Young filmmakers have always been the most neglected within the film industry because the short film format is a fragile and ephemeral one. While some consider that short films are only a step at some point in their careers, the truth is for some, directing a feature-length film was never one of their creative ambitions. And this is fine. Some ideas require emancipation from the pressure of the market and aesthetic autonomy. Others don’t even need the entire division of labor production mould or conventional storytelling devices. Shorts are prone to revolt, disrupt, or re-arrange the apparatus-based art of filmmaking, challenging the beaten track of conventions and thus making innovation and advance of the medium possible. While rewarding, this freeform comes with a precarious situation. When it comes to distribution, short films are one of the most reliant on the festival circuit, having limited possibilities for exhibition. Most of them disappear after they have ended their distribution cycle in response to the demands of premiere statuses and only a few resurface in retrospectives or television broadcasting. In this context of temporality, when selecting the films from an abundance of options, the commitment to relevance prevails, even if it is not always precisely displayed in major or activist themes.

From an artistic standpoint, the Official Section immerses us in sovereign worlds that convey a humanist gaze on reality. Even if we can’t escape our idiosyncrasies, the program confronts us with different styles, moods, genres, and origins, resonating and leaving a mark in the spectators’ minds. In a contemporary world of frontiers and walls, of permanent divisions and categories, the Las Palmas Official Section delivers a creative motor of a program, dissolving the borders of separation. Some films rupture the narrative flow and formal conventions to suggest a world of signification not directly invoked in the frames. Other directors reverberate to nature and the relationship with our surroundings, using cinema as an epistemological tool to make sense of the world. A program to explore the transformative possibilities of short cinema at its fullest.

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