Under the theme Villages, the project will connect the island's memory and ways of life with those of other territories through cinema, knowledge, and dialogue.
This morning, the 16th edition of the Lanzarote Film Festival was presented at CIC El Almacén, with an invitation to reflect on villages: the places we inhabit, the relationships that sustain them, and the changes they undergo. Although its numerous activities will begin on November 3rd with five conferences and a debate panel in collaboration with UNED Lanzarote, its main sessions will be held between November 19th and 29th. The program will extend to relevant venues in the seven municipalities of Lanzarote and La Graciosa.
Once again, the Film Festival will bring films and filmmakers from different parts of the world to the island to share their perspectives with the public and open conversations about our present. Screenings will coexist with conferences, popular gatherings, courses, workshops, and educational and family proposals, in a program that relates cinematographic culture with the territory and citizen participation.
During the press conference, the Minister of Culture of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, Jesús Machín Tavío, highlighted: "Villages create community, they create people," emphasized the minister, who vindicated the legacy of the generations who have cared for the fields, culture, and ways of relating on the island. Machín expressed his pride in the project and in the choice of Villages as the theme for this edition, and defended the need to keep that identity alive and pass it on to future generations.
For his part, Héctor Fernández, CEO of the Lanzarote External Promotion Society (SPEL–Turismo Lanzarote), pointed out: "This project breathes something different," noted Héctor Fernández, who defended SPEL–Turismo Lanzarote's support for initiatives that highlight what differentiates the island from other destinations. Fernández highlighted the clarity of the Festival's objectives and its contribution to Lanzarote's international projection, and underlined the importance of promoting such a unique cultural project, capable of making us reflect on the future and destiny of the island of Lanzarote.
For her part, Elisabeth Cedrés, head of the Corporate Social Responsibility Department and representative of the Centers of Art, Culture, and Tourism (CACT), stated:
"We will continue to accompany, we will go hand in hand," stated Elisabeth Cedrés, head of the Corporate Social Responsibility Department of the CACT, who reaffirmed the entity's commitment to the Showcase and to the promotion of culture on the island. Cedrés highlighted the impact of the programming and expressed the special identification of the Centers with an edition that links the towns and the identity of Lanzarote.
The director of Institutional Relations of Tourism of the Canary Islands, Javier Prieto, highlighted that: "The Lanzarote Film Showcase has consolidated itself, over its 16 editions, as a benchmark event for independent creation, with a program that reaches the seven municipalities of the island and La Graciosa, bringing cinema closer to citizens, generating activity throughout the territory and promoting local talent." Prieto recalled that "Tourism of the Canary Islands sponsors events like the Showcase because they contribute to creating a top-level, diverse agenda of activities open to residents and visitors." Culture is the area to which the public company allocates the most resources through sponsorships, with more than 38.8 million euros for 597 events.
During his speech, Javier Fuentes Feo, the artistic and production director of the Lanzarote Film Showcase project and the non-profit association Tenique Cultural, explained that: "It is a local project, with a local perspective, with local vocation, but with global ambition," explained Javier Fuentes Feo, who highlighted that the Showcase has made Lanzarote "its true star," placing its territory, its people, and its culture at the center. The director pointed out that this edition will reclaim the history and ways of life of the island's towns, connecting them with the experiences of other places in the world through cinema and the memory of its inhabitants.
Five international feature films
The Official Section will bring together five international feature films that will allow us to understand different ways of understanding and representing the contemporary world. The films will be judged by a jury that will deliberate in public, one of the hallmarks of the Showcase. This open session, conceived by the Film Showcase in 2018 and which has been unique in the world until its incorporation by the Cosquín festival, Argentina, in 2024, will allow the public to hear the arguments, share differences of opinion, and get closer to the award-granting process.
The Trasfoco section will address Villages through numerous feature and short films from all eras of cinema. The films will serve as a starting point to explore how a community is built, how its memory is transmitted, and what happens when its ways of life change. The experiences of other territories will thus open new perspectives from which to look at the villages of Lanzarote.
The cinema of the archipelago will also have its space in the competitive section Cruce de Caminos: filmmakers from the Canary Islands, which will foster encounters between its creators and the public.
The program will extend beyond the theaters with proposals to learn, converse, and discover the territory. Cinematographic photography courses with Mauro Herce and sound courses with Eva Valiño and Belén López, major figures in Spanish cinema, will be added to conferences in collaboration with UNED and a popular meeting dedicated to the experiences of the island's villages among people over ninety years old, which will take place at Bodegas El Grifo.
There will also be a workshop to learn how to make rosettes with reused materials, which will unite the island's artisanal and popular tradition with new uses for materials. The honorary award will consist, once again, of a special bottle from Bodegas El Grifo, a way to highlight the essence of Lanzarote. For their part, the awards for the competitive sections will consist, once again, of pieces specially designed by Juan Brito.
The Lanzarote Film Showcase, organized by Tenique Cultural, has the financing of the Cabildo de Lanzarote and La Graciosa, the Centers of Art, Culture and Tourism, the Society for the External Promotion of Lanzarote through its product brand Lanzarote Film Commission; with the sponsorship of the Government of the Canary Islands through the Canary Institute of Cultural Development (Canary Islands Film) and Promotur (Canary Islands Latitude of Life), and of the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts, the Government of Spain through the Ministry of Culture.
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