SOME IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF SANFIC 6:
Top-notch jury members
In SANFIC 6, we are particularly proud of the prestige which distinguishes the local and international names that we gathered to evaluate our three competitions and the Work In Progress section. In the International Competition, we find acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet, winner of three Goya awards as a director and screenwriter thanks to movies like My Life Without Me and The Secret Life of Words. Alongside her, her colleague Abel Ferrara, a true emblematic figure in American independent film thanks to fundamental 90s titles such as King of New York and Bad Lieutenant, and who will also show us his film Napoli Napoli Napoli. Completing this solid and promising jury, we have Robert Koehler, renowned Variety film critic.
In the Chilean Cinema Competition, we have Bolivian filmmaker Rodrigo Bellott, American Mike Maggiore, programmer for the institution that in the last 40 years has become one of the fundamental New York cinemas: the Film Forum. Also, Portuguese Nuno Sena, founder and co-director of the prestigious international festival Indie Lisboa.
In the Local Talent Competition, we have Chilean actor and cultural promoter Felipe Braun; filmmaker Jim Finn, an eminence in indie and experimental American films; and Jeff Werner, an important American filmmaker and editor. And in the Work in Progress category we have Valerie Cates, executive editor of Random House Films; Argentinean Pablo Udenio, founder and director of the magazine Haciendo Cine and co-organizer of Primer Corte, which is a Latin American work in progress category in the Ventana Sur film market of Buenos Aires; Monika Wagenberg, co-founder and co-director of Cinema Tropical, a cultural organization devoted to the promotion, programming and distribution of Latin cinema in the United States.
The SANFIC seal:
Wide and award-winning international panorama
Among the competitions and the rest of the sections, focuses and retrospectives, our film selection includes recent, award-winning, quality films, boarding the most diverse subjects and places in the world: besides Chile, there will be productions from over 25 countries, including Germany, Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Spain, United States, France, the Netherlands, Iran, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, Mozambique, Peru, Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland and Taiwan. And the genre and style variety is wide: from dramas, romantic comedies and experimental documentaries, to melodramas and police thrillers.
As part of the sub-sections in our Visions of the World section, we have once again programmed the most recent works in French, German, American and Middle Eastern cinema, but this year we also incorporated Swiss Mosaic, a space that offers a panoramic view of the rich and active film industry found in this European country; in this context, we will have as our guests two of its most representative names, Lionel Baier and Séverine Cornamusaz, who will show us her three feature films that have been premiered until now.
Also, as has already become customary at SANFIC, we have put together a varied and complete selection of the most award-winning and praised productions in the last two years in the most important festivals of the world, such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Rotterdam, Sundance, Tribeca and Locarno. Thus, among others, three films that were in the last version of the French competition, in May: Peruvian Octubre and Argentineans Los labios and Carancho, the first two of which received awards in the Un Certain Regard section. Also, there are two that were part of the Berlinale’s official competition: Howl and The Robber, and also this year’s winner at Rotterdam and Bafici, Alamar, as well as the two main winners at Tribeca, the German movie When we Leave and documentary Monica & David. Also, we will show one of the greatest box-office and critical successes in recent Spanish cinema, Cell 211, this year’s recipient of 8 Goya awards, including best film, director and actor.
The masters and the new generations
One of the aspects of our programming that has been of greater interest to us since our beginning has been the possibility of not only showcasing the new names in international cinematography, but also saving a privileged spot for filmmakers who are already renowned, having prestige among critics and moviegoers around the world, and some of them with filmographies that cross several decades.
Within this mix between young values and veteran masters, we will have new productions by authors such as Tsai Ming-liang, Margarethe von Trotta, Fatih Akin and Romuald Karmakar, among others, all of them of great importance internationally, but some of which are unfortunately unknown to the local audiences, which makes this opportunity to see their work on SANFIC’s big screen more valuable. At the same time, we will present our viewers with some of the names everyone is talking about in the festival’s circuit, even though they hadn’t been shown in our area, like Xavier Dolan, Benjamin Heisenberg and Joao Pedro Rodrigues, among others; the eclectic selection even includes The Sentimental Engine Slayer, Omar Rodríguez-López’s -the multitalented musician from The Mars Volta- film debut.
Chilean film:
The best and most recent in feature and short films
As every year, in SANFIC we seek to stimulate and empower the development and communication of Chilean film, giving an important space to local productions. Consequently, this year we not only once again have a representative of our country in the International Competition -Drama, Matías Lira’s directorial debut, as a pre-premiere before its October commercial release- and the nine productions that are a part of the Chilean Cinema Competition; also our recurrent short film section Local Talent becomes a competition, with 16 selected titles. And if we add to this the six works selected for our Work In Progress, which groups feature films that have already been filmed and await their post-production, and will alternate interesting debuts with some experienced filmmakers such as Sebastián Lelio and Pachi Bustos; the space assigned to local directors is even larger.
In the Chilean Cinema Competition, we will have a subject and style variety that speaks very well of the local industry’s development, especially regarding the coexistence between fiction works and documentaries. Two works will cross both genres in a very personal way: 31 de abril, by Víctor Cubillos, and Manuel de Ribera, by Christopher Murray and Pablo Carrera, in its Chilean premiere after being shown at European festivals such as Rotterdam, Toulouse and Munich. In the documentary area, we will see Adentro y afuera by Matías Cardone, A la sombra del moai by the Italian director living in Chile Lorenzo Moscia, Generation Exile by Rodrigo Dorfman, and La quemadura by René Ballesteros, which won the latest version of Documenta Madrid. On the other hand, even when dealing with fiction, Cargar la sangre by Christian Zamora, Piotr: Una mala traducción by Martín Seeger, and Velódromo by Alberto Fuguet -the writer and filmmaker’s second feature film- offer a valuable look at the urban surroundings of Santiago.
The Local Talent Competition will also offer an attractive panorama of aesthetic and narrative possibilities of the Chilean short films. The selection includes a wide range of subjects and production levels; it includes both fiction and documentaries, and it goes from short films depicting diverse realities in today’s Chile -specifically showing cities like Santiago and Valparaíso, and including the family scope, communication problems, connections between our past and our present, affective shortcomings and social marginality- to works filmed in Mexico City, New York and Havana, which are nevertheless greatly universal.
Focuses and retrospectives: Coixet, Denis and Finn
Besides offering our audience debuts by young filmmakers and the most recent films by celebrated names, in SANFIC we are always interested in offering focuses and retrospectives that allow us to further know and appreciate with greater depth the work of directors who have not had commercial support in our country, or who have had only one or two movies commercially released, despite being greatly prestigious outside our borders. This is how this time we will have the chance to get close to the filmography of Isabel Coixet and Jim Finn, who will also join us as jurors, and French director Claire Denis, considered one of the key names in the European film panorama of the last two decades, and who this year presided the jury of the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Festival.
At Isabel Coixet’s retrospective, entitled Inner Worlds, we will show five works that encompass almost 15 years of the Spanish filmmaker’s curriculum, including her most recent film, Map of the sounds of Tokyo, premiered last year at Cannes’ official competition. At Jim Finn’s focus, Perceptions of Reality, we will have the chance to appreciate this author’s particular viewpoint, of whom we will show his three feature films to date, as well as short films. And seizing the presence of Claire Denis, a true eminence in today’s French cinema, we will have the Claire Denis: Experiencing with the Limits retrospective, in which we will offer the public the opportunity to see, for the first time on the big screen, seven of her films, also encompassing 15 years of her career, and including her most recent film, White Material, starring Isabelle Huppert and Christopher Lambert, and premiered last year as part of Venice’s official competition.
Shoot the Shooter x 3
One of our festival’s sections that have gathered the most interest in previous versions, attracting an audience that is not limited to seasoned moviegoers, is Shoot the Shooter. For the fourth year in a row, SANFIC dedicates this space to the broadcasting of works by unique and fascinating artists who have become important in the audiovisual area thanks to creations that exceed the traditional scope of cinema. After Juan Downey, Danny Williams, and last year’s visit by Jem Cohen, this time the section will show the works of two artists of different areas and origins:
Alfredo Jaar: this New York-based Chilean artist is considered by experts as the main international exponent of Chilean visual art, as is confirmed by his presence at cultural events such as the Venice Biennial and the Kassel Documenta. Nonetheless, his cinematographic side has been less shown, and this is why, in our festival, it will be an honor to have Jaar himself showing us two of his medium-length films, We Wish to Inform You that We didn’t Know and Le ceneri di Pasiolini (Pasolini’s Ashes), which is an interesting investigation that came from the remembered Italian filmmaker, and was premiered at last year’s Venice Biennial and shown recently at the MoMA in New York.
Almagul Menlibayeva: born in Kazakhstan and currently alternating her residence between Berlin and Amsterdam, her works mix photography, video and performance, and have been shown in individual and collective expositions at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, and the Venice Biennial, as well as the Rotterdam Festival. At SANFIC 6, she will present us with 14 of her short films.
Andy Warhol: undoubtedly one of the artistic icons of the 20th century, whose life and work have been influential for many generations of audio-visual creators. We will count with some of his more attractive productions, including the famous full-lenght film of 1966, co-directed with Paul Morrissey, The Chelsea Girls, of 3 hours and a half of duration, with music of The Velvet Underground and two simultaneous projectors of 16 mm. requirement in order to be exhibited; in addition, the Screen Tests, which include figures as Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick and the independent filmmaker Jonas Mekas. This will also be the South American premier of Face and The Velvet Underground in Boston. All these titles will be screened in SANFIC 6 by a special management of the curator of the Department of Film of the MoMA of New York, Joshua Siegel, who will specially come to our festival to present his works.
For every taste
Subject matter variety is one of our qualities, and this is why the selection of films in SANFIC 6 offers great diversity of styles and stories, which will surely satisfy the most diverse audiences, from the most avid and moviegoers to those who at least want to give a chance to films that are different from the ones commonly offered by our commercial cinemas.
Consequently, for those who seek comedies to just sit back and have a good time, we will have films like Friendship!, La reine des pommes, Tandoori Love and Die Standesbeamtin; those who are interested in visual arts can see the Argentinean documentary Gorri, and fans of exotic gastronomy may enjoy Iranian cookbook; while the ones who wish to dig deep into harsh and complex social realities will have a choice between films such as La tierra se quedó, Norteado, Paraíso, Un lugar llamado Los Pereyra, Zona Sur and Sombras. And in a similar note, the most diverse aspects of current society are objects for documentaries like The Other City, The Oath, Monica&David, Sweetgrass and Khanimambo Mozambique. The shadow left by the World War II, its echoes and effects that reach even current times, are present in films such as Gerdas Schweigen, Saviors in the Night, and The Woman with the 5 Elephants.
In the musical field, our section SANFIC Music will allow us to feed illusions to ourselves with the possible reunion of The Kinks (Do It Again), know one of the most famous outdoor festivals in Europe (Roskilde) and have a different look at the work of Ricardo Villalobos, the Chilean DJ that succeeds in the international electronic circuit (Villalobos). And in dance, while Dancing Dreams offers us the last conversations with the famous Pina Bausch while she prepares a very special re-staging of one of her most commented creations, in Vers Mathilde we will be able to appreciate the art of choreographer Mathilde Monnier, one of the most relevant figures in European contemporary dance.
In the literary ambit, the comedy Lila, Lila reflects what hides beneath the contemporary editorial world, while in Howl, with a prestigious cast starring James Franco, the award-winning documentary directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman board a 1957 obscenity trial caused by the poem by Allan Ginsberg, Howl, which is an absolute icon for the Beat Generation. And, of course, besides more than a hundred programmed titles, there are also some special winks to the most seasoned moviegoers: in Visage, director Tsai Ming-liang filmed a movie at the Louvre where he maintains his particular universe, and confirms once again that in his career French cinema is a clear referent. To prove it, in two of the main roles he has cast Jean-Pierre Léaud and Fanny Ardant, and cameos include Natalie Baye, Mathieu Amalric, and a living legend: Jeanne Moreau. Taking advantage of this true declaration of love to French cinema, SANFIC 6 has also programmed the documentary Deux de la vague; premiered last year in Cannes to commemorate the half-century mark since the premiere of the classic The 400 blows, the film reviews the main milestones in the French New Wave, focusing especially in the personal and artistic relationship between Truffaut and Godard.
Educational, academics and communication area:
Getting everywhere
Since our beginnings, at SANFIC we have felt that one of the greatest priorities we have as a festival lies in communications, in broadening our audience and reaching more spectators of the most diverse ages, origins, and social segments. This is a line of work we have assumed and we are interested in continuing to develop it in an increasingly strong way, so as to continue to create new audiences and reinforcing the education of the existing ones, so that everyone can understand that cinema is closer than they think and believe. In this context, aside from the exhibition of films and special activities, in SANFIC 6 we will have different instances that will be aimed at a wide range of audiences:
We will develop educational activities for the general public, with the goal of creating audiences and integrating a part of the population that does not always have the possibility to get close to cinematography from other places in the world; with this objective, we will once again develop the successful initiative ‘SANFIC en tu comuna’, in which movies from the festival are shown in different points of Santiago city. For this, we will have a mobile cinema which will visit seven districts of the capital, an actual cinema theater with 132 seats, restrooms and air conditioning.
With the same goal of getting the festival’s movies to more people, we are working on setting up -after over two decades- a drive-in cinema: AUTOSANFIC, with a giant screen and a capacity that exceeds 60 cars. Also, SANFIC EN LA NIEVE, which will show films in snowy Valle Nevado. This way we expect to incorporate SANFIC 6 to a wider and more varied audience spectrum, so that they can experience it and enjoy it.
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