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The short film program featuring Buenos días resistencia, Tábula rasa and Resistente offers thematic, geographic and temporal diversity although, in sum, it is made up of three small masterpieces about human beings and their circumstances. Buenos días resistencia, by Spanish director Adrián Orr, depicts the everyday life of a father and his three children at the time they get up to go to school (and everything involved, as parents well know). Tábula rasa, by Argentine director Jonathan Perel (who directed En el predio, premiered at BAFICI 2010), provides a different view of what the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics) is and represents today. And Resistente, made by Paraguayan Renate Soria and Finnish Salla Sorri in the framework of the Danish CPH: DOX Festival, follows an old Italian immigrant who lives alone in the Paraguayan jungle, with no other communication with the outside world than through letters. There are tickets available for today, Thursday at 2.30 p.m. at Village Recoleta and for Sunday at 7 p.m. at CC San Martín: they can be purchased on this website or in person at each venues’ box office.

Opening at 10 in the morning, the Cronopios Theater will showcase the permanent photo exhibition titled “15 Years of BAFICI.” Later, the everyday film series “100 horas extras” (100 extra hours) begins at 2 p.m. El Aleph, on the other hand, will host the roundtable "Mr. Whedon, lo saludamos: invitación oficial y pública al [16] BAFICI a Joss Whedon" today, Thursday, at 3 p.m. with a special screening. Then, at 5, there will be a discussion about “La república perdida y encontrada – Treinta años de democracia” (The lost and found republic – Thirty years of democracy), with the participation of Manuel Antin, Julio Bárbaro, Leandro Despouy and Héctor Olivera. And in the evening, at 9.30 and at the same auditorium, guitarists Claudio Kleiman, Jorge Senno and Marcelo Ponce will perform a tribute concert to legendary musician John Fahey (protagonist of the documentary In Search of Blind Joe Death - The Saga of John Fahey, programmed in this year’s Festival).

VidaExtra, by young Galician director Ramiro Ledo Cordeiro, uses Peter Weiss’s novel The Aesthetics of Resistance (1975-1981) as a starting point, superimposing it on the present time: exactly on the eve of September 2010's general strike, at a building opposite the Catalonia Square in Barcelona. Five friends reflect on and evaluate what was said and done during that day at an assembly of workers who recovered the building that used to be a bank, and paradoxically before that, a Catalonian communist center during the civil war. "In a way, the different collectives and anonymous individuals grouped in the "Moviment del 25" (the building was already occupied in September 25, 2010) were repeating the actions of 1936," says the director. There are tickets available to go see the film on Sunday, April 21 at 7.10 p.m. at Theater 1 of the CC San Martín (Sarmiento and Paraná). Tickets are on sale on this website and at the venue’s box office.

Activities start at 2 p.m. with the "100 horas extras" (100 extra hours) film marathon, showcasing a comprehensive variety of formats at Sala Cronopios and featuring a highly recommended program for every one of its sections. At El Aleph, on the other hand, the topics for discussion will be "Diez números de ensayos sobre el cine" (Ten issues with essays on cinema) at 2 p.m. and "Todo lo que siempre quiso saber sobre TV y no se animó a preguntarle al cine independiente" (Everything you’ve always wanted to know about TV and never dared to ask independent cinema about) at 6.30, with the participation of Benjamín Ávila, Ana Katz, Rodrigo Moreno, Constanza Sanz Palacios, Alejandro Maci and Javier Van de Couter. In between these two roundtables, at 5, the book Stephanie Zacharek. Comedias, tragedias y cosas que explotan. Crítica reunida will be presented, and the author will engage in a conversation with Juan Manuel Domínguez.

The screenings scheduled for today at the CC San Martín and Sala Lugones of the Teatro San Martín will offer the chance to get close to the groundbreaking audiovisual production of Lux, the international arts agency for the promotion of artists’ moving image practice which, from the United Kingdom, distributes and exhibits the most comprehensive catalogue of works by British artists, around the world. At this year’s BAFICI, the exhibition of Lux’s production is one of the most interesting spotlights of the Focus section, titled “Britannia Lado B” (Britannia B-side). So take this opportunity today and meet the artists of this organization. A program of avant-garde short films titled “Una exploración de la diferencia” (An exploration of the difference) will be screened at the Centro Cultural San Martín at 2 p.m. Then, At 2.30, the Sala Martín Coronado will exhibit works by Redmon Entwistle, one of the most prominent directors of his generation. And at 4.50, again at the CC San Martín, there will be a program of shorts authored by outstanding Irish filmmaker Duncan Campbell. In all cases, film-watching pleasure is guaranteed. The good news is that there are tickets available for all these screenings, which can be purchased on this website or in person at the box offices of the above-mentioned venues.

Come by the Festival Meeting Point at the Centro Cultural Recoleta and enjoy the eclectic and interesting film program titled “100 horas extras” (100 extra hours) at Cronopios Theater,from 2 to 8.30 p.m. At El Aleph, on the other hand, there will be two open talks: “Convergencia multimedial. Una idea, mil formatos” (Multimedia convergence. One idea, one thousand formats), conducted by APIMA at 2, and “Mi primer Bafici. La experiencia del paso por el festival y la construcción de carrera” (My first BAFICI. Festival experience and career building), with the participation of Ezequiel Acuña, Verónica Chen and Gastón Solnicki, at 6. Apart from these roundtables, the book El nuevo cine latinoamericano de los años setenta. Entre el mito político y la modernidad fílmica, by Isaac León Frías (The new Latin American cinema of the 1960s. Between the political myth and cinema’s modern age), will be presented, featuring the author in a conversation with David Oubiña and Eduardo Russo.

Radiografía del desierto, a documentary by Mendoza-born director Mariano Donoso, is a visual essay about the landscape, the life and the jobs that blossom in the most arid areas of his province: it was filmed in the dry land of Lavalle, at the Andean foothills, in El Nihuil, in the City of Mendoza and from an airplane. The camera follows several characters and, specially, the jobs performed in the most arid regions – including a plane pilot, a family of well-diggers who build water reserves and irrigation wells, and a historian/geographer, among others. However, the dry territory, which is almost an abstract idea, is central to the film. “The result is not a naturalistic image, but an abstraction. In-depth pictures are not painted for the sake of pleasure, and this film is not precisely a form entertainment,” the film’s director said to Mendoza’s newspaper Los Andes. There are tickets available to see the film on Wednesday 17 at 3.30 p.m. and Friday 19 at 3.35 p.m. at the Centro Cultural San Martín and on Sunday 21 at 8.10 p.m. at Village Recoleta. Tickets can be purchased on this website or in person at the screening venues’ box offices.

Starting at 2 p.m., the “100 horas extras” (100 extra hours) continue at Cronopios Theater with its usual menu of films. And also, there will be three roundtables at El Aleph. At 2 p.m., Argentine filmmaker Esteban Echeverría and Danish fellow director Michael Hegner will take part in a conversation with Juan Manuel Domínguez about “Cómo hacer un largo animado” (How to make an animated feature film). Then, the book titled Estremecimientos. Julio Bressane y el cine (Shudders. Julio Bressane and cinema) will be presented at 4, featuring the participation of the Brazilian cult director himself (photo) in a conversation with film critic Eduardo Antín (Quintín). And at 6, Argentine directors Gabriel Medina, Enrique Piñeyro and Gonzalo Tobal, with moderation by critic Javier Porta Fouz, will talk about “Mi primer estreno. Cómo llegar a la cartelera: los dilemas de la distribución” (My first premiere. How to make it to the marquee: distribution dilemmas).

This coming Friday, starting at 7 p.m. at Plaza J.J. de Urquiza (Av. del Libertador 1500, next to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes), a tribute will be paid to Virus, a key band in the history of 1980s Argentine rock, and especially to its singer Federico Moura, on the occasion of the premiere of Imagenes paganas, scheduled to show at the Festival (with sold-out screenings). At 7 p.m. on the dot, the film will be screened with free admission (there will be 2,000 seats for those who arrive first). And then, at 8.30, there will be a big concert in which the band’s historical lineup, with frontmen Marcelo and Julio Moura, will share the stage with very special guests, including the following confirmed artists: Vicentico, Ale Sergi, Chano Charpentier (Tan Biónica) and Cachorro López. But this is not all: there will be some other surprise guests, whose presence will leave everybody in awe.

David Jones, an Alabama-born guitarist who fell in love with flamenco to the point that he is artistically known as “David Serpa,” traveled a long way between the two worlds, including five women and five children. Rachel Leah Jones, the documentary’s director and one of his children, decided to set out on this journey following in her father’s footsteps, looking to reconcile with him and his past. This is the starting point of Gypsy Davy, a fascinating documentary that combines reproaches from the director-narrator, interviews with the rest of the “family” and an abundant selection of short musical excerpts that serve as a backdrop for this unusual story. There are tickets available for the screenings on Wednesday 17 at 8.45 p.m. at Village Recoleta and on Saturday 20 at 2.20 p.m. at CC San Martín. They can be purchased on this website or in person at the venues’ box offices.