Film Festival Reports

Film Festival Reports

MUTA 2017: DALIBOR BARIC FOCUS

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Dalibor Baric’s experimental animation cinema Works as a specters’ compartment: faceless creatures at the margin of the representation of reality, figures recreated by the process of découpé (or decollage, as mentioned by Antoni Pinent in his visit to Lima), manifestations of this “fetishization” of the uncanny valley1. Since Spectres of Veronica (2011) to The Horror of Dracula (2010), these characters make the visual interpretation restless; displace the comfort of the habitual to transform themselves in new meanings, new readings, new points of departure.

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Film Festival Reports

MUTA 2017: PETER LICHTER FOCUS

By Mónica Delgado

In less of ten years of work, Lichter has shown versatility and a longing for the experimentation of different forms of appropriation, especially from the Super 8, achieving the materialization of personal universes that traverse the premises of some finished objects to transform them in new ways of showing the intimate or the familiar.

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Film Festival Reports

MUTA 2017: ANTONI PINENT PROGRAM

By Mónica Delgado

Something that is clear after watching Pinent’s cinema in panoramic view, is his fortunate perseverance in the experimentation of different editing techniques, not only from the appropriation, but also the subversion of the discourses from the materiality that celluloid allows in its diverse formats, from Super 8 to 35mm, or from video in Betacam. A cinema that comes from old and known things, which are transformed in Pinent’s hands to become vital and powerful.

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Film Festival Reports

IL CINEMA RITROVATO 2017: THE ART OF DECAY, THE PERSISTENCE OF FILM

By Tara Judah

Introducing Decasia (2002) at Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bill Morrison talked about his requests for access for use of decaying nitrate film. Not all archives were forthcoming with the material. Perhaps it is the persistence of imperfection that breeds protective behaviour in archivists. But, what Morrison affected, once access was granted, is a glorious symphony of the persistence of history.

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Film Festival Reports

IL CINEMA RITROVATO 2017: FISHING FOR GOD

By Tara Judah

The most memorable movies aren’t always the best, but there’s something about an earnest stinker that can make the heart swell. Featured in the festival’s Universal Pictures: the Laemmle Junior Years strand, Tay Garnett’s Destination Unknown (1933) is this year’s knock-out rediscovery.

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Film Festival Reports

IL CINEMA RITROVATO 2017: IN FAVOUR OF EXPERIENCE

By Tara Judah

Meanwhile, in Bologna, at the 31st edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato, something else is taking shape. The festival brings both popular titles and niche cinema out of the archives from far corners of the globe and back onto big screens, but it doesn’t pander to a culture of FOMO – there are few ‘new’ films to see here.

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Film Festival Reports

OLHAR DE CINEMA 2017: A YANGZÉ LANDSCAPE, LAND VESSELS

By Mónica Delgado

A Yangtze Landscape is a film that can be seen in conversation with Land Vessels (Navíos de Tierra), also presented in Olhar de Cinema, a film that responds to an entire maritime imaginary in diverse films that have flooded the festival scene and independent cinema.

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