A cinema of the real cannot avoid, these days, two words that are conjugated in the feminine: women and war. In the antipodes of each other, the two connect both with current affairs and with issues that transcend the urgent and the thankless. Hence the XV edition of the Festival MiradasDocwhich takes off today in Guía de Isora, Tenerife (Canary Islands), pays great attention to women and their natural ability to see wars from a human perspective and/or appease them, while dedicating their most exhaustive observations to conflicts, with distant visions of extreme warmongering.
The auditorium of the municipality of Guía de Isora, on the slopes of Mount Teide, raises the curtain to project some 40 films –including 12 premieres– from 32 countries, which recount great migrations or make small portraits of the daily life of ordinary people, by authors from various continents, especially Africa and Latin America. At the same time, an audiovisual market is being developed which, year after year, is consolidated as a geographical and stylistic bridge between the southerners, as well as a space for technical training and a playful and educational proposal for young moviegoers. The final ceremony of this edition, which is once again face-to-face in the film part, will take place on March 12.
At the festival, 40 films from 32 countries can be seen, which tell of great migrations or make small portraits of the daily life of authors from Africa and Latin America
In the spirit of the encounter between the mountain peaks and the immense ocean, artistic risk is inscribed, according to its organizers. Indeed, non-fiction does not have to be a mere informative report, as evidenced by trajectories such as that of the Chilean Patricio Guzmán, one of the contemporary filmmakers who best expresses that desire for documentary cinema with the signature and sensitivity of an author. In fact, Guzmán participated in the first edition of the festival, in 2006, and, since then, more than 1,000 films have been programmed in Guía de Isora that tried to widen that trail of art and truth.
To confirm this, artists such as Basilio Martín Patino, Abbas Kiarostami, Joaquín Jordá, David Bradbury, José Luis Guerín, Avi Mograbi, Montxo Armendáriz, Isabel Coixet, Luis Ospina or Gianfranco Rosi passed by. For this reason, the director of the contest, David Baute, is grateful in the presentation of this edition: “Hundreds of directors have held intimate and creative meetings with our public, and a copious group of artistic and technical professionals from the documentary cinema have gifted us with their knowledge. We appreciate your perseverance and responsibility in the production of these films, which move between reflection and risk, revealing the nerve of contemporary international cinema.”
In reality contest
In the section dedicated to international feature films there are 10 films that are competing. Among them, the works of filmmakers stand out, such as the Paraguayan director Arami Ullón, who presents hardly the sun; the Mexican Natalia Almada (users); Uruguayan director Alicia Cano Menoni (Bosch); Joana Oliveira, who from Brazil brings Kevin; Russian documentary filmmaker Svetlana Rodina, who co-directs Ostrov-Lost Islandand the renowned director of Niger Aicha Macky, with Zinder. The rest of the lengths in competition are: the zero optionby Marcel Beltrán (Cuba); Bukolikaby Karol Pałka (Poland); Brotherhoodby Francesco Montagner (Czech Republic and Italy) and what’s left in the wayby Jakob Krese and Danilo do Carmo (Mexico, Brazil and Germany).
Some of the films in competition talk about what can still be rescued from a house, despite the paths that took us away, or the uprooting and new survivals. For example, in the Paraguayan Chaco, Arami Ullón accompanies a member of the Ayoreo people to recover songs and testimonies of his people, dispossessed by religious missionaries of their home in the jungle, several decades ago. The landscape is more diverse, but close in the round trip between Bosco, Italy, and Salto, Uruguay, proposed by Alicia Cano Menoni. Also in KevinJoana Oliveira shortens distances between continents, when she herself goes to Uganda to visit her fellow student in Germany 20 years ago.
In Russia, Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop move to the island of Ostrov, in the Caspian Sea, where the inhabitants have been abandoned by the state, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and survive thanks to poaching. For its part, in ZinderAicha Macky –director of the prodigious a tree without fruit– lets us back into the social debates of one of the poorest countries in the world, Niger; in this case, to the chaos of a neighborhood where lepers were once confined and where other outcasts now live, paradoxically doomed to the cult of the body and violence.
In the contest you can also see a competitive section of international short films and a selection of debut films. Within this last sample, the premieres of trenchesby the French journalist Loup Bureau, about the fighting in Donbas between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatist troops, and Yoon, by the Portuguese Pedro Figueiredo Neto and Ricardo Falcão, who embark on a long journey overland with the Senegalese emigrant Mbaye Sow. A section on Spanish cinema and other awards for projects in development are also planned. In addition, a new section is inaugurated, called Cinematheque Pedro Zerolo Foundation.
The juries of the national and international short and feature film competitions are made up of José F. Rodríguez, programmer of the Tribeca Film Festival; Mohamed Saïd Ouma, programmer of the International African Film Festival of Africa and the Islands (FIFAI), in La Réunion; Tanya Valette, teacher at the San Antonio de Los Baños film school in Cuba and Chavón, in the Dominican Republic, and Joana de Sousa, DocLisboa programmer, among others.
MiradasDoc, with the support of the Government of the Canary Islands and together with other institutions, offers internships in television studios for primary and secondary school students, as well as criticism and documentary photography workshops
As for the MiradasDoc Market, the market that seeks to open international paths for emerging filmmakers, this year it will take place in an online version. However, its expansion is a fact thanks to the incorporation of financing funds from the most important festivals in the world: those of Sundance and Visions du Reel, those of the Berlinale, the Hot Docs Blue Ice Fund of Canada, the Ford Foundation of the USA and that ofNew York Times. These foundations will be informed of the selected projects from the Afrolatam, DocSur and Anidoc Sur laboratories. Fortunately, Debut Wip, for films in the advanced stage of editing, will be held in person.
In the field of training, MiradasDoc, with the support of the Canary Islands government and together with other institutions, offers internships in television studios for primary and secondary school students, as well as workshops on criticism, project development, documentary photography, in addition to recovery of oral tradition for citizens of the island of Tenerife. Likewise, the proceeds from the sale of tickets to the screenings (which from this year will cost one euro) will go to an audiovisual training program in the town of Kanifing, in Gambia.
Women who tell wars
The festival will pay tribute to two women warriors in their respective fields: on the one hand, the British-French filmmaker Claire Simon will be presented with the Mirada Personal award and, on the other, the Spanish journalist Teresa Aranguren will be awarded the Mirada Encendida award. . Simon (Gare du Nord, Mimi) is a filmmaker who has dedicated her life to registering social causes and teaching cinema, without losing sight of the feminist struggle within the profession: she is a member of the 50/50 collective, which aims to promote gender equality and diversity in the audio-visual industry.
The festival will pay tribute to two women: the British-French filmmaker Claire Simon will receive the Mirada Personal award and the Spanish journalist Teresa Aranguren the Mirada Encendida award
For her part, Teresa Aranguren – a reporter who covered the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf crisis, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Balkans – will hold a meeting this Sunday with the public to the Guía de Isora auditorium (the talk can also be seen later on the TV channel Youtube of MiradasDoc) to talk about the coverage of armed conflicts and, in particular, the role and perspective of female correspondents in war scenes.
Meanwhile, for Tuesday, March 8, International Women’s Day, a colloquium has been prepared that will be animated by Claire Simon, Tatiana Mazú (winner of the first prize at MiradasDoc 2021) and the actress and activist Carla Antonelliwhich will also take place in the municipal auditorium.
The complete program of the festival is available here and the meetings and ceremonies can be followed in live broadcasts, through the page of Facebook by MiradasDoc.
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