October is Human Rights month at the Cine Club of Alcalá. This year, the Elke Infantes season will bring three feature films and one documentary to the screen of the Teatro Salón Cervantes. And there is something new taking place after the screenings. Following the second screening of each film, corresponding to the first session of Thursday (with the exception of ‘We Feed the World’ on the Wednesday the 14th), a discussion will be held on themes tackled in the films, always in relation to Human Rights in the world.
Cine Club’s fine palate has once again aided the selection of a quartet of fascinating films sure to inspire reflection. They are ‘Waltz with Bashir’ (Ari Folman, 2008), ‘We Feed the World’ (Erwin Wagenhofer), ‘Return to Hansala’ (Chus Gutiérrez) and ‘The Visitor’ (Tom McCarthy). Amnesty International is collaborating on this season, as they do every year for the Alcalá film club.
The first film for October will be ‘Waltz with Bashir’, on the 7th and 8th, one of biggest box-office successes of recent months, having exceeded all expectations. It was written and directed by Ari Folman, who has retrieved a little known episode from the first war between Israel and Lebanon, at the beginning of the eighties. Halfway between documentary and animation, ‘Waltz with Bashir’ reproduces the director’s own experiences. He was a first-hand witness of what happened during a mission undertaken by the Israeli army. The film received numerous plaudits, mainly in the form of nominations and special mentions at the most important film awards. ‘Waltz with Bashir’ won a Golden Globe in 2009 for best foreign-language film and was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2008.
The Cine Club turns to the documentary format for its second screening. ‘We Feed the World’ comes from Austria and provides a vision of the food production process in the world; its abundance and its scarcity, a general viewpoint covering the current situation taken as a whole. This time round, the screening of ‘We Feed the World’ will be brought forward one day on the calendar. The normal double session on Wednesday and Thursday will be moved to Tuesday and Wednesday, on the 13th and 14th.
Third up in the Cine Club is ‘Return to Hansala’, the latest film from Chus Gutiérrez, to be screened on the 21st and 22nd. The auteur of ‘Poniente’ now tackles the vicissitudes of Martin, a funeral home owner who sets off on a journey to a Moroccan village to return the corpse of a young man who died trying to cross the straits of Gibraltar in rickety boat. During the journey he comes face to face with the cruel reality of the lives of many people living in Northern Morocco. ‘Return to Hansala’ won the Special Jury Award at the last Valladolid International Cinema Week; ‘Seminci’.
October bids farewell on the 28th and 29th with the screening of one of the films opting for the label of film sensation of the year. ‘The Visitor’ has merits in abundance for the title; a United States production with an independent low cost feel to it, which stars a grey university professor, a widower who discovers his apartment has been occupied by a young immigrant couple, a Syrian musician and his Senegalese girlfriend, when he returns to New York. Music brings apparently disparate characters closer together. The work of Neil Jenkins, seen in the fabulous ‘Six feet under’, is one of the mainstays of this delightful feature film.
All the films will be screened in the Teatro Salón Cervantes, in double sessions on each of the scheduled days, at 18:30 and 21:00.
