Free activities in Barcelona during summer!

Whatever you’re into, you can enjoy summer to the full in Barcelona! Even if you’re on a budget, there are many free activities this August.

Outdoor cinema buffs can head to the CCCB in the Raval for the annual “Gandules” cycle, which this year complements the contemporary culture centre’s intriguing exhibition on labyrinths.

Films such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville or David Lynch’s Lost Highway are screened from Tuesday to Thursday at 10pm. Get there early to grab a sandwich and a seat.

For the ideal combination of art and air conditioning, check out one of the many free exhibition centres in town. They include the Caja Madrid Espai Cultural in Plaça Catalunya, Gaudi’s Pedrera, and Palau Robert on Passeig de Gràcia, which takes you on a tour of the Mediterranean. Caixa Forum on Montjuic explores the work of internationally renowned Majorcan artist Miquel Barceló.

What’s more, other museums and galleries waive their entry charge on Sunday afternoons, including the Picasso and the nearby Design museums in the Born, or the CCCB and the Virreina photography space in the centre.

For those that prefer to be outdoors, the many lovely parks in the city offer a shady haven from the heat, and a very special experience at night, set the scene for free concerts in classical music, jazz and sarsuela.

And if you’re in party spirits don’t miss the lively and colourful street celebrations in Gràcia, in the third week of August, and Sants in the last week, with their extravagant street decorations and live bands in the evenings.

http://www.vimeo.com/13913483

43th Sitges Film Festival - Catalonia

This year’s disturbing programme pays tribute to The Shining by Stanley Kubrick, “an undeniably great film in this genre that has outshone the book it is based on”, according to the festival director. Film fans will have the chance to see the full-length original American version in digital format, plus an extra thirty minutes.

This is not the only tribute paid to great fantasy classics at the 2010 festival. Two films which could not be ignored are Back to the Future, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, and Psycho, which celebrates its 50th.

Nor could one of the festival’s icons be overlooked, who passed away recently. A posthumous tribute will be paid to Paul Naschy with a screening of the documentary The Man Who Saw Frankenstein Cry.

The opening film will once again be a Catalan production, Julia’s Eyes, by Guillem Morales, starring Belén Rueda and Lluís Homar.

For fans of Takeshi Kitano, the Oficial Fantàstic section will see the return of the yakuza and gangster movie director with the “extremely violent” Outrage. There is also room for comedy with A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, the Cohen brothers’ remake of  Blood Simple, and Kaboom, which mixes a gay ambience with witches and teenagers.

For those of you with strong stomachs, take note of this. The festival shocker is going to be A Serbian Film, an extreme, polemical film about pornography in Serbia. One of the crazy films, meanwhile, will be Rubber, the story of an abandoned killer tyre with telekinetic powers.

The festival’s regular film sections Anima’t, Noves Visions, Seven Chances, Midnight X-treme and Brigadoon, are the regular festival sections that “give it its prestige” according to Sala, that will continue to satisfy the tastes of any film buff.

Finally, this year will also see Zombie Walk!!!

Gandules’10: open air cinema at the CCCB in Barcelona

More than ever Gandules 2010 is full of fiction: lost, aimless characters, endless searches, journeys to the unknown… The cinema has often shown labyrinths and has made them explicit. But this cycle drives us through other labyrinths, those that are often unseen: the invisible labyrinths that lock individuals in social circles, or the imaginary ones that create desires and mental escapes. What does it happen when the labyrinth is not an image, but a state?

Lost, lost, lost is a cycle about the desire for movement: get out of a place, escape, change or get transformed, conceive another world. Because what is important may not be to chose the wrong path, but the possibility to start a new one.

Director/s: Ray Ashbury, Luis Buñuel, Vittorio de Seta, Claire Denis, Maya Deren, Morris Engel, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Alexander Hammid, Abbas Kiarostami, Barbara Loden, Joseph Losey, David Lynch, Chris Marker, Ruth Orkin, Óscar Pérez, Alain Resnais, Elías León Siminiani

Gandules 2010: Lost, lost, lost | Open air cinema festival: from 03/08/2010 to 29/08/2010
Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) -> Montalegre, 5 | Ciutat Vella

Sala Montjuïc: open-air cinema this summer in Barcelona

A Barcelona summer evening classic is back. Sala Montjuïc is here again with more films and music in one to the city’s most spectacular settings, Montjuïc Castle.

This year, with sessions every Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 5 July and 6 August, it has a new, bigger screen. It is 16 x 9 metres, that is, 32 square metres more.

This year’s programme is a varied one that includes popular classics like Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange and Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday by Jacques Tati.

However, the “main dish” consists of more recent films, namely a selection of independent films popular with critics and the public, like the vampire movie Let Me In, the “anti-romantic” comedy In Search of a Midnight Kiss and the acclaimed French film The Class.

Apart from that, there will be a concert cinema session with The Gold Rush, by Charles Chaplin, accompanied by live music played by an orchestra conducted by Guerassim Voronkov.

The programme also includes animated films like My Neighbour Totoro from Japan and the documentary Waltz with Bashir. As for the closing film, you can vote for the one you like best out of three Catalan films.

The Sala Montjuïc programme is complimented by live concerts, prior to the film session, and there is also the chance to have a picnic. You can hire a deckchair too, so you are more comfortable.

Castell de Montjuïc -> Ctra Montjuïc, 66 | Sants-Montjuïc

Snowflake is filmed in Barcelona

Snowflake, the white gorilla, (Floquet de Neu, el goril·la blanc); is currently being filmed in Barcelona. It is a film that mixes the story of the albino gorilla’s early days in Barcelona with fantasy. Animals in 3D interact with real people to create a film which aims to commemorate the most famous gorilla in the world.

In the 1960, Snowflake, the most famous gorilla in the world due to his albino fur, arrived at Barcelona zoo. It certainly wasn’t easy for him to adapt to being with the other gorillas.

So just imagine, due to the problems he had adapting to life with the other gorillas, Floquet decided to go in search of a witch who would make him black. This is the premise of the film Floquet de Neu, el goril·la blanc, which is currently being filmed in Barcelona: el Zoo, el Parc Güell, el Parc de la Ciutadella or el barrio de Gràcia.

The film, directed by Andrés G. Schaer, mixes the story of the gorilla’s early days in Barcelona zoo with fantasy. And what better way to do so, and at the same time recreate the animal, than in 3D.

It is thanks to this technology that Floquet de Neu comes back to life and lives alongside real people. Among them, Pere Ponce, the ‘baddy’ of the film and Elsa Pataky, the Witch of the North, who Floquet will ask to grant his wish to become black.

http://www.vimeo.com/12369724

Mecal, International Short Film Festival

Every Friday this summer, from 4 June to the second week of September, there will be a Mecal Air screening, an initiative of the Barcelona International Short Film Festival (Mecal), a new culinary event.

The opening session will feature the best of last year’s festival. Then, there will be a themed programme every Friday, ranging from extreme radical animation to explosive shorts.

Apart from films, another feature of the festival will be music, to create a summery atmosphere that will help you to switch from the city. Remember, each session starts at 8 pm.

Tickets cost 5 euros but if you bring a discount flyer with you, you’ll only have to fork out 2 euro

Mecal Website: http://www.mecalbcn.org

Xcèntric Festival at the CCCB’s cinema

From ecstasy to rage. Fifty years of alternative Spanish cinema (”Del Éxtasis al arrebato. Cinquanta anys de l’altre cinema espanyol”) is the title of the exhibition that Xcèntric, the CCCB’s season of experimental cinema, has brought about and which is currently taking place in Barcelona.

The project has already visited Melbourne’s ACMI, New York’s Anthology Film Archives and Washington’s National Gallery, and has been released in DVD box format.

This is a project that traces fifty years of experimental cinema made in Spain. It looks for affinities between different authors, often little acknowledged in official cinema history.

This is because the exhibition, whose exhibits have been selected by Antoni Pinent, enables us to find numerous directors regarded as “amateurs“, who in fact, when seen in the light of current work, become extremely interesting.

The exhibition, which take place during Xcèntric’s May sessions (on 11, 13, 16, 23 and 30), will allow us to view works by José Val del Omar, Manuel Huerga, Isaki Lacuesta and David Domingo, among many others.

NNHotels sponsors Barcelona Asian Film Festival BAFF 2010

Between April 30th and May 9th will take place a new edition of the Barcelona Asian Film Festival of Barcelona, organized by 100.000 retinas, directed by Amaia Torrecilla and Carlos R. Ríos and sponsored by Núñez i Navarro Hotels. This year, BAAF 2010 presents a selection that increases the number of films screened - a total of 70 and six programs of short films - reinforcing some of its sections and giving a special boost to the animation.

In the Official Section will compete thirteen films, from Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam. The selection shows some essential films this year, the best that has given the Asian scene of the moment, such as Paju by Park Chan-ok; Weaving Girl by Wang Quanan; Like You Know It All by Hong Sang-soo or Aurora, by Adolfo Alix, who also presents Manila, together with Raya Martin.

This year innovation comes with BAFF Anime, a small selection of recent Japanese animation production which includes three world premieres in Spain: Redline, One Piece Film: Strong World and Eureka Seven Movie 2009. BAFF Anime also features one of the best animated films of recent times, Summer Wars by Mamoru Hosoda, best animation film on Sitges Festival 2009.

Xcèntric comes to the CCCB in Barcelona

The 9th season of the Xcèntric cinema programme at the CCCB will be kicking off on 3 December with a range of films whose very length prevents them from fitting into conventional programmes. In addition, this season of Xcèntric will embark on an international itinerary taking it to Australia, the United States and Japan.

This new season starts out with the intention of exploring films which, by their very format, especially their length, cannot fit in with cinema or television programmes.

The best example of this is provided by Andy Warhol’s long films. On 6 December you will be able to see Empire, an eight-hour long film in which the pop-art artist depicts New York’s Empire State Building. You can also take part in the multi-screening of Outer and Inner Space, a film conceived for showing on two screens.

At the other extreme, we can find a whole series of works not even a minute long. Xcèntric will be offering a retrospective on films by the Fluxus movement, including pieces by Nam June Paik, Paul Sharits, George Maciunas and Yoko Ono.

The first session of this new season, on 3 December, Film Ist will see the premiere. A Girl and a Gun, a film in process by Gustav Deutsch, made from a montage of other films.

Website Xcèntric Festival.

El Meu Primer Festival: Cinema for young children

Can you imagine watching a film where the music is not on-screen but is played live by a pianist? Would you like to know the story of an elephant from Poland with vertical stripes or find out about Chaplin the man, one of the greatest characters of the cinema?

El Meu Primer Festival offers all that and lots more with a selection of films from around the world and from different periods, aimed at boys and girls aged between 2 and 12.

With the aim of entertaining and educating, stimulating imagination and creativity, at the same time as developing a critical mind, the festival has a rich and varied programme organised round four different sections.

This is the second time the festival has been held and once again it has a specific programme for families and another aimed at schools.

From 21 to 29 November, the best films will be on screen at the Filmoteca de Catalunya and Verdi Park Cinemas, while all those who want to awake their creativity are invited to attend the family workshops taking place at the Espai Experimentem and La Caldera.

El Meu Primer Festival Website 

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