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Q&A

Eng

ANTONI PINENT: “CELLULOID PRODUCES PHYSIOLOGICAL SENSATIONS THAT DIGITAL DOES NOT CONTAIN”

By José Sarmiento and Mónica Delgado

Almost at the end of last year, Spanish filmmaker, curator and teacher, currently based in Los Angeles, Antoni Pinent premiered his new work “i STiLL BELiEVE iN CELLULOiD” [aka ‘film beyond film’] or iSBiC (2020), a series of short films (or capsules as he calls them) as part of a multimedia project that reflects on the practice and validity of experimental cinema, art and celluloid as a subject.

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Q&A

SANDRA LUZ LÓPEZ BARROSO: “MY FILM HAS A COMPASS: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ABLE TO SAY GOODBYE”

By Mónica Delgado

Since her final project, Son de Artesa (2006-2007), Mexican filmmaker Sandra Luz López Barroso showed her interest in reflecting personal and social dynamics within the Afro-descendant communities in her country. A few days ago, she won the award for best film in the Now Mexico section at Ficunam Film Festival competition, with her first feature film El Compromiso de las sombras, along with Los fundadores, by Diego Hernández. In this first film, she returns to the registry of a territory that she has known for more than fifteen years, but through Lizbeth, a trans woman who directs the funeral rituals of several communities in the Costa Chica, an area of Afro-Mexican towns between the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca.

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Eng

MYTHS IN MOTION: AN INTERVIEW WITH JULIEN FARAUT

By Alonso Aguilar

Intercutting between sharp body movements and intense dramatic sights, French filmmaker Julien Faraut has retooled the sports documentary format to fit his own pursuits. For him, the subjects of his films aren’t just about their unmatched prowess and unthinkable triumphs, but more so a reflection of their own iconography. We see them through the lens of cinematic time. Their actions are repurposed, reframed and recontextualized, while their narratives leave behind the restrictive realms of representation in favor of the limitless possibilities of true expression.

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Q&A

BERLINALE 2021: PABLO ÁLVAREZ-MESA ABOUT HIS FILM “BICENTENARIO”

By Mónica Delgado

Colombian Pablo Álvarez-Mesa is one of the figures of contemporary documentary filmmaking in his country. With a work expanded from the hybridity of documentary and non-fiction, Álvarez-Mesa presented his film Bicentenario at the virtual edition of Forum Expanded at the Berlin International Film Festival. His films have been seen on different occasions at festivals such as IFFR, Visions du Reél and Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal. He has a Master’s in Film Production from Concordia University and experience as a director, cameraman, and editor. Among his works we have Presidio Modelo (2009), Jelena’s Song (2010) and La Pesca (2017).

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Q&A

GIANFRANCO ROSI: “DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING MUST BE SOMETHING MORE EMOTIONAL”

By Malena Martínez Cabrera

“Choose the precise framing for each scene”, with this premise the Italian-American filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi concentrates the effort of his documentary cinematographic work, since it is from these frames that he will tell his entire story. In Notturno (Italy, France, Germany, 2020), Gianfranco Rosi chooses the people who reflect all the intensity of the moment, predicts the best moment of the day, the necessary light, the precise corner where the camera will be located. Both the image and the sound register fall into his own hands, as Rosi works as a one-man-crew.

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desistfilm

MAYA DA-RIN: “WE NEED TO START QUESTIONING THE EUROCENTRIC FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE WE HAVE INHERITED”

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa and Mónica Delgado

Winner of the FIPRESCI prize at Locarno 2019 with A Febre, brazilian filmmaker Maya Da-Rin has been exploring different aspects of Latin American identity towards post-colonial influence, and the intimate dynamics of fluid borders between different countries in the region. We spoke to her about her movement inside different genres and formats (installation/documentary/fiction), her ideas on post-colonialism and identity, and the reality of the Bolsonaro Regime in Brazil.

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Q&A

MANUEL CORREA: “MY WORK IS ABOUT EXPANDING THE POSSIBILITY OF TRUTH”

By Tomáš Hudák

Manuel Correa’s The Shape of Now is a documentary essay about reconciliation after the sixty-year Colombian civil war. However, with philosophers and neuroscientists among the main characters, the film is not so much about the war itself; it is rather a case study of different historical narratives and their co-existence, of possibility of multiple truths, and how the past is constructed.

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Berlinale

BERLINALE 2020 INTERVIEW: CRISTINA NORD, FORUM DIRECTOR

By Mónica Delgado

In the middle of all her tasks in this edition of Berlinale, curator Cristina Nord, took some minutes to talk with Desistfilm about his new role directing Berlinale Forum, about the 50 years of this showcase, and on some topics of cinephile concern, parity and programming.

Cristina Nord was an editor of the cultural section of the taz. die tageszeitung newspaper in Berlin until 2015. A teacher in Freie Uniersität Berlin, and programmer in Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Duisburger Filmwoche, she was responsible for the cultural southeast Europe program in Brussels Goethe-Institut and realized different investigations about literature and cinema.

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