Cartagena: FiCCi gets nostalgic

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One of the most important festivals in the region for movie lovers and industry professionals turns 55 this month and the slogan for this year’s event, “We are what we were,” tributes more than a half-century of Colombian movie talent, as well as films which were mentioned in the books and letters of the late Nobel Laureate, Gabriel García Márquez.

The retrospective of Gabo’s “Movies of my life,” will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of this six-day event, which kicks off in the colonial city, March 11 th.

FICCI 55 is layered with nostalgia and vintage “gems”  this year. Many of the films which at some point were shown in Cartagena in the 1970’s make their comeback, especially those produced during the “Golden Age” of Latin American film, when the festival’s founders screened 35 mm features in basements and restaurants followed by parties with rum infused salsa. Hence, the official poster for this year’s event shows two festivalgoers, in tropical attire dancing in a digitally-enhanced Polaroid.

The respected Italian Colombian actor, Salvo Basile, has been at the helm of FICCI for its 55 years, and recalled during the press launch in Bogotá how “painstaking” it has been to keep this Festival going. But going it has, with more than 5,000 films screened and 150 international guest stars invited to the walled city.

This year, 12 Colombian films will be premiered in the Official Competition, as well as 13 shorts in the category New Creators. The festival will also tribute the films of Israeli documentary and feature film director, Amos Gitaï. “The impressive career of this director is linked to our theme of “remembrance,” stated Diana Bustamante, the festival’s director. The Gitai retrospective includes his 1999 masterworks, Kadosh and Carmel as well as, a video trilogy on settlements in West Jerusalem.

Among the 152 films to be shown in venues across the city, the festival will also look at the genre of spaghetti westerns, many produced between the 1960s and 70s, when Cartagena was a mere blimp on the cinematographer’s lens. The westerns which will be shown include Sergio Leone’s classics ‘A Fistful of Dollars,’ ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,’ and Sergio Corbucci’s ‘Django’.

There are some hard-hitting, nail- bitting, jaw-dropping documentaries this year from ‘Antigone awake’ (Spain) to ‘At 60 km/h’ (Uruguay), the Mexican made ‘Echoes of the mountains’ and a co-production between Panama and Argentina in ‘Invasion’.

The Official Dramatic Competition with its 12 films is also a tour de force of relevant social themes which are affecting the hemisphere: from unearthing the disappeared, to crossing social divides, all rife with crime and impunity. The cross border, drama-thriller-come-road movie, “600 Miles” marks the directorial debut of producer-turned director Gabriel Ripstein. Chile’s Sergio Castro, one of the new voices of South American film, follows one woman’s journey to find a job as an itinerant worker, so she can escape to the capital with her daughter. Colombia’s Hector Gálvez in a Germano-Peruvian production takes on the emotionally-charged and difficult theme of a mass exhumation after an extra judicial killing by a guerrilla group, and seen through a work of a team of forensic experts.

Colombia’s up and comer, Franco Lolli, gives us ‘People of Good’ (Gente de Bien): a well-acted social drama about a 10-year-old boy who is sent to live with his impoverished handyman father (Carlos Fernando Pérez) in a grungy district of downtown Bogotá.

The official listing is a visually gripping road trip through farms and shanties of our continent, including a psychological drama set on a beach in the Dominican Republic and starring Geraldine Chaplin. The Gems category takes on the world, with an offering of movies from the United States (The Horseman), Mauritania (Timbuktu), France (The Fighters) and China (Black Coal, Thin Ice).

While visitors to Cartagena can enjoy a plethora of films in theatres such as the Adolfo Mejía, and open-air venues, such as the Aduana Plaza, the FICCI presents this year it’s late night schedule, for those who suffer from insomnia or simply enjoy movies at midnight. In the ‘Midnight Movies’ selection, there’s the raw, sexual, urban real estate drama of Nova Dubai (Brazil), and the Iranian film noir set in a ghost town, ‘A Girl Walks Alone at Night.’

FICCI 55 is one of Cartagena’s most coveted events, and takes home the prize as Latin America’s longest-running film festival.

As an important revenue generator for the city, it also serves a community mission to showcase movies in marginalized neighborhoods where contact with celluloid remains limited.

So, if planning an escape this month to the colonial city, check the official festival’s website www.ficcifestival.com for screening times and locations.

 

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