10 · 05 · 07

President Felipe Calderón inaugurated the 5th Morelia International Film Festival

Clara Sánchez/Translated by Vicente Castañar

Last night President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa inaugurated the 5th Morelia International Film Festival after giving a speech in which he reiterated his administration’s commitment to guarantee the continuity of the support mechanisms that have enabled the growth of the national film industry.
‘My administration will endeavor -be it from the public or the private sector- to attract more investment for the production, distribution and exhibition of Mexican cinema. We will support projects like this festival, because it represents a value and a gathering point for our cinema, featuring international projects and a promotional launch platform for new talents. Our filmmakers have many things to say, show and express yet. This festival will provide them the space to speak up with full freedom and creativity’.
To the opening ceremony –also presided by Alejandro Ramírez, the Festival’s Chairman, Mr. Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, Mayor of the state of Michoacán and Elisa Miller, winner of the Palm d’Or in Cannes- was attended by filmmakers Bernard Tavernier and Héctor Babenco.
Ramírez said that all through these five years the aim of the Morelia Film Festival has been fulfilled by promoting a space for the diffusion of the Mexican short film and documentary, as well as the opportunity to exhibit them in other film festivals around the world.
‘On the first four editions we exhibited over 170 short films and almost 70 documentaries. This year 700 films applied, out of which 45 short films, 16 documentaries, 8 Michoacán-made films –and for the first time- 6 full-length films were chosen’.
Ramírez said that this year’s festival will pay homage to film industry personalities like Stephen Fears, winner of three Oscars; Bernard Tavernier, who presided the Cannes jury this year, and Arthur Penn, of Bonnie and Clyde fame.
He also mentioned that among the special guests will be Héctor Babenco, Gael García Bernal Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, and Carlos Reygadas.
Before President Calderón addressed the audience, Elisa Miller, winner of the Palm d’Or for her film watching it Rain, best Short Film in last year’s Morelia Film Festival, expressed her wish that in Mexico not only production will be supported, but also distribution and exhibition of Mexican cinema ‘so that Mexico watches what Mexican filmmakers are doing.’
Miller, who thanked the Festival for working as a launch platform for her film Watching it Rain, expressed her fear that the CCC, film school where she is a student, may disappear: ‘we are afraid it might one day disappear, as the federal government suggested in 2003. Both students and alumni of this center have demonstrated with international con awards that the CCC is a breeding ground. Long live the CCC, long live the film schools’.
President Calderón addressed this fear as follows: ‘My administration will by all means continue to strengthen those public institutions meant to support the filmmaking industry like the CCC, the Cineteca Nacional , IMCINE and Estudios Churubusco.”
Archeologist Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, Mayor of the state of Michoacán, who expressed his pride for the fact that his administration ‘supported the creation, realization and consolidation of the Morelia Film Festival’, said he wished the Festival a long and healthy life: ‘we are certain this new tradition is already a part of the city’s history, which adopts it every fall in such a way that we will continue relishing it for many years to come’.
To close the ceremony, the short film Watching it Rain was shown, followed by the extraordinary inaugural full-length film The Orphanage, a horror film directed by Jua