MAY IS DOCO MONTH IN MADRID.
April 23rd 2009 07:24
As a feature of this year’s DOCUMENTA event, all films screening in this years festival will be making their Spanish Film debut’s presenting a collection of truly international films that are a true reflection on society today from the artistic to the cultural and economic, through to the effects mankind has had on the environment and the issues surrounding our planets struggles.
Once again another festival has themselves a new record for entries with 1078 films being received from over 86 countries. With the availability of training and equipment available to filmmakers today, this trend looks set to continue throughout many of the more than 10,000 festivals presented each year throughout the world. From those 1000 entries, 108 have now been chosen to screen in the competition with 40 countries represented in the final line-up.
With the prize monies on offer also increasing, more and more artists are entering their works in what would have previously been seen as something mainstream audiences would not have been attracted to. Over 73.000€ will be divided over the four competitive sections – Original Documentary, Reporting, The National Competition and Filmotech.com. The audience award will also allow one exalted film to be screened as part of the documentary of the month.
The films in competition by category include 54 films in the Original Documentary Section (22 full-length films and 32 short films); 32 in the Documentary Reporting Section and 22 in the National Competition (11 full-length films and 11 short films). Spanish-Dutch director Sonia Herman Dolz, the Mexican Juan Carlos Rulfo, the Chilean Ignacio Agüero Piwonka are once again returning to compete for the Award for Best Full-length Film
Spanish-born director residing in Holland, Sonia Herman Dolz, who was on the Jury in 2007 and whose work was featured in a retrospective, shows the creation of a choreography in her most recent film, Blanco. It shows the first spark of inspiration between the Dutch choreographer Conny Janssen and her dancers, in a process that is usually hidden but whose secrets Dolz manages to reveal.
Juan Carlos Rulfo and fellow countryman Carlos Hagerman delve into the lives of families that have left in search of a better life, risking their lives, in Los que se Quedan. This full-length film inquires into the everyday nature of absence generated by migration, nostalgia, identity and memory, the capacity for fulfilling one's dreams and the mysterious nature of love.
In a recent press release, DOCUMENTA MADRID described this initiative as being ‘run by the Parallel 40 production company (which specializes in documentaries) and integrated into the CinemaNet Europe project, which shows 12 documentaries every year in more than 100 cinemas Europe-wide’ AVID will in also be on board to give the Award for Best Editing in the National Short Film section.
English born Michael Nyman one of the most prolific and commercially successful composers, pianists and conductors in the world today will perform at the official opening on April 30 at the Fernán Gómez Theatre. Some of his most famous scores include: The Daughtman's Contract (1982), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989) and Prospero's Books (1991), as well as being the hands behind the 1993 Oscar® winning film THE PIANO directed by Jane Campion
The festival’s opening night gala takes place April 30 before with competitive films screening from Friday May 1.
Programme highlights include:
Chema Rodriguez, short film Triste Borracha, will compete in the National Competition. This is the story of Marina, a 70-year old ex-prostitute who has the happiest day of her life when she learns she will finally sing in the National Theater of Guatemala. He will also participate in the Reporting section with his full-length film Coyote, the story of three undocumented Central Americans and the smuggler who guides them from Guatemala to the US border. The film was screened in the Panorama section of the Berlin Festival.
Ventrada, a portrait of the probably only paraplegic shepherd in the world, by the Catalonian director Óscar Pérez, whose short film ‘If the Camera Blows Up’ (2008) will also be projected in the Parallel Section Documentary and Comedy.
The Oblique Laugh; and El pequeño Elogio de la Distancia, by the director from Leon Felipe Vega, the director of, among other acclaimed films, Mujeres en el Parque (2007), for which he received the latest Luis Buñuel Award for Film one month ago from the Mayor of Madrid.
One of the films to be screened in the Reporting Competitive Section is the latest film by the Mexican director Nicolás Echevarría. A chronicle of the student massacre in the Plaza de Tlatelolco called Memorial del 68, which gives an overall and broad look at the conflicts dealt within the Series Echando la Vista Atras: Mayo del 68' at last year’s DOCUMENTA MADRID
For a full line up of this year’s festival films:
www.documentamadrid.com
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SimonC
