07 · 17 · 17

FICM presents the image for its fifteenth edition!

The Morelia International Film Festival (FICM) dresses to the nines in its fifteenth anniversary with an image that alludes to the traditional quinceañera party: a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood.

In this year, in addition to celebrating the talents of national and international cinematography, FICM commemorates the festival's history. Rodrigo Toledo, the creative mind behind the festival's image since its inception, has created a design which invites us to join in this party, remember the past, and look forward with excitement to the FICM’s future.

In an interview, Rodrigo Toledo gives us details on the design and the road towards it.

Why did you decide to take the quinceañera path for this image?

The interpretation is straightforward and without excuses: it is a fifteen-year party. I decided to take that road because the fifteen-birthday celebration represents a kind of special Mexican social festivity. In addition, year after year, the image of the festival aims to be something very cheerful, positive, optimistic. The result, in this case, was a very innocent and, indeed, cheerful image.

In this sense, did the playful character of the Mexican party influence the choice of colors?

The palette of colors responds to the two meanings I mentioned: both in the "Mexican" sense—in quotation marks—and in the sense of trying to have something very cheerful and very positive. The colors that make up the image are certainly very basic—colors like ones on paper decorations that you would see hanging at a quinceañera party.

What was the process of constructing the image like?

It was weird. After all, it's a very simple image, but deciding to address it from the angle of the quinceañera party made me take a long journey. At first, what I wanted to do was something that played a little more with the themes of the celebrations and details associated with the traditional quinceañera: cheesy and pastel-colored. I even went to an exhibition, "Expo Mis Quince", at the World Trade Center in Mexico City, to see the stuff they had there. Although I wanted to capture the cheesy and pastel-colored essence I'm talking about, I didn't succeed. Everything I came up with didn't quite go where I wanted. So, I took another direction. I simply decided to keep the subject and make it a simpler illustration.

All the previous images have had a slightly retro tone in their graphic conception. This image, if one can speak of a similar trend, was inspired, very indirectly, by illustrations by Mexican artists from many years ago, particularly Miguel Covarrubias.

After creating so many images of the FICM, have you found yourself without ideas? How do you manage to generate fresh proposals for a theme that you have been working on for so many years?

Surely, it is always about reinterpreting the same theme, but there is always something new and a different moment to think about. Fortunately, ideas start making a line and queueing, there are already new ideas for the sixteenth edition's image. It becomes an interesting exercise in reinterpretation and creativity.

Without further ado, here’s the poster for the fifteenth FICM:

The next big announcement for the fifteenth FICM will be early on August 25, when the films in competition on the Official Selection will be revealed. Stay tuned!