PELÍCULA 2024 presents cultural connections amid diversity

SPANISH-LANGUAGE films, documentaries, shorts, and filmed theater productions will be giving Filipinos a taste of both variety and familiarity for this year’s Película/Pelikula Spanish Film Festival.

The film festival will be held from Oct. 5 to 13 at Shangri-La Plaza mall’s Red Carpet Theater in Mandaluyong.

Twenty-five films will be screened this year, some widely acclaimed while others fresh from the box office. The multi-awarded opener is Robot Dreams, a no-dialogue animated film by Pablo Berger that was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars last year.

A film of note in the official selection is veteran Spanish filmmaker Víctor Erice’s latest work — and his first in three decades — Cerrar los ojos, a mystery about a famous actor’s disappearance. A drama to watch out for is La estrella azul, directed by Javier Macipe, while Catalan comedies like Casa en llamas by Dani de la Orden and Loli Tormenta by Agustí Villaronga will be presented by their scriptwriter, Mario Torrecillas.

Mr. Torrecillas will also grace the festival on Oct. 6 to host a free film workshop for children, who will be tasked over the course of the day to make a video about how they dream of Manila.

At the Sept. 24 press conference at the Red Carpet Theater, Francisco Javier López Tapia, the director of Instituto Cervantes de Manila which is organizing the film festival, said that “Spanish cinema is not limited to films from Spain.”

“We are very aware of Spanish being a global language and culture, and there are a lot of excellent films that were made in the Latin American countries and even the Philippines,” Mr. López said.

The Latin American films that will be included in the festival are the Argentinian comedy Puan by María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat, the Brazilian melodrama Pacarrete by Allan Deberton, and the Panamanian coming-of-age film Las hijas by Kattia Zúñiga.

The official selection has three documentaries, including one on Spain’s wines called Rioja, the Land of Thousand Wines and a historical exploration of Hispanic America titled Hispanoamérica, canto de vida y esperanza, both by José Luis López Linares. Meanwhile, the documentary Benito Pérez Buñuel, which tackles the influence of Pérez Galdós’ novels on Luis Buñuel films, will be presented by its director Luis Roca on Oct. 8.

SPECIAL SECTIONSPELíCULA’s section “En corto: Short films from the Philippines, Latin America, and Spain” will feature recent shorts. The Philippine films in the lineup are Kyla Romero’s Transients and Sonny Calvento’s Primetime Mother, both of which were recently screened at the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival earlier this year.

“We selected these Philippine short films this year because we saw that these two films have semblances of Spanish culture,” said film programmer Eunice Helera at the press conference. “This is a diplomatic cultural exchange between Spain and the Philippines.”

The section “Creadores teatrales,” a first in the festival, will present a series of four filmed productions from the Teatro Real in Madrid.

One is a ballet, El amor brujo, by the company of Víctor Ullate. Two are renowned operas: Carmen and Fuenteovejuna, both adapted by Antonio Gades. Finally, there is El público, an opera based on Federico García Lorca’s text, recreated by Spanish composer Mauricio Sotelo to feature flamenco.

José Maria Fons Guardiola, the cultural head of Instituto Cervantes de Manila, told BusinessWorld that these are “absolutely a must-watch.”

“Teatro Real, which is a wonderful opera house in Madrid, until last year was chosen as the best opera house in Europe. This is remarkable since Europe has many other opera hubs all over,” said Mr. Fons.

Mr. López added that it would be interesting to see how Filipino audiences will react to classics from their repertoire. “If it’s received well, we can think about establishing a fixed section on Teatro Real productions,” he said.

All the screenings have English subtitles and are free and open to the public. For a complete list of films and the screening schedule, visit the festival’s website (https://pelikula.org) or the Facebook or Instagram pages of Instituto Cervantes de Manila. — Brontë H. Lacsamana