One of the most important events in Colombia’s cultural calendar, the 16th Eurocine Festival will be touring the country’s major cities in the coming weeks, to showcase the best in European independent cinema.
Organized by a group of three film enthusiasts, prominent in the country’s cultural scene, and supported by Colombia’s European embassies, the film festival is dedicated to presenting both retrospective and modern looks into the cinema produced in Europe.
Organizer Michele Viaud of the French Embassy in Colombia aims to combat the overpowering influence of the mutiplex cinema, offering audiences a chance to “enjoy a type of alternative cinema … to appreciate it as if it were a work of art.”
The event will involve screenings of over 35 shorts, feature-length films and documentaries from seventeen different European countries, and after opening in Bogota the festival will travel to Medellin, Cali, Bucaramanga, Pereira and Chia. The event is expected to attract audiences of over 20,000 people throughout the country.
With a slightly new format, and increased funding by the European Commission, the festival’s organizers announced that Eurocine will begin to honor one country in particular each year. This year’s event will be recognizing the cinematic achievements of Spain, with a section dedicated to films that have been produced by the country within the last twenty years.
Films by acclaimed Spanish directors Ventura Pons, Julio Medem, Jose Corbacho and Javier Gutierrez will constitute an integral part of the festival’s new format, showing films such as “Barcelona (un mapa)”, “Camino” and “Caotica Ana.”
According to the event’s website, this year’s festival will be divided into six sections, each with a different focus. These include: the “Official Section,” involving Spanish films both new and old; “A Female Perspective;” “Art and Cinema,” involving pieces at the forefront of artistic modern cinema; “Europe in Shorts,” featuring short films; “Community Cinema,” involving family-friendly films to be shown in the city’s libraries and community centres; and “Homage,” dedicated to the films of the late French director Eric Rohmer.
The Eurocine Festival will open in Bogota on April 15 at the city’s Jorge Eliercer Gaitan Theater, with a screening of Spanish film “Camino” by director Javier Fesser.
Bogota’s festival will last for eleven days before moving to its other destinations, where the events will last between four and six days.
To find out more details about which films will be shown and where, click here.