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Image: Sergio Betancort
The Insular Theater of Lanzarote hosted last night, Friday, April 19, a small party to honor cinema and the professionals who work in its industry. A closing gala with performance, music, and a total full house of the Lanzarote Theater's capacity.
With the opening of doors at 8:00 p.m., the soundtrack session began by Marilyn Chacón. The DJ displayed her pin-up silhouette while cinematic music played, creating an atmosphere and transporting the audience to the 20s and other decades of glamour and tropicalism. The public took their seats in the 588 seats of the venue, which registered a full capacity, with invitations sold out since the morning.
The gala began with an audiovisual montage with images of the most acclaimed classics of black and white cinema (Metropolis, by Fritz Lang, the expressionist Nosferatu by F.W. Murnau, or Psycho by Alfred Hithcock, among many others).
With the universal scene of a Charles Chaplin embodying an Adolf Hitler who played with the globe and its inhabitants (The Great Dictator), a group of dancers entered the scene, who starred in a performance of projected shadows, to the rhythm of the images, which the public liked very much. An original tribute to the Seventh Art directed by Acerina H. Toledo and Esteban Cedrés, and staged by the dancers Keyla Hernández, Elena Larroca and Rayco J. Machado.
This thirteenth edition of the Lanzarote International Film Festival has been organized by the Cabildo de Lanzarote and Fisme Producciones, and has had the support of the Art, Culture and Tourism Centers of Lanzarote, the Tourism Board, the Arrecife City Council, the Government of the Canary Islands, Arrecife Gran Hotel, CICAR, Bodegas El Grifo, Lanzarote Natural, Casa África and the town halls of Teguise and Yaiza.
The director of the Festival, Ismael Curbelo, made some historical notes to place us in the early beginnings of cinema in Lanzarote. The Lumiere brothers premiered their invention in Paris in 1895, and only eight years later, cinema arrived in Lanzarote with a first screening documented by historians Falero and Montelongo in 1903, in the old Sociedad Democracia.
"A national media outlet called us to ask why the Lanzarote Festival was sounding so much, with the number of small Festivals there are in Spain. We replied that the only secret was in the public, which is very demanding," Curbelo stressed. "The demand is the way for this to continue to move forward," stressed the director of the contest.
The president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, spoke in second place and analyzed the keys to the success of the Festival. "It is not easy to have a cast of artists of the category that this Festival has had. It is not easy for the public to fill this room. The key, I think, is to have a lot of love for work and a lot of credibility, and the director, Ismael Curbelo, and Fisme Producciones have it." San Ginés ended with a proposal for 2014: "If you respond, I assure you that Ismael will also do it and that the institutions will support it."
Winning Shorts
Víctor González, professor at the Nuestra Señora de los Volcanes Special Education Center, collected the award for Best School Short for the short film Los sonidos del agua, a documentary starring the students of the center in which it is shown how the teaching staff uses adapted systems (gelification of water) so that students with disabilities drink without difficulty, or how water is a relaxing and stimulating therapy for them.
"With the water cycle as a common thread, we wanted to tell the day-to-day life in the special education center, to contribute to the integration and normalization of people with disabilities. So that we see them as the future, and not as a problem," explained the professor at the center. The recording experience was very positive for the students.
The German filmmaker Britta Wandaogo collected the Award for Best Documentary Short of the night very excited and surprised: Crocodiles without saddles. "I am very glad that the short has come this far. With this story I wanted to tell how complicated it is sometimes for a child to grow up between two cultures and not know which roots to be proud of," she explained.
La boda, perhaps the most applauded short of the night, took the Award for Best National Short, presented by the deputy mayor of Arrecife, José Montelongo. The filmmaker Marina Seresesky collected the award from the Councilor for Education and Culture of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, Emma Cabrera. "Culture is being battered, it is wonderful to see that the public and institutions respond in this Festival. I would tell you to continue like this, to continue going to the cinema and continue supporting it, because you are supporting the future," she said. The reference to the "unique" Lanzarote landscape could not be missing. "I would love to shoot here. I don't know if I'll do it as well as Almodóvar, but I would love to."
The night headed for its final stretch with the screening of La última caravana and the presentation of the award for Best International Short, by the president of the Cabildo to its director Foued Mansour who received the most fun applause of the night for a very nice and fresh speech, written and pronounced in Spanish. "I am living a great moment here today. I am very glad that this short has crossed the ocean, because it deals with a universal theme. Thank you all and the organization for inviting me. The landscape of this island is sublime."
Both the Special Mentions in the category of documentary shorts (Alfombra roja, by Iosu López and Manuel Fernández; Lo indecible, by Carolina Astudillo, and Reality 2.0. by Víctor Orozco) and the Audience Awards (La estrategia de Madame Bretó, by Zoraida Roselló; Ngutu, by Daniel Valledor and Felipe del Olmo; and Perfetto, by Corrado Ravazzini), received unanimous applause from the spectators.
The gala ended with some very applauded claims: "that the cinematographic offer of Lanzarote is more diverse, that the necessary Sala Buñuel reopens, that cinema ceases to be considered a frivolity and is recognized as an important part of the culture that makes us people with more criteria and sensitivity, and that the institutions unconditionally support cinema as an educational tool that builds our future."
The band Ciempiés ni cabeza put the finishing touch, with three songs, to a gala as musical as it was vindictive.