[13] Traveling BAFICI

The 13th edition of the Traveling BAFICI, organized by the Ministry of Culture of the City of Buenos Aires in collaboration with local institutions, will take place in different cities of the country between August and December 2011.

BAFICI is a cultural event that has played a role to improve and transform the ways of watching and making cinema in Argentina. The diversity and aesthetic risk-taking of its programming, the possibility of bringing viewers, film critics and filmmakers closer to new trends in today’s and tomorrow’s cinema have contributed to the Festival’s increasing prominence in our city and the entire world of film.

One of the main aims of BAFICI is to spread out that power of transformation further beyond the Festival’s two-week duration every year and the borders of the City of Buenos Aires. Traveling BAFICI is an effort to expand its offer to the most important cities in Argentina, which are increasingly demanding access to these films. The Festival was created in 1999, year of its first edition, to compensate for the necessity of alternative exhibition spaces in other urban centers and villages in the rest of the country for film works that are usually off the commercial circuit.

Traveling BAFICI will open on August 3rd in the City of Mendoza (August 3–7) with the film Los Marziano, with the presence of Ana Katz and other members of the notable cast, and will continue through mid-December 2011. Mendoza, Neuquén, Bahía Blanca, Rosario, Córdoba, Santa Fe, Paraná, Viedma, Tandil, La Plata, Bariloche, Cipoletti, Resistencia and Montevideo will be some of the host cities.

Traveling BAFICI will feature films from different sections of the 13th edition of the Festival. There will be screenings of most of the awarded films and Argentine movies such as El Estudiante, by Santiago Mitre; Yatasto, by Hermes Paralluelo; Las Piedras, by Román Cárdenas; La carrera del animal, by Nicolás Grosso; Ostende, by Laura Citarella. In addition, screenings will include titles highly regarded at international festivals such as Norberto apenas tarde, by Daniel Hendler, and an extensive list of discoveries and worthy titles like Sipo'hi El lugar del manduré, by Sebastián Lingiardi; Novias Madrinas 15 años, by Diego and Pablo Levy; Hoy no tuve miedo, by Iván Fund; La peli de Batato, by Goyo Anchou and Peter Pank; Moacir, by Tomás Lipgot; Creo que te amo, by Germán Greco, among many others.

Also participating are important international titles such as La vida útil (Uruguay-Spain) by Federico Veiroj; La vida sublime (Spain), by Daniel V. Villamediana, True Love (Spain), by Ion de Sosa; Música campesina (United States/Chile), by Alberto Fuguet; La muerte de Pinochet (Chile), by Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikof, among others.

In addition to the program of films, Argentine directors and producers will travel to different places to hold meetings with the public.

The presence of guests at these events is substantial since, apart from the film exhibitions and the post-screening question-and-answer sessions, the different venues of the Traveling BAFICI will host workshops, roundtables and different activities open to everyone.