13th BAFICI News

Within the Argentine Official Selection, BAFICI presents the out-of-competition short film Rosalinda (photo) by Matías Piñeiro, inspired in Shakespeare’s female characters and produced by the Jeonju International Film Festival 2010, through its “Jeonju Digital Project.” The director of Todos mienten (Special Mention in the International Official Selection of the BAFICI 2009) here depicts a busy day of rehearsal for a Shakespeare play on an island in Tigre, where Luisa (the actress) and Rosalinda (the character) are living in two parallel realities. The scheduled screenings are as follows: Friday 8 at 11.30 pm, Wednesday 13 at 1.00 pm and Sunday 17 at 5.15 pm at Hoyts Abasto. Tickets are on sale, at 12 pesos each, on www.festivales.gob.ar, or personally at Hoyts General Cinema Abasto and La Casa de la Cultura, from 10.00 am to 8.00 pm.

Due to high ticket demand last week and for the convenience of festival goers, the advance ticket sale at Casa de la Cultura will continue through Wednesday April 6th inclusive, from 10.00 am to 8.00 pm. Today, the remaining tickets will be available for purchase at the box office of all the festival venues. And of course, also at www.festivales.gob.ar.

Separado! (photo), subtitled “An Odyssey to a Parallel Universe”, is a curiosity in the line-up of the “Cinema of the Future” competition, which honors works by young filmmakers. Directed and starring the Welsh Dylan Goch and his famous friend Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals frontman), the film portrays the musician’s family-search journey, who travels to Argentine Patagonia looking for his uncle René. Separado! will have three screenings (Saturday 9, 7.45 pm and Monday 11, 11.30 pm at Hoyts 2; late night Friday 15, at Cosmos) and tickets are on sale at www.festivales.gob.ar, Hoyts Abasto and Casa de la Cultura.

As an attractive bonus, the Argentine Competition includes mostly world premieres and debut films within the 11 works participating. Among them, En el futuro (photo) by Mauro Andrizzi, the only Argentine representative at the prestigious festival Mostra di Venezia 2010, where it received the “Queer Lion Award” for best gay-themed film. In words of its director, “These are nine stories about the experience of love; how one remembers a past love experience and how one tends to invent. Because memory is a fiction, especially when it comes to love experiences.” Shot in black and white and starring Luis Machín, Sergio Boris and Lorena Damonte, the film has three scheduled screenings for Sunday 10 at 6.00 pm and Wednesday 13 at 3.30 pm at Hoyts Abasto, and Friday 15 at 4.45 pm at Arteplex Belgrano. Tickets are available for purchase through www.festivales.gob.ar, or personally at Hoyts General Cinema Abasto and Casa de la Cultura, from 10.00 am to 8.00 pm.

The films by Japanese director Takeshi Miike (Dead or Alive, Audition) are always received by viewers as striking and stirring. Actually, this has been the case since they were first included in the programming of the BAFICI. This year, as always, there will be an authentic Miike to see: 13 Assassins, his latest film, tells the epic story of 13 samurai recruited to kill an evil master of war. About tickets, it is necessary to hurry up: tickets remain for late night Saturday 9, 0.45 am at Hoyts 10 and late night Saturday 16, 1.00 am at Hoyts 12. They are available for purchase on www.festivales.gob.ar, at Hoyts General Cinema Abasto and at Casa de la Cultura from 10.00 am to 8.00 pm. The screening of Friday 8, 11.45 pm is sold out.

One of the 13th BAFICI’s new features is the 3D screening, the format that has expanded the visual experience in this decade. On this occasion, the film trilogy showing at the Festival challenges conventions and moves away, precisely, from mass production. In their own way, the grotesque Torrente 4 by Santiago Segura, the aesthetic risk of Pequeñas voces by Jairo Eduardo Carrilo, and the introspective realism of Cave of Forgotten Dreams by the always irreverent German filmmaker Werner Herzog, follow these guidelines. Cave… have all sold-out screenings: Friday 8, 10.45 am at Hoyts 10; Wednesday 13, 11.30 am at Hoyts 12; Sunday 17, 11.15 pm at Hoyts 10) ). The same happens with the one-day only screening of Torrente 4 on Monday 11, 6.00 pm. For Pequeñas voces (photo), on the other hand, there are tickets available for purchase on www.festivales.gob.ar, at Hoyts General Cinema Abasto and at Casa de la Cultura, from 10.00 am to 8.00 pm. This original, groundbreaking, purely realistic Colombian animated film has three scheduled screenings for Saturday 9 at 2.00 pm and Tuesday 12 at 11.15 am at Hoyts 11, and Wednesday 13 at 7.00 pm at Hoyts 12.

The documentary A Letter to Elia that Martin Scorsese—together with film critic Kent Jones—made as a personal, almost autobiographical, tribute to the ouvre of the director of On the Waterfront and East of Eden, is one of the treasures in the BAFICI programme. It will be screened on Thursday 7, 10.15 pm at Hoyts 12; Monday 11, 1.45 pm, and Wednesday 13, 9.00 pm at Hoyts 10. This is good information to have at hand so that you don’t delay the purchase of the ticket: either on www.festivales.gob.ar, or at the Hoyts General Cinema Abasto and Casa de la Cultura, from 10.00 am to 8.00 pm, at 12 pesos each.

From early on Monday morning, the panorama of the main hall of the Abasto Shopping Mall and the sidewalk of Casa de la Cultura, on Avenida de Mayo, definitely changed. Little by little, hundreds of people quietly lined up with their film guides and a pen in hand, reading and highlighting as they waited to get to the box office. The objective: be the first ones to purchase tickets to see some of the 426 films of the 13th BAFICI. By the end of the first day, the number of tickets sold reached 17.400, 20% higher than the first day of sale for the 2010 edition. The details are as follows: 40% of the total were sold at Hoyts Abasto, 32% via Internet, and 28% at Casa de la Cultura. Please remember that tickets can be purchased, at 12 pesos each, through the website www.festivales.gob.ar or personally from 10.00 am to 8.00 pm at Casa de la Cultura (Av. De Mayo 575 – Ground Floor) and at Hoyts General Cinema Abasto.

After the first 48 hours of advance ticket sale for the Festival, there are already sold-out screenings. So far, these are: Ausente by Marco Berger (Thursday 7, 11.15 pm at Hoyts 11); Blue Valentine by Derek Cianfrance (Saturday 9, 6.30 pm at Hoyts 4); line-up #3 of the Argentine short films competition (Saturday 9, 11.30 pm at Hoyts 7); Torrente 4: lethal crisis by Santiago Segura (Monday 11, 6 pm at Hoyts 10) El estudiante by Santiago Mitre (Tuesday 12, 8.00 pm at Hoyts 11; and Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog in 3D (Wednesday 13, 11.30 am at Hoyts 10 and Sunday 17, 11.15 pm at Hoyts 10). Also, the only two screenings of El hombre que podía recordar sus vidas pasadas (Tío Boonme) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (photo), scheduled for Wednesday 13, 10.15 pm at Hoyts 4 and Thursday 14, 11.15 pm at Hoyts 10, sold out. A reflection of how BAFICI sparks the interest of film lovers. For an update of this relevant information, see the report posted in this section of this website (within the Ticket Sales menu, on the left of the screen) and through www.facebook.com/FestivalesGCBA.

Today, Monday 28th at 10 am, begins the advance ticket sale with the unified system that allows to purchase them, at 12 pesos (a third of the ticket price to a commercial screening), through the Internet via www.festivales.gob.ar, or personally from 10.00 am to 8.00 pm at the Casa de la Cultura (Av. De Mayo 575 – Ground Floor) and at the Hoyts General Cinema Abasto. With the complete film programme available as from last Wednesday 23rd, ticket demand is anticipated to be high due to the elevated expectations raised by the 2011 line-up. Therefore, on this website you will be able to check the status of films and activities by area: sold out screenings, alternative times, and other updates. Stay connected…