- Directors Isaki Lacuesta, Virginia García de León, Elías León Siminiani and Fernando Franco defend the value of Spanish heterogeneous cinema, which approaches reality from very different angles, linked to the effects of the recession
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Saturday, April 1, 2016. Directors Isaki Lacuesta, Virginia García de León, Elías León Siminiani and Fernando Franco, who participated ten years ago in the Film Festival, within the D-Generation, the digital generation cycle, come back to the festival to give each one of them a master class and program with “carte blanche” the Panorama Spain film section. A selection that allows to take a look at some of these filmmakers’ new proposals, who have chosen to express themselves from the industry’s edges. They, together with the programmers of 2007’s catalogue, Antonio Weinrichter and Josetxo Cerdán, have presented their personal bets that will be screened this week in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
This group of filmmakers, teachers and film editors defend the value of Spanish heterogeneous cinema, which approaches reality from very different angles, and that is linked to the effects of the recession. “This cinema is still a thermometer of what’s going on in Spain, although many insist on denying it”, pointed out Elías Siminiani. In this sense, Isaki Lacuesta insisted on the fact the presence of Spanish cinema in the world has to do with film that have not even been released in Spain. Very appreciated people abroad, like Oliver Laxe, “that are of no interest here. There’s a certain type of films that are not, that are not considered, that you will never see in a Goya ceremony or in the main headlines of the country”.
In any case, the D-Generation filmmakers, far from considering themselves “the other Spanish cinema”, highlighted the diversity at a formal and esthetic level of the films made outside the industry. “There’s no pattern that connects us all, Spanish films in general are very different; professionals have a great versatility, very few can live from making films, so we do other things apart from directing”, explained Fernando Franco.
Share this Post