The VI Lanzarote Film Festival arrives at the El Almacén Cultural Innovation Center with the screening of the Spanish-Moroccan co-production "Mimosas", on November 24, and will feature the presence of its film director, Oliver Max. This sixth edition, which will last for 9 days, is the most "varied" and the "best" of all those designed so far, according to the programmer of the exhibition, Marco Arrocha.
Among other things, he explained that for the first time, the Exhibition takes an "ambitious leap" and proposes an Official Competition Section, with "nine films without commercial distribution in Spain", an example "of the current state of film creation", with works by filmmakers "unknown" but "established" such as the Austrian documentarian Nikolaus Geyrhalter or the Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing.
The jury of the Official Competition Section will be made up of the filmmaker Chema García Ibarra, "a master of cinema made with very few resources"; the film critic Andrea Franco (Cinentransit.com) and the Lanzarote actress and playwright Yuri Fontes.
On the other hand, the Panorama section will bring together "the best harvest of films of 2016", with titles such as the animated work Ma vie de courgette, the dramatic comedy Toni Erdmann or the most "heterodox Spanish cinema" such as La ciudad del trabajo, by Guillermo G. Peydró. Outside of El Almacén, the Special Sessions will be screened: I, Daniel Blake, by Ken Loach, at the Teatro de Tías; and Fuoccoamare, a documentary about the island of Lampedusa and the drama of the refugees, filmed by Gianfranco Rossi, which will be screened at the Teatro de San Bartolomé.
Also, the existence of a Youth Jury made up of film lovers between 16 and 20 years old is presented as a novelty, who will choose the best youth film of the exhibition. This year's workshop will be dedicated to soligraphy, an experimental photographic technique, and will teach the manufacture of handmade photo cameras, made with soft drink cans.
The program also includes three round tables: one in which the filmmakers Federica Di Giacomo, Alba González de Molina and Rita Azevedo will participate. "More than half of our films are signed by women, something natural, we have not established quotas or anything like that; but we must remember that cinema is dominated by the male world", explained Arrocha. "Another of the meetings will be dedicated to Canarian cinema and the last one, to other forms of production (the marginal ones, those that run along paths parallel to the official ones)", he stated.
The Film Festival will conclude on Saturday, December 3 with Gimme danger, by Jim Jarmusch, "a tribute to that programming of the Buñuel Room of the 80s", which generated a generation of alternative cinema lovers among whom are the team of programmers of the current Exhibition. "Having El Almacén as its headquarters is a dream we have been longing for for years. Its new name —cultural innovation center— fits like a glove to the Exhibition, to cinema as an artistic expression and not as an object of consumption", declared the programmer. "We became fond of that cinema in 1984 in the Buñuel Room and now it will be exciting to step on it as programmers".
The president of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, Pedro San Ginés, has stressed that the Exhibition, which has the first Island Corporation as a sponsoring institution, has received this year "a well-deserved institutional support, greater than in previous years", words that have also been repeated by the organizer of the Exhibition, pointing out that the Culture area has "redoubled" its efforts. "We are proud to be part of the new impetus that cultural life has taken in Lanzarote", he added.
For his part, the Minister of Culture of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, Óscar Pérez, has detailed one of the main sections of the Exhibition: Canary Islands, crossroads of views, which will bring together works by filmmakers David Pantaleón and Alba González de Molina (Gran Canaria), the documentarian Miguel G.Morales (Tenerife), Sergio Erro (from Madrid based in Lanzarote) and Samuel Delgado and Helena Girón who present a short film awarded at the Toronto and New York festivals. The objective of the 2016 Exhibition is that "the people of Lanzarote can feel proud of a cinema that is not usual, but is necessary; we want to be a forum for reflection, a moment to stop in the middle of this maelstrom where we are bombarded with images everywhere and think about where we are going", he pointed out.
On the other hand, although most of the films will continue to be European, the Exhibition opens "to all the cinema in the world", programming Argentine, Chilean, Lebanese or Chinese works. "We wanted to take a risky leap to define our own personality: to bring films that are our own bets, which are practically unknown in Spain".
The mayor of Arrecife, Eva de Anta, has also had words for the Exhibition, recognizing that she feels a "special affection" for the event, since it designs a cultural offer "of quality, not elitist", very "didactic" and that bets "for cultural diversity", "young people" and "citizen participation".
