Festival de Cine de Huesca - Huesca Film Festival
41st edition
10 - 16 June 2013
Introducing the poster of the 41st edition.José Luis Cano (Zaragoza, 1948) is a painter, cartoonist, comedian, writer and art theorist. A man of many facets who has always worked within the spheres or art and culture. He studied at the San Jorge School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, the Rabadán Studio and the Zaragoza School of Arts and Professions and was an integral part of the artists’ collectives Azada 40 and Colectivo Plástico de Zaragoza. He has worked as an art critic and has contributed numerous illustrations and cartoons to a variety of newspapers and magazines. He is a poster artist, a muralist, painter and comedian and has published cartoons in El Día, el Periódico de Aragon as well as his current series in the Heraldo de Aragon. His works have been the subject of over 50 exhibitions, the most recent being in the magnificent surroundings of La Lonja Palace in 2007. Among his books, those from Xordica Editorial with more than 20 editions merit special attention. Biographies of illustrious Aragonese personalities such as Papa Luna, Miguel Servet, Fernando el Católico, Baltasar Gracián and others without forgetting Francisco de Goya and Luis Buñuel. In his cartoons, Segundo de Chomón, Julio Alejandro and Luis Alegre have featured assiduously. With his characteristic irony, he underlines that “Buñuel begins where Goya ends: With a dog!”. This is a wonderful connection between Goya’s cowering dog and Un Chien Andalou, the latter surely the first ever example of Video Art. Cano´s name features prominently in the list of illustrators charged with expressing in images the philosophy of the forty previous editions of the International Film Festival of Huesca. As to the poster itself, I am struck by the extraordinary balance between image and text, emphasized further by the combination of colours of both these component parts. The colours themselves are joyous, light-hearted and youthful while the use of basil green transmits freshness and “fiesta”, a nod to of the city which hosts the event and its patron saint San Lorenzo. Given the common root of the words festival and fiesta this connection is particularly suitable. The author also reflects the wider context of the event and its international nature by means of the youthful visage who seems to have stepped out of a scene from Buster Keaton. To sum up, as one would expect from artist of this calibre, the task of transmitting the essential message of the event through a poster is wonderfully well-accomplished. As an artist, Cano is efficient, versatile and intense. Ricardo García Prats
Poster of the 40th editionChema Madoz (born Madrid, 20 January 1958) is the author of the POSTER of the 40th edition of the Huesca International Film Festival. Chema Madoz has presented a photograph, poetic and suggestive as are all of his photographs, that perfectly communicates the event as well as visually transmitting the mystery that encircles the world of film. A door against the light with a curtain, that I think above everything else, cinematographic, suggesting a series of feelings. Chema Madoz studied Art History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, while simultaneously studying Photography at the Centro de Enseñanza de la Imagen. His first exhibition dates to 1985. Since 1990 he begins developing the concept of objects, a constant theme to date in his photography. Amongst his many exhibitions, we could single out “Objetos 1990 – 1999” at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 1999, which is the first restrospective showcase that the museum has given a Spanish photographer while still living. In the year 2000, he is awarded the National Photography Award in Spain. Madoz buries his creative roots in the avant-garde of the first third of the 20th century, in Dadaism and Surrealism. Man Ray comes to mind, who lifted photography to the world of art. Since the inheritance of the artistic functionality of surrealist objects, where rational provocation is randomly united, caused a poetic effect, many artists have continued along these lines, such as Joan Brossa. Chema Madoz, however, distances himself by working from the idea, from the intangible. If he needs objects to complete his images, these disappear within the very image. The objects in the photographs of Chema Madoz have been poeticized with time. Neutral and clean backgrounds accentuate all the poetic strength that he establishes with the spectator. Madoz’s photographs are visual poetry. The artist himself says “In some ways it is harder for me to explain certain things verbally, yet through visual language I have other capacities when working. I can be more convincing, I can be more subtle… I have the feeling I am more in control of the different fields and the different possible interpretations than if I was to control on the verbal aspect”. Isidro Ferrer who has been a great source for contacting with this photographer of international recognition, and as great designer himself, also a National Award, in this case in Graphic Design, he has designed the typography of the poster, with a great respect for the photograph and a rhythm and cadence of the letters suitable to the photographic rhythm.
Theo Angelopoulos, Luis Buñuel Award in 2009The Huesca International Film Festival held in its 37th edition in 2009 a well deserved tribute to Theo Angelopoulos. The Huesca Film Festival Foundation is deeply saddened by the loss of one of the greatest filmmakers of our time, and without doubt, the best director from Greece.
Theo Angelopoulos was born in Athens in 1935 and passed away last Tuesday 24th January 2012, hit by a motorcycle while shooting his latest film, The Other Sea, a film about the economic crisis facing Greece today. He died at the age of 76. Theo Angelopoulos won numerous awards such as the Palme d'Or in Cannes in 1998 for Eternity and a Day and the Grand Jury Prize, also at Cannes, in 1995 for Ulysses' Gaze. Amongst the many awards he received, at the Huesca International Film Festival, we feel honoured to have awarded him the Luis Buñuel Award in 2009 in recognition of his distinguished cinematographic career. We are grateful to have had him stay in Huesca in 2009 with his long life partner Phoebe. As part of the tribute that the Huesca International Film Festival held in his honour, we published a book titled “ Poemas de la desolación: El cine de Theo Angelopoulos”, coordinated and written by Manuel Vidal Estévez. In the official catalogue of the 37th edition, the following text was published, which we would like to recall as a tribute to one of the most important contemporary filmmakers of our time:
Colivia, Los Crímenes, Ya Zabudu Etot Den and Hombres de Arena winners of the Short Films ContestsInternational Short Film Contest
Concurso Iberoamericano de Cortometrajes
Raoul Servais, the visionary founder of protest animation, will be presenting his films in HuescaThe Huesca Internacional Film Festival, as part of its “Cult Directors” section, will be screening in its 39th edition – being held from June 3rd to 11th – the works of a filmmaker virtually unknown in Spain. On this occasion, the exceptional Belgian draftsman, painter and animation filmmaker Raoul Servais (Ostend, 1928) will be presenting the retrospective dedicated to his peculiar films. Classified as a painter-filmmaker with influences from artists such as Paul Delvaux and René Magritte, with whom he collaborated occasionally, the birth of film animation in Belgium is attributed to Servais. His films are a jewel in animation – with recurring references to other artists such as Mirò, Tanguy, Klee and Léger – which reveal the talent of a visionary director in continual experimentation. Furthermore, Servais is the founder of the First School for Animation in Europe at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, where he not only studied but later worked as a professor.  Influenced by World War II and the Nazi occupation, one of the main attractions in his animated films consists in his sharp and ironic vision of the world. His films are made up of individuals being oppressed and facing complex situations, organic forms surrounded by geometric structures, elements of Belgian architecture, means of communication that only create confusion, and the ever present ghost from the war. His films, which have been classified as “protest animation” for its denunciation of social causes and contemporary political issues, have been recognised by the critics as well as receiving awards at some of the most prestigious international festivals. In Venice, he won the Best Animation Short Film Award for Chromophobia (1966). In Cannes, he won the Jury Award for Operation X-70 (1971) and the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film for Harpya (1979) – a key piece in the avant-guarde art movement inspired animation and included amongst the fifteen best short films ever made. At the Seminci, he won the Special Jury Award for Atraksion (2001), where he experiments for the first time with digital post-processing. Considered as one of the greatest filmmakers in animation, the works by Servais can be seen at the MoMA in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, amongst others. The Huesca International Film Festival, with its objective of giving visibility to artists of international prestige with a career dedicated mainly to short films, will be publishing in collaboration with the editorial Intermedio, a book-DVD with a selection of titles by Servais. This initiative is of special interest given that it will be the first time that his films are included in such a format in a Spanish-speaking country. |
