role in A Balance (Yujiro Harumoto, Japan, 2020, 153 min.)
Best Actor Award
Chandan Bisht for his role in Fire in the Mountains (Ajitpal Singh, India, 2021, 83 min.)
Special Jury Mention
Mixtexa Knot (Ángeles Cruz, Mexico, 2021, 96 min.)
Best Short Film Award
Palma (Alexe Poukine, France, 2020, 39 min.)
Short Film Special Jury Mention
Blue Affair (Kosuke Okahara, Japan, 2020, 13 min.)
Audience Award
Nudo Mixteco (Ángeles Cruz, Mexico, 2021, 96 min.)
BAND À PART
Band à Part Short Film Award
Point and Line to Plane (Sofia Bohdanowicz, Canada, 2020, 18 min.)
CANARIAS CINEMA
Richard Leacock Award for Best Feature Film
White on White (Théo Court, Spain, Chile, Germany, 2019, 100 min.)
Richard Leacock Award for Best Short Film
Versions (Claudia Torres, Spain, 2019, 14 min.)
Digital 104 Film Distribution Award
Versions (Claudia Torres, Spain, 2019, 14 min.)
20 years, 16 awards, 62 films in competition
During our Film Festival’s 20-year celebration, spectators have been able to enjoy at Cinesa El Muelle’s screens, the Elder Museum of Science and Technology and the Edificio Miller over a hundred films, 62 of which have competed for any of the 16 awards the Festival has granted in this edition, that comes to an end tomorrow Sunday April 18.
Behind the coveted trophies we may find LPA Fábrika’s work in the 3D creation process and César Luzardo’s work as carpenter. These scale copies of Martín Chirino’s Lady Harimaguada of titanium finish and of 3D finish have substituted the old trophies since 2017. These figures, created with digital printing techniques, have taken shape thanks to machines that have produced the body of these singular Ladies millimeter per millimeter, and with whom the most outstanding works and authors in this edition of the festival have been awarded.
The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival, which has strengthened for another year its commitment to a philosophy devoted to talent, to films born without commercial intent, away from conventionalisms, had in its twentieth edition the support of the Ministry of Culture and Sport (through the ICAA); the Canarian Government (through Canarias Cultura en Red); Cabildo de Gran Canaria [Gran Canaria Island Council], thanks to the SPEG and Gran Canaria Film Comission; University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Mid Atlantic University; the Canary Islands Audiovisual Cluster; the Association of Filmmakers of the Canary Islands ‘Microclima’; the Association of Women Filmmakers and the Media CIMA; Filmin; Cinesa El Muelle, the Elder Museum of Science and Technology and the International Bach Festival.
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