10 · 05 · 08

Diego Luna suggests taking back the streets

Clara Sánchez/Translated by Caroline MacKinnon

[imagen]“Now more than ever we have to take over the public plazas to spread culture, we all need one another, so we don’t become alienated. Thank you for being here. This year is four times more important,” said Diego Luna at a conference to present the 4th Ambulante Documentary Film Festival. Also in attendance, were Gael García Bernal; Ambulante director, Elena Fortes; general producer and coordinator of distribution for Ambulante, Roxanne Sayegh; and members of the Ambulante advisory board. Director general of the FICM Daniela Michel, Alejandro Ramírez, president of the FICM; and vice president of the FICM, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas were also there.

Gael García Bernal added “the worst that we can do is ignore what has happened, we thought that there was a line that separated those of us in civil society from this type of attack, but that is not the case. We need to be conscious that this is the place in which we live. We cannot learn to get used to these levels of violence.

Elena Fortés shared her hopes that Ambulante needs to be seen as more than just a documentary festival, but it now also has parallel activities that look at different aspects of making documentaries, from production and distribution to exhibition. “This year, for example, we are going to have a basic documentary director’s workshop led by Carlos Taibo. It will be a weeklong workshop and go to different cities, including Tijuana, Querétaro, Oaxaca and Guadalajara. In a response to the lack of schools, we are going to have speakers from different areas of production.”

The 6th FICM Ambulante will present two documentaries, James Marsh’s Man on Wire and Tung Chang’s Up the Yangtze. The films that received the Gucci Ambulante grant will also be shown in the FICM’s Ambulante program - Los que se quedan directed by Juan Carlos Rulfo will be shown in the Cinema Without Borders section, and Trazando Aleida directed by Christiane Burkhard.

“With Lucía Gajá’s film Mi vida adentro, winner of the Best Documentary in the fifth FICM, we have had an intense time. Its commercial debut will be in November. With Los que se quedan, we will do the same thing.”

[imagen]The fourth edition of Ambulante will take place from February 6 to April 9 in 16 cities: Mexico City, Metepec, Cuernavaca, Morelia, Guadalajara, San Luis Potosí, Tijuana, Monterrey, Puebla, León, Xalapa, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mérida, Cancún, Oaxaca and Querétaro.

Fortes said that Ambulante has also shown in other countries, thanks to invitations from Cuba, Norway, the United Kingdom, Spain and Argentina. This year the festival will also go to Canada, Sweden, Morocco and Greece.

“When we received these invitations, we wanted them to be for the directors and that they would also receive some money for showing there.”

Daniela Michel, Alejandro Ramírez and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Batel thanked the Ambulante festival for its support and for using the FICM as a platform to announce their upcoming edition.

“You have always been with us, but this year, more than ever, we appreciate that you are able to be by our side,” said Daniela Michel.