- “In this section we include the things we like without following any sort of program,” pointed out Miranda in regards to the section that features two of Basilio Martín Patino’s fundamental films, Straub and Huillet’s last work as a duo and two other pieces related to LGTBIQ+ cinema
- In June, and in collaboration with ULPGC’ Aula de Cine, Godard’s films, accompanied by presentations and debates, will como to the Humanities Hall
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Tuesday, March 28, 2023-. After announcing the program of both official sections, as well as the rest of the cycles and sections, competitive or not, the Festival director highlighted the presence of a series of special screenings that are intermingled with the rest of the titles due to their relevance, commitment or fit within the purpose of a festival, and which functions, in a way, as an escape route: “a container in which we put the things we want, a space that every festival needs to allow itself,” Miranda argued.
Thus, as special screenings, the Festival audience, and especially students of image or audiovisual studies, will be able to approach Nine Letters to Bertha and Songs for After a War, by Basilio Martín Patino. These fundamental films will be shown in copies “excellently restored by Filmoteca Española,” said the director of the Film Festival.
The screening of both titles responds to an initiative sponsored by film critic Javier Tolentino and underlines the value of the filmmaker as one of the names of a cinema that, he says, “did not bow to the exaltations of the homeland and the Catholic and lying devotion of the regime.”
These screenings, according to the comments of the director of the film event, connect in a special way with the cycle dedicated to The Spirit of the Beehive, as well as with one of the principles of the festival, “to be able to travel a route of the present time having the possibility of detouring to the cinema produced in the last decades to link different issues.”
The first one, which premiered at San Sebastian in 1966, is considered “the most French New Wave film in Spanish cinema up to that moment,” says Tolentino in the catalog. In addition, he adds, “it burst exhibiting a different language and narrative from what Spanish cinema was offering at the time.”
About Songs for After a War, the first of a trilogy that has been persecuted, the critic claims that “it is his sarcasm, irony and playfulness . . . that will make Basilio a minstrel of the seventh art, a gambler of the false, a magician of the cinema of the real and a pioneer of cinematographic language.”
The screenings will be accompanied by debates and discussions moderated by Javier Tolentino.
As a special screening, and from the hand of an indisputable ally of the Film Festival, the Aula de Filosofía y Pensamiento Manuel Alemán, will be Itinéraire de Jean Bricard / The Itinerary of Jean Bricard, by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub (France, 2008, 40 min.), a reflection on the devastation caused by war. This collaboration pays tribute to Straub months after his death (the filmmaker died in November, 2022) and to the “films that, in tandem with Huillet, have exhibited a political aesthetic commitment throughout the history of cinema,” added Luis Miranda.
The Festival will also open a window to LGTBI+ cinema with the world premiere of Calima rosa by Canarian Ismael Cabrera (Spain, 2023, 100 min.) and the screening, after its appearance in San Sebastian, of the documentary My Way Out by Izaskun Arandia (Spain, 2022, 70 min.).
Godard’s films will come to the Humanities Hall in June
The Film Festival will close its twenty-second edition on April 23, but it will do so with a new appointment on the horizon, the one that will bring back to the big screen Jean-Luc Godard’s oeuvre, iconic figure of the French New Wave. Together with the ULPGC Film Classroom, the Humanities Hall will show fifteen works by the French-Swiss filmmaker, which will offer an essential legacy for film buffs. Specifically, five short films and ten feature films will be screened from June 16 to 30, in the Agustín Millares Carló building, in the Obelisco, a legacy spanning 60 years of career and that will be accompanied by talks and discussions with experts.
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