11th BAFICI News

Today at midday took place the official announcement of award winners of the eleventh edition of BAFICI. The favourite of practically the entire specialised critics, Portuguese “Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto” by Miguel Gomes was chosen Best Feature Film in the International Competition, where German Maren Ade garnered the award for Best Director for her remarkable film “Everyone Else.” Also in this section, Argentinian film “Todos Mienten” by Matías Piñeiro reaped a special mention of the jury and a distinction for Best Argentine Film. Best Actor went to Alfredo Castro, protagonist of Chilean “Tony Montero” and Best Actress to Romanian María Dinulescu for her leading role in “Hooked.” Guatemalan “Gasolina” by Julio Hernández Cordón received the Special Jury Award, quite an honour.

As for the Argentine Official Selection, Alejo Moguillansky’s “Castro” was awarded Best Feature Film and Pablo Agüero, Best Director for his film “77 Doronship.” In turn, Santiago Loza’s “Rosa Patria” garnered the Special Jury Award. The award of the Asociación Cronistas Cinematográficos Argentinos (Association of Argentine Film Journalists) went to Mariano Donoso for “Tekton,” and that of FIPRESCI to “Everyone Else,” by prize-winning German director Maren Ade. In the always surprising section “Future Cinema,” the award for Best Feature Film went to the French “La Neige au Village” by Martin Rit.

As planned in this eleventh edition of BAFICI, many winning films have been given “surprise” new screenings –thus called in the official programme schedule– so nobody misses out. They are due to take place today at Hoyts Abasto cinemas. Other films with mentions and awards had already been appointed screenings at this weekend within the official lineup.

Miguel Gomes’s “Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto” (Portugal), awarded the festival’s Best Feature Film, will screen at 9.30pm at Hoyts 10.

Alejo Moguillansky’s “Castro”, distinguished as Best Feature Film in the Argentine Competition will screen at 11.45pm at Hoyts 7.

Matías Piñeiro’s “Todos mienten” (Argentina), Special Jury Mention in the International Competition, will screen at 10.45pm at Hoyts 9.

Pablo Larraín’s “Tony Manero” (Chile), awarded Best Actor (Alfredo Castro), will screen at 11pm at Hoyts 12.

Adrian Sitaru’s “Hooked” (Romania), awarded Best Actress (Maria Dinulescu), will screen at 8.30pm at Hoyts 12.

The Festival’s Closing Screening will take place today 7pm at Hoyts Abasto 10 and 11.

“Jerichow”, by German director Christian Petzold (“Die Innere Sicherheit”,

“Ghosts”, “Yella”), is inspired by James M. Cain’s novel “The Postman Always Rings Twice” but adapted to the universe of West Germany in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The film was screened at the opening of the 2008 Venice Film Festival, where Nina Hoss was awarded Best Actress.

On Saturday afternoon the Chief of Government of the City of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, called in on the Espacio BAFICI, talked to the authorities and the production team and learned the details of the success of this eleventh edition of BAFICI. The number of attendants reached 245 thousand, adding up screenings and special activities.

This impressive figure strengthens, with facts, the continuity of a government policy of promotion and incentive to the cultural activity of the city.

“To encourage the culture development and to promote spaces for dialogue and exchange are essential steps in our task of making Buenos Aires an emblem of cinema,” wrote engineer Macri in his prologue to this edition in the festival’s official catalogue.

The awards ceremony and the closing party of the eleventh BAFICI, held yesterday night at the CMD (Metropolitan Design Centre) in the traditional Barracas district, were jam-packed with warmth, emotion and people. Saturday night went by in an atmosphere of good music, beer, ice cream and chats on cinema and run until the small hours of Sunday morning. The opening act was presented by actress Mirta Busnelli and featured the presence of the jurors of each section, performers, directors and, of course, people from the film scene and friends of the winners. Each award presentation and acknowledgement speech was special in its own way. Among the winners, the young Argentine directors Pablo Agüero and Matías Piñeiro thanked BAFICI for specifically supporting the continuity of its film projects (in Piñeiro’s case, as he remarked, the awards received lead him to think of a future film.) And for his film “Todos Mienten,” the young filmmaker had many recognitions to thank for. For instance, the high praise bestowed upon it by writer Alan Pauls (member of the jury of the international competition,) when he said the movie was “graceful and fiendishly clever.” And following the presentation of Best Feature Film to the Portuguese “Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto,” its director Miguel Gomes made an already laid-back ceremony even more so when he lowered the microphone stand on the small stage and spoke as if among friends. Gomez emphasised the close relationship he shares with many Argentine directors, among whom he especially mentioned Mariano Llinás, who was also present at the ceremony.

Once everyone had received their awards it was time for the “final” picture of the eleventh BAFICI, an image that today holds an important place in Argentine newspapers and the media worldwide. A worthy postcard of a festival that will go down in the annals of history.

Tonight the free season of OPEN AIR CINEMA presents, at 8.30pm on its stage in San Martín de Tours square (Recoleta district), the film “Los Rubios” by Argentinian director Albertina Carri. For those who haven’t yet seen it or those who would like to seize the opportunity to see it again, it is one of the best Argentinian films of the first decade of this newborn century.

“Los Rubios” is Carri’s second film and was actually premiered at BAFICI’s 2003 edition, within the festival’s Official Competition Section. There the work garnered a special mention by the jury of Signis (World Catholic Association for Communication) and the coveted “Audience Award”.

Next Friday at 6pm at Espacio BAFICI, under the title “Reality is Hotting Up: Cinema as an Act of Involvement”, French-Israeli filmmaker Simon Bitton will be engaging in a dialogue with the festival’s artistic director, Sergio Wolf. In this edition of BAFICI was shown “Rachel”, her latest work and probably her best work to date.

“Rachel” is an insight into a specific episode in the protracted, gruelling Palestinian-Israeli dispute: on March 16 2003 peace activist Rachel Corrie died in Rafa, in the Gaza Strip, after stepping in between a Palestinian house and an Israeli bulldozer which intended to sweep it away. Given the Israeli military police ruling that the event was “accidental”, the documentary rebels and investigates with harshness and courage.

Today at 4.30pm at Hoyts 7 there will be a free screening of a selection of short films by students of the renowned New York University. The selection comprises “Saint Mark's Place”, “Man vs. the Unknown”, “Five Pointz Graffiti Building in Queens”, “Pelagic”, “Autumn, Sophie”, “Days of Absence”, “Here Forever Always”, “Cachumambe”, “Pure Lily”, “Ritos”, “Story of a Man Named Basil”, “Portrait of Ailene Valmar”, “Dosh” and “Pump up the Croad”.

All the works, packed full with vitality and interesting ideas, display different ways of reflecting realities, dreams and nightmares in a big city like New York. We might come across some A-list director of future editions of BAFICI, so you had better watch the shorts and remember the filmmakers’ names.

Free newspaper La Razón published last Friday an article entitled “Romanian Cinema, a Bafici Star”, where journalist Javier Firpo highlights the presence of three films from the Balkan country in the eleventh edition of the festival.

“Three austere, enlightening stories which testify to the emergence of a new cinema that is sharp, visceral, realist and, above all, promising. Films with attitude such as ‘Boogie’, ‘Elevator’ (entirely set inside a lift with a 100 euro budget) and ‘Hooked’ bring closer to us the idiosyncrasy of a poor, battered, beautiful country, without having to resort to the media-loved Dracula’s castle.”

Worthy of mention within the festival’s section “Modern Classics” is the screening of “Milestones” (1975), by the extolled American documentary makers Robert Kramer and John Douglas, this Saturday 12.30pm and 5.15pm at Hoyts 12 and Sunday 2.30pm. at Leopoldo Lugones auditorium in the San Martín theatre.

This documentary is an accomplished testimony of the meanderings of the struggle for peace and human rights in the United States, once the fervour of the sixties had died out. “It strikes as the most complex, honest and moving exploration up to date of the fate of the survivors of what came to be called “The Movement”: young people who radicalised in the anti-Vietnam war movement and who later switched struggle for passive (and sometimes active) resistance,” wrote critic Richard Eder in October 1975 in the prestigious New York Times.