email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

FESTIVALS Italy

The Spanish film “movida” comes to Viareggio

by 

All eyes were on Spain this year at the 24th edition of EuropaCinema (May 2-6), which ended in Viareggio (Italy) with Bigas Luna’s Yo soy la Juani [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
. The international festival of European cinema, presided over by Luciana Castellina and directed by Felice Laudadio, changed its formula this year, opting from now on to focus on films from a single country of the European Community.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

After having explored Spanish cinema, presenting new films to both audiences and Italian distributors (the event in Viareggio is followed by a showcase at Rome’s Casa del Cinema), next year EuropaCinema 2008 (April 15-19) will spotlight German cinema, both recent and from the 1970s. The year after that has already been reserved for Denmark.

“The festival has undergone a revolutionary change, ahead of the times,” said the director at the inauguration. “The first to look at the broad and underrated European panorama when it was founded with the collaboration of Federico Fellini, it now looks to the future, changing form and structure, but not spirit”.

To Laudadio, it seemed natural to begin “with one of the most illustrious, renewed and fertile industries: Spain,” reminding all that one of the filmmakers first celebrated by EuropaCinema was Pedro Almodovar. The Spanish “maestro’s” All About My Mother was screened, in celebration of one of his favourite actresses, Marisa Paredes, who received the Premio Fellini 8½ Platinum Award, and who at the event’s first film lesson spoke of a long and still very active career (in 2005 she starred in the commercial hit Queens [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
as well as arthouse film Espelho Mágico by Manoel de Oliveira).

The other great dame of Spanish cinema to receive an award was Angela Molina, whose extroverted presence enthused audiences. Molina is also the star of the 38 year-old Juan Carlos Falcón’s first feature film La caja, which furthermore won the Audience Award (the only competition prize given out at the recently restructured festival). The debut film on death, eros and noir humour owes its charm to the wonderful Molina, who is first aged and run-down as the wife of the loathsome, deceased Don Lucio, then as the reinvigorated widow who, having “parked” the body and coffin at her neighbour Isabel’s, can finally know life and love.

An entertaining and calibrated tragicomedy set in the Canary Islands, the film is symbolic of the renewed spirit of a festival that has set its sights on young artists such as Rodrigo Cortés (Concursante [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
), Mario Iglesias ( De bares [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
), Victor Garcia Leon (Vete de mi), Pablo Malo ( La sombra de nadie) and Maria Ripoll (Tu vida en 65’), all of whom who were present in Viareggio.

Even veteran director Luna has offered his own profound, generational change in this cinematic “movida” with Yo soy la Juani, updating his expressive registers with youthful rhythms, rapid-fire editing, techno and hip hop music and unbecomingly contemporary pre-adults.

Yet the “old guard” of filmmakers, represented by Basilio Martin Patino and Manuel Gutiérrez Aragon, also kept historical memory alive, speaking with Castelina of the bygone era of censorship and how directors used to evade Francoism in Spain.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy