← Back

• The Bueu International Film Festival closes its seventeenth edition with the day dedicated to girls and boys
• A “stop motion” workshop, a concert by Dani Barreiro and Kids, and a screening session of short films for family audiences, special programming for the little ones in a day that started with the Galician Schools Gala

21.09.24 The seventeenth edition of the Bueu International Film Festival closed this Saturday. With movies, of course. Those of the Minific, the program of activities dedicated each year to children. The session of shorts for family audiences, scheduled for 6:30 p.m., was the last of the activities of the XVII FICBUEU. Earlier, girls and boys could take part in a stop motion workshop. And dance and have fun with the music of Dani Barreiro and Kids. The day began with the Galician Schools Gala, dedicated to the teams responsible for the short films made by schools and which participated, and competed, in the festival.

The FICBUEU has among its objectives the promotion of culture through cinema, and the same one that works to promote and spread creativity and film production in its environment, wants to help build new audiences. Also in childhood.

And the children’s audience responded in the same way as the adult audience did between September 6 and 15, during the screenings and activities scheduled around the “Official Section” of the competition: they attended massively, significantly increasing participation compared to last year and barely leaving seats free to enjoy the films at the Centro Social do Mar.

The award ceremony for the winning short films of the Galician Schools Section served to inaugurate, at 11 a.m., the last day of the FICBUEU. It was led by the writer and editor Olalla González, and featured the participation of plastic artist Marc Taeger: he took care of the visual support of the event by drawing and live animation.

Then the workshop, the concert, and the screenings would come. And then the curtain came down on the 2024 edition of the Bueu International Film Festival. The FICBUEU team is already working on the next edition of the competition. The number eighteen. The one of majority age.

← Back

Tomorrow the Festival will hold a reading of his poem “A Requiem for the XXth Century”, chosen by his son, and will dedicate to the Lithuanian artist its fifth Notebook and its “Retrospective”, which celebrates his career through nine of his films.

13.09.24. BUEU. This Sunday, September 15, is Poetry Day, created by the Georges Pompidou National Centre for Art and Culture in Paris. The Lithuanian-born poet and director Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) will be the person being honoured this year. Mekas is considered the founder of American avant-garde and experimental cinema. FICBUEU joins an event in which thirty artistic and cultural institutions from cities around the world also participate: from the French capital to New York or Los Angeles, passing through Vilnius, London, Porto, Milan, Stockholm, Seoul, Tokyo or Tehran. In Spain, only the Bueu International Film Festival is on that list. In fact, FICBUEU will be the first to join the international tribute, tomorrow Saturday, with its particular tribute to this pioneering creator and guardian of free and independent cinema that inspired masters such as Martin Scorsese or Jim Jarmusch.

Cinema and literature

In addition to being the guiding thread in this edition of the festival’s visual style, the FICBUEU dedicates its “Retrospective” section to Jonas Mekas with the aim of bringing his figure and his work closer to its public, where his cinema becomes literature and with which he offers a reflection on the nature of existence and the human condition. The 9 short films selected from his filmography will be shown tomorrow, at 5:00 p.m. But before that, joining the Poetry Day organized by the Pompidou, there will be a reading of one of the poet and filmmaker’s favorite poems, A Requiem for the XXth Century. It was chosen by his son, Sebastian Mekas, and translated from English to Galician by Adrián Estévez. He will be in charge of reading it to the public.

Visual journey through five decades

The screening will begin immediately afterwards, a visual journey through Mekas’ film work between 1966 and 2011, from his first films to his last, which combine everyday and significant moments of life from a perspective very close to poetry and documentary, and which show the artist’s relationship with his environment and his nonconformity. Among the short films by Mekas that the festival will show are the emblematic Cassis (1966), which challenges narrative conventions by capturing everyday life in an uninterrupted sequence of images, and Mozart Wien&Elvis (2000), with shots of Elvis Presley’s last performance in New York in 1972, preceded by others from Vienna that he recorded years before. In addition, Notes of the Circus, Hare Krishna and Report from Millbrook (all from 1966), Travel songs (a travelling film around Europe between 1967 and 1981), Quartet #1 (1981), Imperfect Three-Image Films (1995) and Song of Avignon (1998) will be screened.

The tribute is completed by Cuaderno FICBUEU #5, which addresses the figure of the filmmaker through a critical review of his career and focusing on the shorts chosen for his retrospective. The book will be presented tomorrow at 11:00 am, and its author, the researcher, teacher and music photographer Nieves Febrer, will be at the event. The General Secretariat for Language Policy has supported, once again, the publication of Cuaderno FICBUEU, also translated from Spanish to Galician by Adrián Estévez.

Mekas, a key cultural and artistic figure

Jonas Mekas began exploring avant-garde cinema with his 16mm camera in 1949, after arriving from Lithuania to New York and having spent 10 years in a Nazi concentration camp. He eventually played a key role in the New American Cinema movement in the 1960s and 1970s and was followed and admired by other great voices of the cultural revolution of the time such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg and Susan Sontag.

A tireless protector of independent filmmakers, Mekas always advocated for freedom of artistic expression by co-founding the Film Makers Cooperative, fighting against censorship and looking towards emancipation from conventional cinematic norms. He continued making experimental films until he was 80 years old. Some of them have been screened, in addition to cinemas, in some of the most important museums in the United States and Europe.

FICBUEU FILMMAKERS AND JURIES VISIT ONS ISLAND

“Discovering the town of Bueu”, the programme organised for FICBUEU guests, took filmmakers and members of the festival jury this morning to Ons, one of the four islands that form part of the Illas Atlánticas de Galicia Maritime-Terrestrial National Park. They went on a hiking route with a stop at the Ons Visitor Centre, located in the building of the island’s old school and where there is an exhibition focused on the customs and traditions of its inhabitants. It is worth remembering that it is precisely on Ons where FICBUEU carries out its Residency, a project to develop short film scripts with filmmakers that premiered in 2023 with Isabel Peña – screenwriter of films such as As Bestas or El Reino and the Antidisturbios series – as tutor. This year it will be held between 16 and 23 October and will be coordinated by Estibaliz Urresola, director of the film 20,000 species of bees, which won three Goya awards, including those for best screenplay and best new director.

This afternoon, filmmakers and judges will take a guided tour of the Massó Museum, located in the industrial warehouses of the former Massó Hermanos canning factory, next to the port of Bueu. Tomorrow they will take part in an outing with traditional boats organised with the Os Galos Association and, upon their return, they will participate in a meal based on products with a designation of origin sponsored by the Consellería do Mar through the pescadeRías brand.

← Back

Unsatisfied motherhood, lack of communication, silence and the construction of identity, themes of the short films scheduled in the fourth session of the “Official Section”

THE PLAYROOM RETURNS TO FICBUEU SO THAT MOTHERS AND FATHERS CAN ENJOY THE BIG SCREEN

The FICBUEU play centre is back, an initiative developed in collaboration with the General Secretariat for Equality that was launched at the last edition of the festival with the aim of facilitating family conciliation, an issue recognised in the workplace, but not so much when it comes to leisure and culture.
This space for children between 3 and 12 years old, where they can play and do activities related to cinema, allows mothers and fathers to attend the sessions of the “Official Section” of the festival.
The FICBUEU play centre is a free service and will be open until Friday 13th from 6.30pm to 9.30pm and on Saturday 14th from 4.30pm to 9.30pm.

CLICK ON THIS LINK TO ACCESS MORE IMAGES

10.09.24. BUEU. The voices of two filmmakers and an actress whose short films are competing in the “Official Section” of the Bueu International Film Festival will meet tomorrow, starting at 8:30 p.m., in a discussion with the FICBUEU audience in which they will talk about cinema. The meeting will take place between the two scheduled screenings (at 7:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.) and will allow the festival’s spectators to learn more about the films and their creative and production process.

Two of tomorrow’s guests come from Eastern Europe. Their films will be shown for the first time in Spain at the FICBUEU. This is Arnas Balčiūnas, director and screenwriter of Hablo dėsnis (Hubble’s Law), a fiction that establishes a parallel between the physical principle referred to in its title – the distance between galaxies – and the story it tells: the isolation and lack of communication of a young mute man who tries to fit in with his new coworkers in construction without success. The director will be accompanied in the discussion by Estonian Maria Valk, actress of Saab, a short film directed by independent artist Lisbeth Kala who, through the car journey of several people, investigates the aesthetics of boredom and a silence in which it is also possible to hear their desires, dreams and fears without the need for words.

Portrait of trans and non-binary people

Balčiūnas and Valk will also talk with Anxos Fazáns, a Galician director who is presenting Habitar at the festival, a short documentary about the construction of identity through an intimate portrait of transgender and non-binary people from Galicia who speak honestly about how individuals face a world in which the family structures of the past have collapsed. Fazáns, who has already made other short films and a feature film, La estación violenta (2018), a free adaptation of a novel of the same name by the journalist and writer from Pontevedra, Manuel Jabois, was part of the jury of the sections «GZ_00», «Descubertas» and «Escolas Internacionais» at the last edition of FICBUEU.

An animated short and a dramatic comedy

The list of films to be screened in tomorrow’s session is completed by two stories about frustrated motherhood. One is an animated short, The Miracle, which has already been honoured at two of the most prestigious festivals in the world, Annecy and Clermont-Ferrand. This Belgian, French and Dutch co-production directed by Nienke Deutz presents us with a woman who wants to have children and can’t find her place in a resort where she only sees pregnant women. Faire un enfant is a Canadian comedy-drama film, directed by and starring Éric K. Boulianne, which shows a couple who, after many years together, decide to have a child and must face their fertility problems while trying to maintain their love and unity.

← Back

The selection of the “Official Section” that will be screened tomorrow Wednesday brings together an experimental film set in Andorra and four other films that explore family relationships

CINEMA WITH A FEMALE PERSPECTIVE TO OPEN THE “OFFICIAL SECTION”

Cinema with a female perspective characterised the block of films that kicked off the “Official Section” of the Bueu International Film Festival yesterday. 4 of the 5 films screened were directed by women. The public was able to see the films “Lemon Tree”, by the American Rachel Walden; “L’été des chaleurs”, by the Canadian director Marie-Pier Dupuis; “If you are happy” directed by the British Phoebe Arnstein; and “3 MWH”, by the Czech creator Marie-Magdalena Kochová. The list of screenings yesterday Monday was completed by “O frío”, a work by the Galician Pablo Dopazo.

CLICK ON THIS LINK TO ACCESS MORE IMAGES

10.09.24. BUEU. The Bueu International Film Festival reaches the halfway point of its “Official Section” tomorrow. The third day of screenings will bring together five short films that will compete until Saturday with the other 24 in competition to enter the FICBUEU 2024 list of winners. They come from different latitudes. From Europe, specifically from Lithuania and Spain, and, on the other side of the Atlantic, from the United States, Brazil and Canada.

Four of the shorts in this block, which will be shown at 7:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., share a common theme: they explore family relationships, albeit from different perspectives and at different times.

Obraza (Resentment) is a film by Lithuanian director Gleb Osatinski. It was nominated for the Berlinale and the Buenos Aires festival has been chosen for its premiere in Spain. Set in Soviet Ukraine in the 1990s, it presents for half an hour Yasha, a 17-year-old teenager who rebels against authority and believes that he can emigrate with his family to New York: when his father opposes, he embarks on a journey that will lead to irreparable damage.

An animated work and a journey in the midst of war

An animated film is Un trou dans la poitrine (A Hole in the Chest), by Alexandra Myotte and Jean-Sébastien Hamel, a duo of scriptwriters and directors based in Montreal. This multi-award-winning eleven-minute piece tells the story of two brothers abandoned to their fate, Zoé and Théo, who must face the problems of their relationship on a stifling summer day. Julia Elihu, an Iranian-American writer and director whose work spans narrative, documentary and commercial (she has created pieces for clients such as Nike and Amazon), directs In the Garden of Tulips, the last car trip of a young girl with her father through the Iranian countryside in the midst of her country’s war with Iraq. Once again, the FICBUEU is hosting its premiere in Spain. Meanwhile, Ruído da pele, a fiction filmed by the Brazilian Gustavo Milan, addresses the intimate relationship between a mother and her 12-year-old son and how it comes to an end when the child experiences his first sexual awakening.

A film about another film

Only Coldness is somewhat outside the thematic script of this block of screenings. There is no family as protagonist in this first short film by the Spanish director Andrea Sánchez. It is an experimental film about a B-series horror film by two Andorran directors that was never released and about how, by invoking that cursed film rehearsal after rehearsal, Andorra becomes the setting for another horror film from which not even its inhabitants can escape.

Discussion with filmmakers

Andrea Sánchez will be one of the filmmakers invited to chat with the FICBUEU audience tomorrow. The director of Obraza will also participate in the discussion with the public. It will be at 8:30 p.m., between the two screenings of the films.

← Back

The relation between cinema and political, the film «The Conversation» of Coppola, in the big screen, the official section or the contest between the short films of novel Galician authors, between the activities programmed

The FICBUEU will recover one of the less known films of the realizador Francis Ford Coppola, The Conversation, to close the program of the «III Xornadas Cinematographic». Premièred in 1974, and with Gene Hackman in the leading paper, the film is a thriller on listen them like method of espionage, reflection of the social climate and politician of USA in the years 70 and of the scandal of the Watergate. The projection will take place in the Auditorium of the Social Centre do Sea of Bueu from the 21.00 hours.

06.09.24. BUEU. The films are daughters of his time. This is the starting point of the «III Xornadas Cinematográficas», a space of reflection and thought on cinema created by the FICBUEU that will celebrate tomorrow Saturday. This year the subject turns around the bidirectional relation between politics and cinema and the impact and influence of the historical context and his reflection in the seventh art. To analyse it, film-makers, essayists and professional of different jobs of the audiovisual sector will participate during all day in diverse meetings with the public of the International Festival of Cinema of Bueu.

The days will start to the 11.00 hours with  Sé realista: fai o imposible!, masterclass of Camil Ungureanu, professor of political Philosophy of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona, the one who borrows for his title one of the lemmas of the movement estudiantil of the years 60 of the past century and coined by the philosopher Ernst Bloch. Ungureanu Will deepen in the waves contestatarias and of deep social transformation, political and artistic of the period to show how the cinema turned into one of the maximum expressions of freedom. The film Easy Rider, of Dennis Hopper, is a clear example.

To continuation (12.30 hours), the criticisms Daniela Urzola and Belit Lake will keep a dialogue that have designated Trauma y Reconstrucción to tackle the Holocaust and the Second World War, the historical event and politician more represented in the big screen. They will do it through a route by different cinematografías and big marked films by the memory, the desolation and the effort of the back reconstruction to the horror.

On-line round table and meeting with Jaime Rosales

This same Saturday, already in the afternoon (17.00 hours), there will be a virtual round table in which Jesús Callejo, Guillermo Díaz and Pepa Llausás, members of the team of the pódcast «La escóbula de la brújula» (one of the most notable of the country on history and culture), will speak on the period of entreguerras and the paper of the cinema like tool of propaganda and domination, as well as of criticism and creative freedom. They will examine the Soviet cinema and the Russian Revolution, the German expressionism and the nazi totalitarianism and how the Great Depression (1929-1939) reflected in the global cinema.

Afterwards, from the 19.00 hours, will be the turn of one of the big realizadores that participate this year in the FICBUEU. Jaime Rosales will keep a conversatorio with the critic of cinema Xavier Montoriol. The director of, between other films,  Petra y Girasoles silvestres will analyse the way in which questions like the triumph of the distopía, the effects of the technology or the climatic emergency have left his print in the cinema of the last 25 years.

← Back

The relationship between cinema and politics, Coppola’s film “The Conversation” on the big screen, the official section or the competition between short films by new Galician authors, among the scheduled activities

05.09.24. BUEU. The FICUEU begins tomorrow Friday with the premiere of the short films co-produced by the FICBUEU Association, the production of the floral carpet by the Cunchas e Flores Association and the concert by the Seville indie group Sr. Chinorro.

One of the short films is Millonetis, made in collaboration with the Igualarte Foundation within the framework of the FICBUEU Social Area workshops. In the short, the students criticise evictions, one of the evils of today’s society. The other short is the documentary A Roiba. A refuge in Beluso, directed by Jaime Olmedo and where we can discover the peculiarities of the work of the architect Ramón Vázquez Molezún in Bueu.

The FICBUEU arrives, one more year, with a wide range of screenings and activities around cinema. What are they? The information is below these lines.

6 things you should know about the 17th edition of the Festival

1. It connects cinema and politics. FICBUEU is also thought, ideas and analysis. That is why the word, dialogue and the dissemination of knowledge about cinema have a prominent place in the Festival. The public will be able to participate in a master class by Camil Ungureanu, professor of Political Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, ​​in the conversation between critics Daniela Urzola and Belit Lago; in the virtual round table by part of the team from the podcast «La escóbula de la brújula» and in a meeting with the filmmaker Jaime Rosales (Petra, Girasoles silvestres, La soledad) and the critic Xavier Montoriol.
2. Bringing back the legendary Coppola for the big screen. The finale to the film days programme on Saturday 7 will be a feature film, the only one to be screened at FICBUEU (9:00 p.m.). This is The Conversation, a “gem” written, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Gene Hackman and John Cazale. An intelligent thriller full of traps about a detective specializing in surveillance and eavesdropping, spying on people and responsibility in technological intrusion. The film was released in 1974, between The Godfather and The Godfather II, but it did not go unnoticed: it was nominated for an Oscar and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. A unique opportunity to see a classic on the big screen.
3. It puts the spotlight on the closest emerging talent. It does so with the “GZ_00” section, created in the last edition to disseminate the work of new film talents from Galicia and bring it closer to the general public. The selected shorts are four, all of the documentary genre. The screenings will be on Sunday 8th, starting at 6:30 p.m. From 8 p.m., the three directors and the director of the films in competition will talk to the public about their respective works.
4. Discover key figures in the history of cinema. This is the case of Jonas Mekas (1922-2019), an experimental filmmaker and cultural agitator of Lithuanian origin, admired by figures such as Warhol or Sartre and considered the father of American avant-garde cinema. This year, the festival is dedicating its Caderno FICBUEU#5 and the “Retrospective” section to him, with a selection of his most innovative and interesting shorts. It will be on Saturday 14th.
5. It recognises the best Galician professionals. The actress from Vigo, María Vázquez, has a career spanning more than twenty years of acting in Galicia and at a national level, both in film and television. From her appearance in the youth series Al salir de clase to the most recent Fariña and in films such as Silencio roto (Montxo Armendáriz), Mataharis (Icíar Bollaín), Quien a hierro mata (Paco Plaza) or Matria (Álvaro Gago). The festival will present her with the FICBUEU Galician Cinema Award on Saturday 14th.
6. It promotes solidarity, inclusion and conciliation. With initiatives such as the FICBUEU play centre, launched in 2023 in collaboration with the Xunta to promote family conciliation. This leisure space for children over 3 years old is free and will be open from Monday 9 to Friday 13 from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., and on Saturday 14, from 4:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The campaign to collect menstrual management products also continues in this edition to raise awareness of menstruation-related poverty, which affects millions of women around the world. To this end, in collaboration with the FESBAL Food Bank, there will be boxes in which tampons, pads or menstrual cups can be deposited for distribution among different local entities. The initiative came from the festival’s own audience, which in 2022 awarded its prize to Spotless, a short film on this subject by Dutch director Emma Branderhorst.