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 

In-Edit: Music Documentary Film Festival

Born in 2003 with the intention of showing the most outstanding music documentaries, the In-Edit.Beefeater Festival continues its voyage into this extensive year, 2009.

 The festival, held at Cine Rex, will be reviewing the career of the videoclip and musical documentary pioneer, Peter Whitehead. During the final section of the festival, the first time it has been publicised, there will be various films focusing on the role music plays in cultural and popular celebrations.

The most obvious example is ‘Favela on Blast’, a film that avoids clichés on Brazilian faveles and which focuses on the most festive point of view. This is the work of Wesley Pentz, better known in the music world as Diplo. The film itself is expected to be an all-round festival of rhythm and fun.

What we find in ‘Soul Power’ is a celebration of being black. We journey to the Zaire of 1974 to relive the concert given by James Brown, Miriam Makeba and B.B. King. It will fill you with the playful spirit of Black Power.

The role of music in black civil rights movements is explored in ‘Soundtrack for a Revolution’, another film which regards music as a part of culture.

As for more local culture, ‘Febrero: cuando la vida es carnaval’ (February: when life’s a carnival) will take us to the Cadiz carnival from a whole array of perspectives.

On concert documentaries, we’ll be able to relive the performance by Johnny Cash in Folsom prison. What’s more, we’ll discover a deeper side to the United States in ‘The Folk Singer: A Tale of Men, Music & America’ and the influence of Brazilian music on the West in ‘Beyond Ipanema’.

What: In-Edit.Beefeater Festival
When: October 29th - November 8th
Where: Cine Rex Barcelona
Gran Vía Corts Catalanes, 463
More inf@: In-Edit Website

9th Docúpolis, the Barcelona International Documentary Festival

The best documentaries are being shown at the CCCB (Barcelona Centre of Contemporary Culture) until to Sunday 4 October, where over 100 documentaries await you from all over the world.

Keeping to their line of offering groundbreaking and committed documentaries, this will be the 9th edition of the Docúpolis provides a platform for spotting and showing new audiovisual languages with little chance of appearing on TV or cinema screens.

The documentaries competing in the competition’s various categories for this year’s official festival awards have been selected from more than a thousand submitted from up to 63 countries.

Without doubt the pick of the official awards is the Docúpolis Award for best documentary, with a prize of 6.000€. This year 12 documentaries with very different themes and from very different locations are in the running.

One of the twelve that stands out is the Argentinian ‘Mundo Alas’, which will be screened at the inaugural session and is a road movie describing a tour of Argentina undertaken by some young artists with various physical and mental disabilities.

Docúpolis 2009 - Festival Internacional de Documental de Barcelona at l’Auditori del CCCB 
From 29/09/2009 to 04/10/2009
Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) - Montalegre, 5 | Ciutat Vella District

NN Hotels: www.nnhotels.com

Barcelona in the movies

Today, Barcelona is at center-stage in the movie market, for both world-renown actors as well as prestigious directors of international prestige. Proof of that is the great many films that have used the city of Barcelona for a set.

 Núñez i Navarro Hotels offers you an interesting report, featuring the most succesful movies shot in Barcelona. If you still need a reason to visit our city, you will fall in love after watching those movies with the Catalan capital.

Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Calista Flockhard or Penélope Cruz are part of the long list of actors and actresses who have been in Barcelona and can recommend you a visit. The recent Woody Allen’s film Vicky Cristina Barcelona  features also Scarlett Johanson and Javier Bardem.

Many other directors have shown the best of the city on their movies, making Barcelona universally available through the screen. From the old Gothic Quarter with its medieval palaces to the modernist buildings by Gaudí and Puig i Cadafalch, from the city coast line to the impressive views you have at Tibidadbo hill, Barcelona has a lot to offer you, and you can discover it on the cinema!

More inf@: Barcelona in the movies

42nd International Sitges Film Festival

From 1st to 12th October, film lovers in general and fans of the fantasy and horror genre in particular, have an unmissable date in Sitges, with the arrival of the 42nd International Fantasy Film Festival of Catalonia.

Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia is the #1 fantasy film festival in the world and represents, at the same time, the cultural expression with the most media impact in Catalonia. With a solid experience, the Sitges Festival is a stimulating universe of encounters, exhibitions, presentations and screenings of fantasy films from all over the world.

Born in 1968 as the 1st International Week of Fantasy and Horror Movies, today the Festival is an essential rendezvous for movie lovers and audiences eager to come into contact with new tendencies and technologies applied to film and the audiovisual world.
Sitges’ status as the number one fantasy film festival in the world allows it to receive visits from top-level movie stars, directors and producers like Quentin Tarantino, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, Paul Verhoeven, George A. Romero, Viggo Mortensen, Rutger Hauer,  John Landis, Joe Dante, Dino de Laurentii, Takashi Miike, Wim Wenders, Tony Curtis, David Cronenberg, Vanessa Redgrave, Brad Dourif, John Woo, Park Chan-Wook, Paul Naschy, Jon Voight, Sam Raimi, Robert Englund, Roger Corman, Santiago Segura, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, Guillermo del Toro, Álex de la Iglesia, among others from the long list of people who, year after year, are a media attraction.

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Alien is the star of this year’s edition, and the festival will once again be showcasing the best this genre has to offer.

A festival where Horror is the protagonist

The festival will open with a screening of the eagerly-awaited sequel [REC]2, which ties in with the first film by relating the events which take place just fifteen minutes after the last images of that film.

The Official Fantasy Section will include many other outstanding titles from this genre, such as Thirst, by Park Chan-wook about vampires, Yatterman, an adaptation of the comic of the same name, and Crows II, which highlights youth violence, both by Takashi Miike.

You will also get a chance to see the film which won an award at Cannes for best director, Kinatay, by Brillante Mendoza, a journey to hell, a hyper-realist horror, and Moon by Duncan Jones, recent winner of the Award for Best Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Home-grown cinema will also play an important role in the festival, with films such as Orphan, by Jaume Collet-Serra, and Ingrid, by Eduard Cortés. And from Europe, Monica Belluci and Sophie Marceau come face to face in Ne te retourne pas.

In addition to the usual sections of the festival, this year sees the introduction of 3D cinema, with titles such as The Final Destination and Toy Story 3D.

The 80’s make a come back

For nostalgics, Sitges 09 will be taking a look back at some of the best films of this genre from the 1980s, including the North American production, previously unreleased in Spain, The Shining, and Nightmare on Elm St.

Another retrospective will be the Other Fantasy Films, with productions that vindicate the atypical genre, produced by Catalan and Spanish film makers who have regularly turned to it, such as Vicente Aranda, with Las Crueles.

Clive Barker, author of horror novels, will be one of those celebrated at the festival, which will screen two films based on his works: Dread and Book of Blood.

Brigadoon, one of the festival’s classics, will also pay tribute to Alien, with the screening of films inspired by this film in the After Alien section.

And once again, as we saw last year, the living dead will take to the streets of Sitges with a new edition of the Zombie Walk, Saturday 10 October, and a tribute to Zombie 2, which debuted at Sitges 30 years ago.

More inf@: Sitges Film Festival

Summer nights in Barcelona

 A Midsummer Night’s Dream could be title of this post, but William Shakespeare has already used it, so we won’t paraphrase.

There are many things to do and visit in Barcelona during the day. Gaudí buildings, La Rambla, 5km of beaches, the new architecture at Diagonal Mar and Forum, Camp Nou and the FCBarcelona museum,…
But what happens when the Sun is down? Don’t let the Moon fool you: Barcelona still has many things to offer !

Cinemar
Can you imagine being able to enjoy the best films ever on board ship? Well, once again, Barcelona harbour is offering you the chance. With “Cinemar” you can recall the first pictures produced by the seventh art, as well as the comic gems of silent cinema, while enjoying the Barcelona coastline.

Cinema at Sala Montjuïc
Sala Montjuïc is the name used to identify the dry moat of Montjuïc Castle during summer nights. Outdoors cinema on a fantastic location with Barcelona as background.

Montjuïc Magic Fountain
Probably the best-known show of Barcelona nights. A combination of music, light and water.

Urban nights by the City History Museum
From a visit to a Civil War air-raid shelter to a night of poetic astronomy. These are two of a dozen ideas on the museum nights.

More inf@:  Barcelona Website

The Art of Deception - Cinema Exhibition in Barcelona

The cinema’s special effects industry and its evolution over the course of history constitute the core of the exhibition “The Art of Deception”, which opened its doors to the public on 20 May 2009 at Barcelona’s Palau Robert with the support of CAM (Caja Mediterráneo). The exhibition will be open to the public until 30 August 2009. Just like the cinema, visitors shall be warned that “some viewers may find the content disturbing” and may not be suitable for those under 13 years of age.

The Palau Robert exhibition seeks to bring the magic of the cinema, “the art” concealed behind photograms, within the reach of visitors. In the first part of the exhibition, visitors can behold the work carried out by the great masters of non-digital special effects at various stages in the history of cinema. Featured are names such as Willis O’Brien and King Kong (1933); Ray Harryhausen and Jason and the Argonauts (1963), and Stan Winston and The Terminator (1984), as well as small-scale reproductions of the characters.

The second part reveals the craftsmanship facet of this discipline, based on the stop-motion technique, that is to say, a frame-by-frame animation technique. Finally, a third section outlines the work undertaken by David Martí and Montse Ribé and their team at DDT Efectos Especiales. Specialised in prosthetic make-up and design, the studio has gained international recognition having garnered Oscar and Goya awards, among others. Some thirty pieces shall be on display, including figures and monsters from various films, prosthetic make-up and animatronics, as well as short videos illustrating the production process. Also to be exhibited are characters from the Guillermo del Toro film Pan’s Labyrinth, including the Pale Man and the head and torso of the faun.

Palau Robert: Passeig de Gràcia, 107 08008 Barcelona
Opening hours -> Monday to Saturday: 10 am to 7 pm.  Sunday: 10 am to 2.30 pm

NN Hotels: www.nnhotels.com

GANGS OF THE 80s at CCCB in Barcelona

This exhibition, organized by Amanda Cuesta and Mery Cuesta, offers a view of juvenile delinquency cinema, which peaked between 1978 and 1985, focusing on its relationship of retro-feeding with the press of the time. The exhibition also acts as a faithful reflection of the urban, social, political and economic transformations that were sweeping through the country at that time.

The starting point of «Gangs of the 80s» is the figure of the juvenile delinquent formed by the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency cinema. The codes of representation of juvenile delinquency found in this cinema genre have continued to the present day in such a way that the stereotype of the juvenile delinquent, subject to an aestheticising process, continues to excite fascination.

The presence of young delinquents in the media is the key to understanding their iconization. El Vaquilla and El Jaro are the brightest stars in this universe, real heroes of marginality, thanks to cinema biopics: Navajeros, the saga Perros Callejeros and Yo, El Vaquilla. These films form the backbone of gang culture cinema.

This exhibition tackles the survival of this juvenile delinquency phenomenon since its rise and the tragic end of many of its protagonists. Hand in hand with a new generation, an aesthetic pirouette has occurred by means of which the juvenile delinquent of the eighties has risen to become a cool icon. The icon today, especially on Internet, flies freely.

From 25 May 2009 to 06 September 2009  |  www.cccb.org
Opening hours: From Tuesday to Sunday: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. | Thusday 11 a.m. at 10 p.m.
Closed: Non-holiday Mondays

Nearest hotel to the exhibition: www.hotel1898.com

Digital Barcelona Film Festival

Digital Barcelona Film Festival  (DiBa) is the Festival that opens the cinema to the digital generation.
DiBa is more than just a film festival. Since its first edition, it has consolidated its position as the meeting point of the “Prosumers” generation and the place where you can make your own cinema, as well as seeing it.

Screenings: the latest audiovisual trends in a wide variety of cinematographic genres and formats such as: documentaries, animation, video clips, short films, etc.
Contests: be the main star with DiBa Express, the contest that challenges professional and amateurs to make a short film in 72 hours, or with DiBa Clip, the contest that proposes you to make a music video for one of the best musical groups of the moment.
Workshops: Check other ways of making films through the workshops DiBa Doc (documentary film) and DiBa Kids (cinema for and by children) in order to approach the digital creation.
Technology: DiBa is a meeting point of technology and creativity. We organize masterclasses, pro conferences and techrooms showing the latest digital technology innovations.

DiBa wants to see cinema, DiBa wants to make cinema!

More inf@: DiBa Felstival website

Núñez i Navarro Hotels: Barcelona always!

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