• Tickets to attend the opening ceremony, which will take place on April 19 at the Symphonic Hall of the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium, are available at the digital portal of the cultural entity and on the links provided on the websites lpafilmfestival.com and lpacultura.com
• The film event will open with the screening of Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr., a film currently celebrating its first centenary that will kick off this year’s program accompanied by the Gran Canaria Big Band under Chano Gil’s direction
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Buster Keaton will light up the screen of the Symphonic Hall of the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium on April 19. He will do so one hundred years after the premiere of what is considered one of his masterpieces: Sherlock Jr. (USA, 1924, 49 min.). A black and white film, which he starred in and directed, that will open this 23rd edition of the International Film Festival and that will be accompanied by the Gran Canaria Big Band, who will perform Duke Ellington’s music under the direction of Chano Gil.
The opening of the Film Festival will feature one of the most renowned actresses of Spanish cinema, theater and television: Mónica López. Winner of numerous distinctions and nominations, including the ‘Can de las Artes’, she will be in charge of conducting the opening ceremony and presenting the contents of the edition.
The Gran Canarian artist, who has lived in Barcelona since she began her training in the art of acting, has worked with masters of the stage such as Adolfo Marsillach and Mario Gas, and with prominent figures in Spanish auteur cinema such as Ventura Pons, Augustí Vila and Cesc Gay. She has also worked under Laura Mañá, Álvaro Fernández Armero, Emilio Martínez Lázaro or Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, among many others. Her presence in TV series goes back to the 90’s, including several successful productions of Cataluña’s TV3. Hierro, by Pepe Coira and Fran Araújo, brought her back to the Archipelago, and gave her the leading role in this team’s next fiction series: Rapa. During her career, which now spans over three decades, she has not only proved her acting skills and her effectiveness on the set, but has also stood out for her commitment and honesty.
Tickets to attend the opening ceremony are now available through the usual channels of the Auditorium and Theater Foundation, in addition to the links enabled on the websites lpafilmfestival.com and lpacultura.com.
Sherlock Jr. “Camera Obscura”
In its fourth year of life, “Camera Obscura” is once again in charge of opening the film event with a title that celebrates its first centenary. The Festival’s most classic section, which pays tribute to the history of the seventh art and music, will remind the audience of the ties that bind both arts. Because, as FICLPGC director Luis Miranda recalls in the catalog, although films were silent for its first decades, “they were very rarely without sound” since “from (almost) the beginning they were accompanied by music.”
This 2024, the film festival will open with one of silent cinema’s most acclaimed works, Sherlock Jr., in which Keaton displays his talent as a director and actor while always exhibiting his immovable expression, no matter what happens. Full of visual gags, in it Keaton plays the projectionist of a small neighborhood cinema who, to win the favor of his beloved, pretends to become a detective and ends up inside the film he is projecting after falling asleep.
Original and avant-garde, this masterpiece of slapstick -a type of comedy where physical activity is exaggerated- will be accompanied by Gran Canaria Big Band’s live music. This formation is backed by 25 years of experience with over “75 productions that have led it to collaborate with great artists such as Paquito D’Rivera, Kurt Elling, New York Voices, Anthony Strong, Sole Giménez, Braulio, Deborah Carter, Santiago Auserón, Pedro Guerra, Pasión Vega, Germán López, Cristina Ramos, or Jorge Pardo, among others”, pointed out the director of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival.
With Chano Gil at the helm, the screening will include pieces from the best-known repertoire of Eduardo Kennedy ‘Duke’ Ellington, “whose artistic development was one of the most spectacular, especially in jazz.” It will be done with a “special Big Band format with three trumpets, three trombones, four saxophones, a clarinet and a rhythmic base formed by piano, double bass, drums and guitar.”
The section will continue throughout the film festival with Mikaël (Michael, Germany, 1924, 94 min.) by Carl Theodor Dreyer. On this occasion, Cines Yelmo Las Arenas will host a screening that will be accompanied by the International Bach Festival, who will perform the music composed expressly for the event by Gran Canarian composer Laura Vega.
Share this Post