The Festival finishes this Sunday

The last day of BAFICI 2010 offers 104 movies for every taste, starting at 10.30AM with the screening of “You won’t miss me” by Ry Russo-Young. In this way concludes the best independent film marathon of the world that took over the city of Buenos Aires during 10 days. Tickets cost 10 pesos and are for sale in the ticket booths at the French Alliance (Av. Córdoba 946),the Hoyts Abasto cinemas (Av. Corrientes 3247), Atlas Santa Fe (Av. Santa Fe 2015), Arteplex Belgrano (Av. Cabildo 2829), Arteplex Caballito (Av. Rivadavia 5050), 25 de Mayo (Av. Triunvirato 4444), Leopoldo Lugones Auditorium of the San Martin Theater (10th floor Av. Corrientes 1530) and Malba Cinema (Av. Figueroa Alcorta 3415). Tickets can also be bought through the website www.festivales.gob.ar.

Festival winners

This is the complete list of the winners of the 12º BAFICI, disclosed on Saturday, April 17 at noon (pictured):

International Official Selection

- Best film: "Alamar" , by Pedro González-Rubio (Mexico).

- Best Director: Corneliu Poromboiu for "Police, Adjective" (Rumania).

- Jury’s Special Award: "La bocca del lupo", by Pietro Marcello (Italy).

- Best Argentine Film DistinctionDistinción a Mejor Película Argentina: "Lo que más quiero", by Delfina Castagnino.

- Best Actor: Dragos Bucur for "Police, Adjective" (Rumania).

- Best Actress: shred by Pilar Gamboa and María Villar for "Lo que más quiero" (Argentina).

Argentine Official Selection

- Best Film: "Invernadero", by Gonzalo Castro.

- Best Director: Iván Fund and Santiago Loza for "Los labios".

- Jury’s Special Award: "Somos nosotros", by Mariano Blanco.

- Best Photography Distinction: "Las pistas – Lanhoyij- Nmitaxanaxac", by Sebastián Lingiardi.

Dialogue with Angela Basset-Vance

The prestigious American actress, world-famous for her performances in “What’s love got to do with it”, “Strange days” and “Malcom X”, among other films, is in Buenos Aires integrating the Jury of the International Official Selection. Ms. Basset-Vance will have a dialogue with the public this Friday at 7.30PM at Espacio Bafici, with Osvaldo Bazán as the moderator.

Dialogue with Peter Kerekes

This Saturday at 6PM at Espacio BAFICI, the Slovenian director of the creative “66 Seasons” (2003) and “Cooking History” (2009, photo), will have a dialogue with the audience about these movies and other stages of his career as a director. The journalist Javier Porta Fouz will be the moderator. Entrance will be limited to the capacity of the room.

This Saturday, free and outdoors cinema

During this last BAFICI 2010 weekend, attractive free and outdoors programming is offered in two nice urban spots of Buenos Aires. “Outdoors cinema” at Carlos Gardel St. presents this Saturday at 3PM a selection of shorts by young Argentine filmmakers, at 5PM “Tape” by Richard Linklater and at 7PM the original Chilean documentary “Femme Rock Doc” by Denis Elphick. At the San Martín de Tours Square (Schiaffino y Posadas) “Outdoors Little Bafici” presents at 7.30PM the remarkable movie “Spirited Away” (photo) by the Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki.

The retrospective that Rogério Sganzerla deserved

The director Sergio Wolf said it during the official opening of this twelfth edition: the Brazilian critic and filmmaker Rogério Sganzerla (from Sao Pablo for more information) has deserved a retrospective on his work for a long time. First a theorist and then a creator, always on the cutting edge to understand and make movies in Latin America, Sganzerla started writing about cinema in the literary supplement of the newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo and then fully jumped into directing. He directed very important movies such as “Copacabana mon amour” and “A mulher de todos”, which can be seen this Thursday at 7.30PM and 9.45M respectively at the Leopoldo Lugones hall in the San Martín Theater.

Dialogue with Tizza Covi

This Thursday at 7PM in Espacio BAFICI, the Italian director Tizza Covi will have a dialogue with the Festival’s director Sergio Wolf and with the public. Covi integrates the Jury of the Argentine Official Selection and is the protagonist, with three films co-directed with the Austrian Rainer Frimmel (photo together), of a section within the section "focuses and retrospectives" of this BAFICI edition.

Ariel Minimal puts music to leisure

The Argentine musician Ariel Minimal, former constituent of Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and leader of Pez, one of the local cult rock bands, will be the protagonist of tonight’s “Little night music”, the series of concerts that BAFICI offers at the end of each cinema day. Minimal’s connection with film takes on an added weight since the premiere of “Ocio” in the Festival. This movie by Juan Villegas and Alejandro Lingenti is in competition in the Argentine Official Selection and Minimal participates in it with the sound of his guitar for the movie’s incidental music.

The festival daily

The newspaper “Sin aliento” (without breath) is published every day and is available at no cost in every festival meeting point. It is the ideal complement to face the BAFICI day with reviews, interviews, articles, columns, recommendations and the complete guide for every day. This newspaper is edited by Juan Manuel Domínguez and written by Nazareno Brega, Javier Diz and Marcos Vieytes with the special participation of the writer Juan José Becerra as the author of the column “Ultima fila” (last row). “Sin aliento” is the graphic thermometer of a bigger and bigger festival.

Magnetic fields day

This Tuesday 13/04, the prolific and enigmatic American indie rocker Stephin Merritt (photo), leader of the band The Magnetic Fields, will have his day in the BAFICI: at 9.30PM in the Hoyts 2 the documentary "Strange powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields" by Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara will be screened. Also, at 11PM in the cycle "Small Nocturnal Music ", the Argentine pop musician Sebastian Rubin along with Nacho and Alvy will interpret Magnetic Fields’ songs, whose last album "Realism" was just edited in Argentina.

Cinema, against any superstition

The festival continues its course during this Tuesday the 13th, day feared in Argentina by the popular belief that link these particular day and number with "bad luck". In BAFICI 2010, however, it is the contrary. It is considered good luck to see the best independent film of the world. This Tuesday, 117 films will be screened (see programming "Day x day" ), tickets cost 10 pesos and are for sale in the ticket booths at the French Alliance (Av. Córdoba 946),the Hoyts Abasto cinemas (Av. Corrientes 3247), Atlas Santa Fe (Av. Santa Fe 2015), Arteplex Belgrano (Av. Cabildo 2829), Arteplex Caballito (Av. Rivadavia 5050), 25 de Mayo (Av. Triunvirato 4444), Leopoldo Lugones Auditorium of the San Martin Theater (10th floor Av. Corrientes 1530) and Malba Cinema (Av. Figueroa Alcorta 3415). Tickets can also be bought through the website www.festivales.gob.ar.

A full BAFICI Sunday

This past sunny autumn Sunday in Buenos Aires left the geography of the city with snapshots inevitably linked to the festival, from downtown to Belgrano, from Villa del Parque to Villa Urquiza, with the main center in the Abasto: from the Espacio BAFICI at Guardia Vieja St, to the central hall of the Abasto Shopping Center on the way to the Hoyts cinemas, across Anchorena St. to the outdoors cinema at Carlos Gardel St. The same happened at the San Martin of Tours Square, where families with their parents and children enjoyed the end of the afternoon with a series of praised shorts by Spanish filmmakers (photo). Everywhere, people coming and going, with their programming grid in hand and the desire to see films reflected in their eager faces, awake, alive. A full BAFICI Sunday

A must see dialogue with Marie Losier

This Monday at 7PM at the BAFICI Space, the artistic director of the Festival, Sergio Wolf, will have a dialogue with the French filmmaker Marie Losier, New Yorker for adoption and protagonist with her particular shorts of a space within the section "Retro and Focus" of BAFICI 2010. Marie was born in France in 1972 and has her operations center in NYC, where she films, is curator and displays her films in museums, galleries and festivals such as the George Pompidou Center of Paris, the Berlin Film Festival and the Lincoln Center in New York.

A dialogue about “the new stuff”

A meeting about “New literature and new film” will take place this Sunday at 2PM at the Espacio BAFICI auditorium. Fabián Casas (photo), Gonzalo Castro, Oliverio Coelho, Cecilia del Valle, Alejandro Lingenti and Pedro Mairal will participate in this meeting with Gonzalo Aguilar as the moderator.

Talent Campus begins

This Saturday, the fifth edition of Talent Campus Buenos Aires begins, with the participation of renowned experts of the film industry of America and Europe, focused on documentary films. 50 young professionals of the cinema in South America — selected among more than 500 applicants— will participate in enriching seminars and workshops. This edition, the amount of applications received exceeded the ones from previous editions. In this context, at 3.30PM in the BAFICI Space, a dialog with the Austrian director Bernhard Sallmann will be carried out (photo). He and his films are the protagonists of the Festival’s section "Retro".

This Saturday, special screening of “Outdoors cinema”

This Saturday at 9PM in Carlos Gardel St. (between Anchorena and Jean Jaures), the movie “The circle" by the Iranian director Jafar Panahi will be screened with free entry. This special screening of "Outdoors cinema" is in solidarity with the unfair situation that this remarkable filmmaker is going through. The movie won a Golden Lion at the Venice Festival in 2000 (photo).

Three Argentine movies in the International Official Selection

The film "Lo que más quiero" by Delfina Castagnino, the documentary "El ambulante" (picture) by Eduardo de la Serna, Lucas Marcheggiano and Adriana Yurcovich and "Centro" by Sebastian Martinez are the Argentine representatives in the highly competitive grid of the International Official Selection of BAFICI. These three films are first works of young filmmakers who live, from today, a kind of materialized dream: participating as main characters of one of the most important independent film festivals in the world.

China´s myths and truths, here and now

The Festival’s director Sergio Wolf mentioned it in all his speeches about the 2010 programming: the section "Radical visions from China", consisting of eight documentaries of contemporary filmmakers from the country that is the new global power, casts a light on the daily life, customs and habits, contrasts and contradictions of this cultural time in the Asian giant. An example is "Bing Ai" (picture) by Fang Yan, an intimate portrait of a simple orange harvester with the spiritual strength to live her life in the midst of rural China and, at the same time, face a decision by the powerful government.

Festival’s opening screening

The exact beginning of this 12th edition of BAFICI took place this past Wednesday night at the 25 de Mayo cinema and theater while the first enigmatic images of the film “Kidnapping and death” by Rafael Fillipelli were screened. But actually, minutes before the film began, the phrase “Long life to BAFICI” pronounced with enthusiasm and satisfaction by BAFICI´s artistic director, Sergio Wolf, was the signal for the beginning of the great independent film festival that Buenos Aires offers to world every year since 1999.