11th BAFICI News

Chile’s main newspaper, El Mercurio, published on Tuesday a dispatch from German news agency DPA reporting the presentation of Alberto Fuguet’s book “Mi Cuerpo es Una Celda”, on the mythical Colombian writer Andrés Caicedo, who was the subject of a round table that took place last Monday at Espacio BAFICI.

“To Alberto Fuguet, Andrés Caicedo was a sort of pop-Neruda: some people in Colombia recite passages from his texts from memory. Not only that, he could also be regarded as a kind of Jim Morrison of the literature, an incipient talent who died early thus fuelling a legend which has his fans heading on a pilgrimage to his grave,” states the report and adds as a special plus: “and, what’s more, a flock of freaks turns up at all the presentations related to the writer copycatting his glasses and his long, middle-parting hair.”

The winner of the International Selection was Ik-June Yang’s “Breathless” (South Korea). As for the Argentine Competition Selection, the chosen one was “8 Semanas” by Alejandro Montiel and Diego Schipani, carried out with the subsidy of Fondo Metropolitano de la Cultura, las Artes y las Ciencias –Audiovisual Line.

Other winners of the public choice were “Yo, Natalia” as Best Short Film and “Básicamente un Pozo” by the Humus group, in the newborn, pampered section BAFICITO

The designers Constanza Martínez and Romina Goransky directed the tailoring of a thousand bags made with advertising banners from the 2008 edition of BAFICI, with an aim to recycle and also as a token of the tenth anniversary of the festival.

They worked with a patchwork technique that blended different textures and colours which call to mind the ones used by the Festival in its graphic image.

They used gabardine, textured corduroy and the banners to create these original mementoes of a decade of independent cinema.

Portuguese newspaper Público in its online version reported the new international success of Miguel Gomes’s “Aquele Querido Mes de Agosto”, under the title “Aquele... Winner of the Film Festival in Buenos Aires.” The daily highlighted the impressive record of merits so far received by this “fusion of documentary and fiction set in the summer festivities in Beira Serra”: Gomes’s film piles up awards from the festivals of Guadalajara, Valdivia, São Paulo and Las Palmas.

Público also announced this afternoon that the movie continues its international tour, soon to screen in the festivals of San Francisco and Los Angeles in the States and Aukland and Wellington in New Zealand.

Twelve days of multiple screenings, special activities and filmgoers zeal went by for the delight of a total 245 thousand people who attended this eleventh edition of BAFICI. After the count, some aspects reveal the striking scale of a festival that keeps growing year after year.

The total number of features, shorts and open air screenings adds up to 417 films in 1069 screenings including the 14 open air ones. 45 countries were represented, of which 297 international figures participated as guests (directors, producers, jurors, BAL participants, musicians and actors,) and there were 34 jurors. 65 Argentinian films were screened (features and shorts,) of which 59 made their world premieres. Moreover, there were 5 other world premieres of overseas films and 46 special activities, i.e. 11 seminars, 14 dialogues, 5 round tables, 2 Master Classes, 4 book presentations, 2 live-music-screenings and 8 WIP (Work in Progress) screenings.

Today ends the successful season of OPEN AIR CINEMA that took place in two locations of the city, the Pasaje Carlos Gardel in Abasto and the San Martín de Tours square in Recoleta. Since it began on Saturday 28 March, more than eight thousand people have attended it in both venues, a fact that provides irrefutable evidence of the great interest this season arouses in the public.

This afternoon’s screening in Pasaje Carlos Gardel will begin at 4pm with “Upa! Una Película Argentina”, by Santiago Giralt, Tamae Garateguy and Camila Toker, winner of Best Film in the Argentine Official Selection of BAFICI 2008; to be followed by Gabriel Alijo’s “Sueños de Polvorón” at 6pm.

At the time the first part of “Chaplin Today” begins (Sunday 11.15pm, Arteplex Duplex Caballito 2), a programme that features documentaries for TV on “Limelight” (by Argentinian Edgardo Cozarinsky), “Modern Times” and “City Lights”, there will be only half an hour to go to the last screening of 2009 BAFICI. A worthy closing to the party, with Chaplin in the limelight.

In the documentaries, made by French film company MK2 following a remastering of virtually the entire work by the great Charles Chaplin, renowned filmmakers such as Claude Chabrol, Bernardo Bertolucci, Abast Kiarostami and Jim Jarmush, among others, lay bare the extent to which Chaplin’s films have influenced their work or their daily life.

“Yakuza Eiga: une Histoire Secréte du Cinema Japonais”, Ives Montmayeur’s documentary on Japanese mafia cinema (Sunday 8.45pm at Hoyts 9), is a remarkable compilation of testimonies and images of a sub-genre from the East that has won audiences worldwide.

Alternating interviews with directors, performers, producers and even true yakuzas with images from some of the most representative titles of the genre, Montmayeur provides a panorama of the evolution of this type of cinema, parallel to Western black cinema, from the aftermath of the Second World War to date. An evolution that reached its zenith in the 60s and 70s, when it became one of the most popular –and controversial– genres.

An outstanding feature of this Saturday’s programme for the free season of OPEN AIR CINEMA, the documentary “Rey Queen” will be screened at 7pm at Pasaje Carlos Gardel street. The protagonist of the film will be attending the event to pay tribute, after his own fashion, to the musical legacy of the British rock band.

“Rey Queen” is a work by playwright, filmmaker and storyteller Sergio Bizzio, who directed the feature films “Animalada” (2001) and “100 Tragedias” alongside Mariano Galperín (2008), published nine novels and five collections of poetry and wrote four plays. Among his projects for 2009 is the premiere of his third feature, “No Fumar Es un Vicio Como Cualquier Otro”.

Tickets are sold out for today’s “film event” at 5.45pm at Hoyts 9: the screening of “Love Exposure”, by radical Japanese filmmaker Sono Sion (“Suicide Club”, “Strange Circus”), a 4-hour film that constitutes a real feat of endurance for the audience with its multiplicity of genres and bizarre plot.

The feature garnered two awards at the latest Berlin Film Festival (“Caligari Film Prize” and the Prize of the FIPRESCI Juries in the Forum section) and thrust its director into the sight of Hollywood: in an article entitled “Local Asian Talent on the Rise”, Variety magazine includes him in the list of directors to be considered by the big American industry. “Once an independent director of limited success at home, he morphed in the current decade into a hit maker,” reads the article.