10 · 07 · 10

Spanish vanguard short films

Mariana Linares

In 93 minutes of film, Garbiñe Ortega, an independent curator who works and lives in the United States and Spain, seeks to show that certain Spanish productions actually “feel and vibrate, re-invent and reveal.” Ortega, who is also a film history professor, is interested in the new forms that are re-inventing cinema -- from the point of view of conception, production, language and distribution. Today, filmmakers don’t only have to depend on spectators buying tickets at the box office to see a film on the big screen, but with the Internet, they have a more immediate and more personal way to reach an audience. Ortega knows this – just as she knows that spectators attend the Morelia Film Festival in search of new proposals, cutting-edge cinema, and the most innovative works in the world of film.

Pequeña muestra de películas que laten is the name Ortega has given the Spanish avant-garde short film section that will be screened in Morelia. The section begins with Cómo dibujar animales tristes o cuaderno de todas las cosas vivas y muertas que imaginé la noche que te fuiste para siempre by Pere Ginard and Laura Ginés. These Spanish filmmakers belong to Laboratorium, “a micro factory that combines the creation of films and experimental publications with illustration and graphic design for the press and television” and also can be accessed on the Internet (www.laboratorium.cat). Ginard and Ginés are multidisciplinary artists who use super 8 mm, films from Cinexin?? and drawings in this short. This technique allows them to make a bestiary or book of pictograms with poems by Antonio Gamoneda -- drawing poetry or writing poems with images.

    The second short is Luis Berdejo’s For(r)est in the des(s)ert, a story about extraterrestrial love. Animation, photograms, images taken from newscasts, music and a narration resembling the radiophonic This American Life combine to take it beyond this galaxy.

    Léon Siminiani’s Orígenes del marketing, made this year and lasting 6 minutes, is a pendulum that swings back and forth from laughter to reflexion of preconceived concepts and how they are manipulated by those who touch them. Siminiani studied Hispanic Philology and Film Direction at Columbia University in New York. His short Ludoterapia won the Best Short award at Europa Cinema 2007.

    The last short in the program, Unas fotos en la ciudad de Sylvia, made by veteran director José Luis Guerín, is a film about film.  In 2007, Guerín made En la ciudad de Sylvia, presenting it in Venice, but how did Sylvia come about? This new film, presented at the Morelia International Film Festival, traces how the project came to be – production notes, literary and pictorial sources, a compilation of film stills all contribute to the making of this independent short by the filmmaker from Barcelona.

    Avant-garde Spanish cinema, which doesn’t conform to any label or fit into any category, will delight audiences at the 8th Morelia International Film Festival.  This special program of experimental Spanish shorts will be shown on, a unique opportunity to experience vibrant cinema and expand the mind.