Next Monday, May 11, the press conference of ImagineIndia at the Ateneo (c / Prado, 21) at 11:30 AM with the presence of the following personalities: Carlos Iglesias (director), Guillermo Fesser (director), Jordi Dauder (actor), Chus Gutiérrez (director), Greater Wyoming ( presenter), Sergio Pazos (actor), Menene Gras (Casa Asia), Abdur Rahim Qazi (director of ImagineIndia), Antonia San Juan (actress), Sudhir Kumar (Counselor of the Embassy of India in Madrid), Alberto Luchini (Metropolis ), Javier Cifrián (actor) and Miguel Losada (film critic).
As every year towards the end of May, the ImagineIndia Madrid Indian Film Festival film festival, already in its eighth edition. Eighty-four films of 18 nationalities - all of them subtitled in Spanish - form the central body of this festival that never ceases to surprise in its commitment to a high-flying program. The 11 days of screenings, the more than 100 sessions and the 200 hours of cinema make this festival the largest feature film festival in Madrid.
In the circuit of international film festivals, the presence of films from all over the world has been consolidating in recent years, which show us thousands of details of the state of their affairs, where they are going or would like to go or the why of their behaviors. This fact makes these events the ideal place to, for a moment, become "the other", regardless of the projection that the films may obtain or the market shares that they may win. And it is precisely this putting ourselves in the place of the other that is pending for all of us.
The development of emerging countries and the glamor intrinsic to the seventh art have led to an enormous proliferation of films and new directors, thus making it difficult for festival programmers to select films. However, it is worth knowing that, every year in the month of May, the ImagineIndia festival with a solid selection, of great quality and very varied.
The starting gun for this eighth edition will be given, on May 20, by films such as The Prisoner (Pryas Gupta), Gypsy Caravan (Jasmine Dellal), Dreams from the Third World (Kan Lume) or We went to wonderland (Xiaolu Guo).
The Indian Section, with 38 films, will give an account of the past and the present of Indian cinema. The retrospectives of Girish Kasaravalli, Shaji Karun, Tapan Sinha (awarded with the Dada Saheb Phalke, the highest award in Indian cinema) and the lesser-known feature films of Satyajit Ray consolidate the retrospective section as a solid reference.
The competition and non-competition sections capture the best of Indian cinema in recent years. Directors like Shyam Benegal, Girish Kasaravalli, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Pryas Gupta, Anurag Kashyap are the best exponents of current Indian cinema made in Bombay but outside the sphere of what is known as Bolywood or Hindi / Urdu popular cinema. And it is that, one of the objectives of ImagineIndia is to show that less known face of Indian cinema, the so-called Parallel Cinema or independent cinema, betting on films of the highest quality such as One Wednesday (Neeraj Pandey), Mumbai, my life (Nishikant Kamat ), Welcome to Sajjanpur (Shyam Benegal) or Frozen (Shivajee Chandrabhusan). Really, this year, the jury will have a difficult time giving the prizes.
These sections are completed with classic films by Satyajit Ray and Tapan Sinha, as well as documentaries and short films where the future stars of Indian cinema make their first steps.
With its 38 Indian films, ImagineIndia has become the largest showcase of Indian cinema, including India. And it is organized in Madrid.
With each new edition, the Asian section rises one more notch, not only in quantity but, above all, in quality. This has been possible thanks to the NETPAC organization (Network for Promotion of Asian Cinema, chaired by Aruna Vasudev, patron of ImagineIndia) that would curate the Asian Competition section. NETPAC is the most prestigious body for the promotion of Asian cinema and it is an honor for ImagineIndia to have its support for the last three years.
The Asian part is made up of the retrospectives of Won Kar Wai and Eduard Yang. Along with them, the sample of 12 films from Hong Kong stands out, whose gaze is, to a great extent, closer to us due to their history and the Anglo-Saxon training of their directors. We have paid special attention to the directors Ann Hui, Mabel Cheung, Patrick Tam, Johnny To, all of them pillars of the best cinema made in this autonomous province of China.
Within the competitive section, some unpublished films stand out, such as Dreams from the Third World by Kan Lume; the Philippine film Kolorete, about Spanish influence; o Call me if you need me, by James Lee. Along with them, great films such as As We Are by Ann Hui or Ramchand Pakistani by Mehreen Jabber will be shown.
As in past editions, this year there is also a central theme with which the festival wants to show the way that cinema addresses certain social aspects. “Los gitanos” is the theme of the eighth edition of ImagineIndia. This section contains 7 films where the past and present causes of their marginalization and their introverted attitude towards it are explained. Robert Pejo's Dallas; Gypsy Caravan and American Gypsies, both by Jasmine Dellal; or Song of the dunes, by Paula Fouce, will give shape to this section.
Finally, for the first time, the festival will screen a selection of 8 representative titles of Australian cinema, a cinema that, without a doubt, we can call 'Great Cinema' and whose presence is almost nil in the Spanish festival circuit. Authors such as Ray Lawrance, Sarah Watt, Richard Roxburgh and Rowan Woods make a cinema with a limpid air and a distant look. And it is that, due to the very distance from the continent, its directors necessarily make a different cinema, but we emphasize that of 'Grande' in all its aspects.
The jury will be chaired by Chus Gutiérrez. Along with her will also be other personalities of Spanish cinema, among them, Jordi Dauder (Goya for best actor, 2008), Alberto Luchini (Metropolis), Guillermo Fesser (director), Antonio Saura (producer), Lucía Hoyos (actress), Miguel Losada (film critic), Javier Corcuera (director), Isaki Lacuesta (director), Chema Rodríguez (writer and director) and Javier Cifrián (actor).
The films of the festival will be shown in 7 different rooms: the Filmoteca de Madrid, Casa Asia, Ateneo de Madrid, Instituto Francés, Sala Triángulo, La Boca Cultural Space and La Escalera de Jacob.
The screenings will continue during the month of June at the Filmoteca and the Sala Triángulo.
Likewise, in the first week of June, the second edition of ImagineIndia Barcelona will be held, whose headquarters will be Casa Asia. In this installment, 16 films will be shown, all of them Indian. For the organization of this event we have had the invaluable collaboration of Casa Asia and Cine Asia.
The presentation to the public will take place on May 18 at 20:30 p.m. at the De Viaje bookstore in Madrid, on Calle Serrano 41. It will be attended by Javier Corcuera (director), Guillermo Toledo (actor), Guillermo Fesser (director) , José Marzilli (representative of Javier Bardem) and the director of ImagineIndia, Abdur Rahim Qazi.