72nd San Sebastian Festival - 20/28 September 2024
72SSIFF - 20/28 September 2024
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Z365" or "Festival all year round" is the new strategic point of the Festival in which converge investigation, accompaniment and development of new talents (Ikusmira Berriak, Nest); training and cinematic knowledge transfer (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Zinemaldia + Plus, Filmmakers' dialogue); and investigation, disclosure and cinematic thought (Z70 project, Thought and Discussion and Research and publications).
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Agenda
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FIPRESCI 1995/96
Films
Films
BENT HAMER
86 min.
Bent Hammer is aware of the importance of frequency for constituting narrative temporality in all tales, where events do not only take place, but generally repeat themselves. When the objective of fiction is the imitation of reality, extraordinary happenings cannot follow one other in an isolated manner without being punctuated by the frequency of the actions we repeat each day. (...) Behind the lives of the leading characters is a somewhat poetic art of vulgarity. A poetic art which is distantly related to certain vulgar worlds explored by another Scandinavian film-maker, the caustic Aki Kaurismäki. Angel Quintana
ZHANG YUAN
95 min.
Controversial Sixth Generation director Zhang Yuan, who ruffled Chinese authorities' feathers with his independently made features Mama and Beijing Bastards, pays an extending visit to his downstairs neighbours in Sons. Tracking the head of the house's descent from alcoholism into madness, this gritty docudrama, renacted by the family themselves, is an audacious enterprise notable for its unflinching authenticity. (...) Zhang's resourcefulness as a film-maker is evident in the fact that the feature was made at all, given the govenment ruling curtailing his professional activity.
ZHANG YUAN , DUAN JINCHUAN
100 min.
I know it is very difficult to make films in China independently. Most of the film directors in China belong to state film studios at the assignment for employment after graduating from the Beijing Film Academy. Mr. Zhang Yuan declined it and started as an independent film-maker. Though The Square may look and is a small-budgeted, small-size film, it is a no nonsense film. (...) I am not a veteran of reading between the lines, but when I see Asian films I try to see how this or that film could be produced under the severe control of censorship of the country to which the film belongs. The Square is a brave film. Fuyuko Hayashi
Sergei Bodrov
95 min.
Like in so many other things, there is nothing worse in cinematography than good intentions, especially when accompanied by heated, so-called pacifist discourse. And what better a starting point for this than a topical subject related to the countless armed conflicts which devastate our post-cold war panorama, doubtlessly the ideal situation for conscious authors to fill their mouths - and often their purses - with their "humanist", "pacifist" or simply "symbolic" abuse? This, don't doubt the fact, was the biggest trap awaiting Prisoner of the Mountains (...) (...). Relieved, the spectator sees that there was nothing to fear: in spite of the fact that the film is set up as an antimilitarist track, and even in spite of its ambiguous and calculated neutrality, Bodrov's film is finally something else, much more than it seems at first glance.
AIVARS FREIMANIS
135 min.
A typical example of a cinema concerned about its role within a process of national reconstruction, and a sample of strange cinematography on international circuits, Ligzda succeeds in avoiding a large part of the obstacles provoked by its own approach and intentions. Way beyond didactism - whether historical or social - which would thereby bring the film closer to traditional Soviet models, or to a positivity alien to the very contradictions of that which is vital, both on the individual and collective level, it also avoids getting caught up in the beauty of its landscapes, not giving in to the temptation of aesthetism, although this takes absolutely nothing away from the splendours of Viktors Gribermanis' black and white photography.
ROSA VON PRAUNHEIM
89 min.
The main virtue responsible for awarding this prize to Rosa von Praunheim was, by general recognition of my Jury accomplices, irony: the amusing, intelligent, never complaining or self-compassionate way of dealing with an autobiographical comedy on homosexuality and AIDS. (...) Grotesque, comical, shameless, bad-mannered, Rosa von Praunheim's film is the denial of the politically correct, but also offers eighty-nine minutes of cinema full of highly instructive inventions, games and expressions. It's not true that we've got nothing left to do but cry.
YIM HO
100 min.
Based on a melodramatic structure, this film apparently backs convenient love as the path to social redemption. However, the progressively uncovered details of the bloody methods used by the officer who has seduced the heroine in exchange for helping her out of poverty, cause her to undergo a radical change of attitude. Examining the traditional side of a deeply male chauvinist society, The Sun has Ears has, if possible, an even greater expressive force. Sudden acts of rebellion, like the one assumed by the leading lady at the end of the film, (...) are only justified by certain social situations which this film, so apparently serene and decidedly energetic in outlook, helps us to understand better.
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