Jubilee 15th ji. Hlava international documentary film festival
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- TRANSLUCENT BEING – BASILIO MARTÍN PATINO
DOC-FIDoc-Fi, now in its second year, is a new permanent edition to the festival program. The section presents films that blur the line between documentary and fiction, thus opening questions as to the essence of the audiovisual medium, the importance of documentary ethics, and the role of fiction in the process of recording reality. According to Petr Kubica, programming director of the Jihlava IDFF, the Doc-Fi section “expresses the conviction that the boundary between documentary and fiction is porous, that perhaps no such boundary exists at all – as shown by films whose ‘otherness’ alters our understanding of cinema.” For instance, People I Could Have Been and Maybe Am (Boris Gerrets, Netherlands 2010), filmed on the streets of London using a mobile phone, tries to break through urban anonymity by wondering what it is like to enter into the lives of complete strangers. Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbours (Rirkrit Tiravanjia, Thailand 2011) looks at 60-year-old Lung Neaw, who lives in harmony with nature and his neighbors far from busy Bangkok, in order to ask what man might want if he already lives in paradise? In his new film Accidentes Gloriosos (Sweden/Denmark/Argentina 2011), Mauro Andrizzi, the director of Iraqi Short Films (shown at last year’s festival) presents nine different stories that share the subject of death and transformations, from a man with a transplanted heart who acquires new artistic talents to a photographer who tries to depict car accidents as works of art. And in Summer of Giacomo (Italy/Belgium/France 2011), Alessandro Comodin presents a coming-of-age love story mixing memories with actual first-time experience.
TRANSLUCENT BEING – VITTORIO DE SETAVittorio De Seta (Palermo, 1923) Originally from an aristocratic family, after interrupting his architecture studies Vittorio De Seta worked as an assistant to director Mario Chiari and eventually began his long career as a director and screenwriter. His early documentary films from the 1950s and ’60s, whose first comprehensive retrospective will take place in Jihlava, focus on the simple life of poor people in the director’s native Sicily and on the island of Sardinia. His works are a celebration of this mystical landscape and the people’s way of life, their work and their traditional festivities (e.g., Easter in Sicily, 1956). In Golden Parable (1956), he finds beauty and dignity in fieldwork; The Forgotten (1959) pays tribute to the society, traditions, and way of life of a remote mountain village. De Seta also works in the neo-realist spirit of calling attention to social issues. For instance, he paints a detailed portrait of the dismal working conditions in the sulfur mines of central Sicily (Surfarara, 1954) or of fishermen on the Sicilian coast (Peasants of the Sea, 1956). We can see the influence of his documentary work on his remarkably mature feature debut, Bandits of Orgosolo (1961), which looks at the life of Sardinian shepherds who follow their own laws, which differ from those of the modern world and police. De Seta’s realistic depiction of the bandits’ life and traditions pays witness to the distinctive moral codes of the island’s inhabitants and the poetry and pathos of nature and man. The festival will be presenting Vittorio De Seta with the Contribution to World Cinematography prize.
After studying philosophy, Patino immediately garnered attention as a talented writer. Nevertheless, an important moment in his life was his founding, together with Joaquín de Prada, of the Salamanca University Film Club in 1953, where he also became the editor of Cinema Universitario magazine. He was an active participant in and organizer of the so-called Salamanca Interviews (1955). After moving to Madrid, he studied at the IIEC film school and shot advertisements for companies such as Coca-Cola and Schweppes. In 1965, he made his debut with the fiction film Nine Letters to Berta, which ranked him among the members of the new Spanish cinema. But it was his subsequent three works – Songs for After a War (1971), Dearest Executioners (1973), and Caudillo (1977) – that forever marked him as the father of modern Spanish documentary film. Visitors to this year’s Ji.hlava IDFF will have the opportunity to see these and several other of his films. His auteur style rests not only in his original use of archival footage – as can be seen in Dearest Executioners or Madrid (1987) – but in particular in the search for gaps in meaning. His documentaries are not crammed full of objective data, but instead aim for a subjective interpretation of an era (Songs for After a War), Franco (Caudillo), or the emotional state of the condemned (Dearest Executioners). Other films offer a personal mediation on the subject of how to make films about history in the first place (Madrid). Patino is such an original filmmaker that he has no need to use “typical Spanish issues” – it is enough for him to rouse his nation’s consciousness. Directory: press -> 2011 press -> Draft I film Screening press -> The milk carton kids press -> Embargoed until 15 december 2005 15H00 gmt press -> Press Release world meteorological organization press -> Introductory Text press -> The project is part of the wider cooperation between Eni and Rosneft sanctioned under the Strategic Cooperation Agreement entered into by the parties on 25th April 2012 press -> El Niño’s Effects May Be Limited This Winter press -> I am particularly pleased that my last year at Kunsthaus Bregenz was so successful. There are very few institutions in which the architecture, the staff, and the art encounter each other so productively Download 167.4 Kb. Share with your friends:
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