The event, curated by Ruth Somalo and Lur Olaizola, and produced by Laura Turégano, will include guest filmmaker: Mercedes Álvarez, Neus Ballús, Cecilia Barriga, Virginia García del Pino, Pilar Monsell, and Sandra Ruesga.
The King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (KJCC) at New York University will present a showcase and symposium entitled “The Limit of Our Gaze – Women Filmmakers and Contemporary Documentary in Spain” on Friday, Oct. 2, and Saturday, Oct. 3. The back to back events are free and open to the public at KJCC, 53 Washington Square South, New York, N.Y., (tel. 212.998.3650).
The event, curated by Ruth Somalo and Lur Olaizola, and produced by Laura Turégano, will include guest filmmaker: Mercedes Álvarez, Neus Ballús, Cecilia Barriga, Virginia García del Pino, Pilar Monsell, and Sandra Ruesga.
Friday, October 2: PAISAJES/LANDSCAPES:
2:30 p.m. Program 1: El Jurado (The Jury) (Virginia García del Pino, 2012, 63’) + La iniciación (The Lesson) (Sandra Ruesga, 2014, 15’.) Q&A moderated by Jo Labanyi (Professor of Spanish and Coordinating Editor, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, New York University)
5:00 p.m. Program 2: Africa 815 (Pilar Monsell, 2014, 66’) + Haciendo Memoria (Jogging My Memory) (Sandra Ruesga, 2013, 9’.) Q&A moderated by Ruth Somalo (artist, filmmaker, curator and a PhD Candidate at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.)
7:30 p.m. Program 3: Tres instantes, un grito (Cecilia Barriga, 2013, 96’.) Q&A moderated by Isabel M. Estrada (Assistant Professor/Deputy Chair, Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literatures, The City College of New York, CUNY.)
Saturday, October 3: MIRADAS / GLANCES
10:30 a.m. - 11:30 p.m. Networking breakfast. Closed networking event by invitation only.
12:00 p.m. Program 4: Open panel with the six guest filmmakers: Mercedes Álvarez, Neus Ballús, Cecilia Barriga, Virginia García del Pino, Pilar Monsell,and Sandra Ruesga. Moderated by Ruth Somalo & Lur Olaizola.
3:00 p.m. Program 5: La Plaga (The Plague) (Neus Ballús, 2013, 82’) + I’m Fluss (Downstream) (Cecilia Barriga, 2007, 5’). Q&A moderated by Lur Olaizola (curator, visual artist, Audiovisual Program Coordinator, Tabakalera, San Sebastian, Spain)
5:00 p.m. Program 6: Mercado de Futuros (Futures Market) (Mercedes Álvarez, 2011, 110’)+ A través de sus ojos (Through Their Eyes) (Sandra Ruesga, 2012, 11’). Q&A moderated by Susana Draper (Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University.)
ALL FILMS HAVE ENGLISH SUBTITLES.
With the support of AC/E, Spain’s Public Agency for Cultural Action, NYU Department of Spanish and Portuguese, NYU King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center. Networking breakfast sponsored by Doughnut Plant. Accommodations sponsored by Room Mate Grace Hotel.
Media Sponsors: Pragda, Spain Culture New York.
SYNOPSIS
EL JURADO / THE JURY by Virginia García del Pino (63 minutes)
The camera filming the members of a people's jury at a murder trial finds itself incapable of representing anything. We are both listening and surveying the listening process, we invent the film we can not see. The members of the jury become our mirror image lost in a labyrinth of evidence, images, and witnesses.
LA INICIACION / THE LESSON by Sandra Ruesga (15 minutes)
In this observational ethnographic tale, two daughters in their fifties have the right to fish in their local fishing spot for the first time, and are finally allowed to learn the ancient local fishing art from their father.
AFRICA 815 by Pilar Monsell (66 minutes)
Gleaning her father’s photo archive and diaries, the director explores the failure of the traditional family project that her dad had contrived after serving in the military at the Spanish colony in Western Sahara. An intimate portrait of a man and his enchanting affection seeking journey during the 1980s and 90s in Morocco explored through the interstitial space between memory and landscape.
HACIENDO MEMORIA / JOGGING MY MEMORY by Sandra Ruesga (9 minutes)
A super-8 film about personal remembering, that reviews the negative space under the shadow of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in the domestic images of an average family. It takes a look at the present in a search for keys to the past and an understanding of a world in which the figure of the dictator is unfortunately still relevant.
TRES INSTANTES UN GRITO / THREE MOMENTS, A SHOUT by Cecilia Barriga (96 minutes)
A documentary born out of the fascination for the spontaneous global movements of angry citizens. A journey through three cities where a new spirit of social protest has seized the popular imagination and reawakened the demand for a more just society: In Madrid, the indignados, in New York, the 99%, and in Santiago de Chile, the students that have staked a claim for human dignity. The diversity of these protesters expresses the breadth of a common desire for justice and the will to pursue it.
LA PLAGA / THE PLAGUE by Neus Ballús (82 minutes)
The Plague is a film of interwoven stories that offers a realistic and atmospheric portrait of life in the outskirts of contemporary crisis ridden Barcelona. The main characters are not actors: they play themselves after four years of working with the director.
I’M FLUSS / DOWNSTREAM by Cecilia Barriga (5 minutes)
For decades, two 70-year-old Swiss ladies have been walking along each other. In the summertime, their daily ritual is to swim down the river that flows through their hometown while they ponder the unthinkable.
MERCADO DE FUTUROS / FUTURES MARKET by Mercedes Alvarez (110min)
A film essay that traces the connections between memory, public space, and the real estate bubbles that led to the international financial crisis. "The art of memory was practiced by philosophers, poets, and architects", a narrator tells us. In this poetic tableau we see the art of forgetting practiced by real estate developers and business school gurus.
A TRAVES DE SUS OJOS / THROUGH THEIR EYES by Sandra Ruesga (11min)
Poetic first person film that looks at images in search for identity. A woman’s world cannibalized by the lens that points at her children observing, absorbing, loving. Erasing her.
Filmmakers Bios
Mercedes Álvarez was born in 1966 in Aldealseñor, Soria, Castilla y León, Spain. She is a director and writer. Her first feature film, THE SKY TURNS (2005), has been shown in more than 30 countries and the Tiger Awards from Rotterdam, Cinema du Rèel from Paris, Infinity from Alba (Italy) and BACIFI from Buenos Aires. She has also made the short documentary EL VIENTO AFRICANO (1997) and, more recently, her cinematographic poem CINCO ELEMENTOS PARA CUALQUIER UNIVERSO. As in the case of THE SKY TURNS, FUTURES MARKET emerged within the scope of the Master de Documental de Creación from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, with the support of its director, Jordi Balló, and the participation of the students.
Neus Ballús was born in 1980 in Mollet del Vallès (Barcelona, Spain). She earned a degree in editing and filmmaking from Barcelona's Pompeu Fabra University. Her first short films, "The granddad with a movie camera" and "Immersion" earned several prizes around the world. Her first feature-lenght film, "La Plaga" (The Plague), was premiered at Berlinale 2013 and was nominated for the European Film Awards - European Discovery, the LUX Prize Awards, the Goya Awards, and has received more than 20 international prizes, including 4 Premis Gaudí and the prestigious and historical 57th Premi Sant Jordi to the Best Spanish First Film. In 2006, and teaming up with producer and scriptwriter Pau Subirós, she set up the production company “El Kinògraf”. Since then, they have developed and produced cinema, documentary and TV projects together, commissioned or co produced by major European cultural institutions such as channel ARTE France, TVE (Spanish Public TV), TVC (Catalan Public TV), the UE Program MEDIA, and the Catalan and Spanish film funds. She is strongly interested in cinema along the boundaries of documentary and fiction, and she have specialized in scriptwriting, film editing and working with non-professional actors. She is currently developing her second feature-length film, “Staff Only”.
Cecilia Barriga was born in Concepcion, Chile, in 1957. She left home at nineteen to study in Madrid. In 1984, she graduated in sound and image in the Complutense University. In 1994, she settled down in New York to study screenwriting and video art at Columbia University. Back in Spain, she made numerous documentaries and TV reports, without leaving the realm of fiction. Her 1991 film Meeting of Two Queens was shown at Montreal Women's Film and Video Festival and New York International Festival of Gay and Lesbian Film. She directed her first feature film Time's Up! in New York. It premiered at the Donostia-San Sebastián Film Festival in 2000 as part of Zabaltegi. Cecilia Barriga and Claudia Lorenz have worked together since 2006 and produced two shorts, IM FLUSS and THE DAY OF THE EURO. Her work ranges from fiction to documentary to video art and is known for it’s simple political and humanizing portraits and stories.
Virginia García del Pino, Barcelona, Spain, 1966. She is a project director for the Master of Creative Documentary Program at the UAB. After graduating in Fine Arts, her production as a video artist brings her to the documentary genre. She has lived in Mexico, where she directed her first short films, including PARE DE SUFRIR (2002). Later, she made the documentary What You Say I Am (2008) which opened the doors to numerous international film festivals, although her short films still participate in contemporary art exhibitions. With My Sister and I (2009), she participated in Features festivals like Punto de Vista and Fid Marseille. They were followed by ESPACIO SIMETRICO (2010) and BASILIO MARTIN PATINO. LA DECIMA CARTA (2014). Her latest production, The Jury, is her first full-length film. Her films, of resounding formal simplicity, arise from an attempt to understand human behavior and in doing so, her films float between optimism and a disturbingly tragic background.
Pilar Monsell Cordoba, Spain, 1979. She graduated in Audiovisual Communication at Malaga University, and in Artistic Photography; in 2007 she concluded her MFA on Documentary Creation Film at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona with an Art scholarship by the Andalusian Government. Her first short film Time Machines (2002) won First Price of Young Video from the Cordoba Council. During 2004-2007, she coordinates and programs for the social-artistic meeting Fadaiat, on the spanish-moroccan border (Tangier and Tarifa). In 2007, she co-directed the short documentary film School Minutes. Founded by Iniciarte’07 of the Andalusian Government she produced and directed her short documentary Distances. In 2009, Pilar joined the Laboratory of Documentary Creation run by Play Doc – IDF in Tui, where she directed a portrait filmed between 2009-2013. In 2012, her short BREAD, WORK AND FREEDOM premiered at Doc Lisboa 2012 IFF and she participated also in the french collective cinema project 100jours, directing the short film +46. In 2013, she directed the short film VULCAO.
Sandra Ruesga holds a Bachelor degree in Communications and Political Science in both University Complutense of Madrid and the Institut d´Etudes Politiques of Toulouse (France). She also holds a master in Historial Documentary Film Screenwriting, alter what she deepened into the documentary film World by learning from documentarist such as Patricio Guzmán or Michael Rabiger. She is Co- director, Co-writer and Co-producer of the feature documentary 200Km. She has an ongoing CORRESPONDENCES project with filmmaker Ruth Somalo. Sandra’s awarded documentary Haciendo Memoria (Jogging my Memory), as part of the collective film Entre el dictador y yo (Between the Dictator and Me), exposes the inherited silence about Spanish dictator Franco. The military uprising he led against the Republican government of Spain, that was part of a 'pact of forgetting' that underpinned the transition to democracy after his death; becomes the backdrop of this biographical experimental film. Sandra has work as a programer for documentary festivals and film series like DOCUMENTAMADRID, 4+1 INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL and Cines Zoco en Majadahonda.