The Circuit

by John Hopewell and Team Variety
The poster for “Acne” made a splash-let at Cannes: a curly-haired 13-year-old boy lies on a bed and peers between a woman’s splayed legs. He doesn’t look to overjoyed. In fact, he seems a little worried.

“Acne” was a standout in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. It turned up again in a strong Horizontes Latinos section at San Sebastian. “Acne”’s set in those endless borderlands between child- and adulthood. The way Uruguayan director Federico Veiroj has it, they’re a pretty inhospitable place.

The protagonist, Rafael Bregman, sees his parent’s divorce; his best friend goes to live in Israel; his maid relieves him of his virginity, while he looks on like a patient receiving local anesthetic surgery.  Above all, Rafael sports bursting wowser acne, the sort that suggests that, yes, alien life has fallen on earth, and taken up residence on his face.

“Acne” has remarkable recall of pure adolescence. Rafael practices kissing by snogging his own arm; he jots down tips from his friends about how to talk to girls.  It’s shot by mostly hugging up to the protagonist but pulling away twice to long-shot in two crucial scenes, as if to suggest they’re fixed in Bregman’s memory. And it has that typical deadpan Uruguayan humor - think “25 Watts” and “Whisky” - as if its official film school were run by the Kaurismaki brothers.

They’re only three films, says Veiroj, interviewed at San Sebastian. Other Uruguayan movies are different. “It’s difficult to talk about a Uruguayan sense of humor, like you can talk about an English sense of humor.”

Feeling like Hugh Grant repping “Horse & Hounds” in “Notting Hill,” I probe lead Alejandro Tocar - remarkably facially spotless, but maybe he travels with a cosmetologist - if he’s planning a career in acting, Jean-Pierre Leaud style.

He’d be delighted to have another role, he says in perfect English. But a career might be difficult: Uruguay makes only two-to-four films a year. And he wants to stay in Uruguay. But Uruguayan production is growing. “In the last eight years or so productions are up, partly because they’ve gone well at festivals,” says Veiroj. A Uruguayan Film Institute launches next year.

Maybe Tosar will get a career. Certainly, Variety must get a handle on Uruguay. Especially if its next films are as good as “Acne.”

Read Variety's review of "Acne" here.

by John Hopewell
Believe it or not -- you might not believe from many of her films -- Meryl Steep has a sense of humor. And a pronounced one at that.  It was in large evidence at San Sebastian.

Streep was there to pick up a career achievement Donostia Prize. Before, she had to run the gauntlet of a press conference. She dazzled, and made people laugh.

Sweet Latin American femme journalist, simpering: "Bet Davies wrote a letter saying you would be her successor. If you could write a letter who world you send it to?"

Streep (imitating Davis): "I'm not dead yet, babe."

Journalist: "What happens if things change and the new president of the United States becomes a Democrat?"

Streep puts her hands above her head and squeals with delight to long applause, then replying:  "If it doesn't happen….I'm looking at real estate in San Sebastian (laughter)."

Streep said other interesting and intelligent things: “There are more women working in my industry at the money end and they're willing to put money into projects” with roles for women over 40.

What keeps her going?

“Appetite. No matter how good the dinner was the night before, around seven o'clock the next night, I'm want to go out and eat dinner.”

The best question, she said, to be asked at a press conference is “Does fiction film matter any more?”

"Now that there's so much appetite for documentary, the real events are somehow so much more bizarre."

Streep disagreed just once with a journalist, who observed that since she’s such a great actress that it’s impossible to know who she really is.

“You always bring something personal to your work,” she countered.

If Streep came over as anything, she came over as a mother. 

She's frustrated by the time and attention needed for film marketing these days:  “Sometimes I think that making a film is this much effort, and marketing a film (spreads her hands more) is this much. That make's it harder on the young ones.”

Hasn’t she thought about directing?

Directing's a 24-hour task, she said. But now that her youngest daughter is 17-years-old and (imitating pushing) nearly out of the house, well, she’d now think about it.

But even here, she made a joke: “Most of the directors with whom I’ve worked would say that I have directed before.”

by Emiliano de Pablos
One of the galas that generated most expectation for local audiences at this year's San Sebastian Film Festival edition wasn't even for a film.

Already, this month, Madrid has seen two glitzy preems - for TV series.

But San Sebastian went one step further Friday, opening the Victoria Eugenia theater to police-thief pursuit skein "Guante blanco," one of pubcaster RTVE's flagships for the 2008-09 season.

San Sebatian fest audiences, more used to left-of-field or social-issue art films during the fest, nevertheless heartily applauded the series which combines suspense, comedy and family dramas.

After the screening, top RTVE execs and "Guante"'s production company Bambu Producciones held a party at the nearby Hotel Maria Cristina, which went into the wee hours.

RTVE's new management thinks that film and TV should move closer. Friday's pioneering event for the San Sebastian fest could set a precedent for more galas to come.


Actor Jose Luis Garcia Perez, TVE head of programming Eva Cebrian and humorist-journo-filmmaker Guillermo Fesser smiling at the Maria Cristina party. Perez plays Mario, the leader of a gang of thieves.


Bambu founder, producer Ramon Campos, with director of photography Jacobo Martinez (left) and Enrique Baro, who made the making-off. As with "Desaparecida," in "Guante," Campos shows multiple film influences.


Top RTVE execs at the Victoria Eugenia:  TVE director Javier Pons, actor Carlos Hipolito (police inspector Bernardo Valle in "Guante"), Cebrian and RTVE prexy Luis Fernandez.


TVE head of film Gustavo Ferrada and actor Eloy Azorin, who plays Jorge, and brings a comedic dimension to the band of thieves.


Producer Ramon Campos, left, crouched, and part of the cast of the series seconds before entering a box in the belle epoque Victoria Eugenia theater to enjoy the premiere.

by John Hopewell and Jonathan Holland
Yesim Ustaoglu’s “Pandora’s Box” won the 56th San Sebastian festival’s Golden Shell for best pic, plus a Silver Shell actress for France’s Tsilla Chelton as an ageing Alzheimer-afflicted country matriarch.

In one of the most popular decisions by the Jonathan Demme- led jury, Melissa Leo took a second Silver Shell actress statue for her performance in Courtney Hunt’s “Frozen River,” a San Sebastian Competish fave.

Full story here.

by Martin Dale
"Norteado" swept up all 3 awards in San Sebastian's Films in Progress section, but the prize-giving speeches also emphasized the quality of this year's selection, showcasing the current vitality of Latin American cinema.

Loneliness, claustrophobic social pressures, the struggle to survive, disorientated men, feisty women and wonderful intrinsic humor, were just some of the intriguing ingredients of the 6 Latin American films in this year's 14th edition.

In "Arctic", the third feature by award-winning Buenos Aires-based director Santiago Loza, we follow a young man as he wanders through a sweltering zone of the Argentinian interior in the hope of recovering his kidnapped wife

Loza creates a sense of icy despair and oppression by almost constantly tracking directly behind the protagonist, filling one third of the frame with his sweat-drenched shoulders and nape of his neck, deliberately hiding the wider landscape.

29-year old Chilean-director Sebastian Silva stirred up visible interest from sales agents at the screening with his second feature, "The Maid".

Catalina Saavedra stars as a live-in maid who spent her last 23 years essentially confined to the house, where she is slowly losing her mind.

Silva sets the audience on a knife-edge, unsure whether the maid is about to derail psychologically and creating moments of intrinsic humor.

Inspired by the director's own childhood experiences and shot in his family home, the film turns on its organic portrayal of the family members where the servant is the bedrock of the family -- as long as she's in crisis so is the rest of the family.

Providing a rare insight into life in Nicaragua, Florence Jaugey's "La Yuma" portrays a young woman from a poor neighborhood who is training to become a boxer.

"Optical Illusions" by 33-year old Cristian Jimenez has a subterranean melancholic humor that the director claims is typical of his home town Valdivia in Southern Chile where the film is set.

The film weaves together three stories, including that of a shopping mall security guard who falls in love with an elegant young woman who's hooked on shoplifting.

"The Tree" by Carlos Serrano, has certain parallels with Loza's "Arctic." We follow a lonely man's disconcerting journey through the streets of Madrid as he tries to come to terms with losing his job and separating from his wife.

Winning film, "Northless" by Rigoberto Perezcano begins in similar vein - with a lone man crossing the desert in blistering heat, but then switches gear and transforms into a tale about attempts to cross the intimidating US-Mexico border wall. 

Notwithstanding the oppressive imagery of the border wall and repeated, desperate attempts by Mexicans to cross it, the film also carries a humorous touch as the main character romances, and is helped by, two local women whose husbands have both previously crossed the border leaving no trace.

The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by Bob Flynn
Pinning the audience to their seats at its world premiere in San Sebastian, Christian Poveda’s documentary about Salvadorian street gangs, “La Vida Loca,” comes at you like a gun shot in a dark alley.

It’s a willfully ironic title for a film in which, director Poveda acknowledges, “death is the star.” 

Filmed over 18 months amongst the “Mara,” violent youth gangs - modeled on their L.A. counterparts - in the Campanera district of Soyapango in El Salvador, veteran war photographer and documentarist Poveda records, in alarming detail, the lives and sudden deaths of a "clique" of the Mara La 18 . "The 18" are one of two vast rival gangs, with an estimated 17,000 members throughout El Salvador, a country ravaged by decades of brutal dictatorships, covert international interventions and civil war.

“I arrived in El Salvador as a news cameraman and shot my first documentary there in 1981,“ says Poveda, who went on to film 16 docs in strife-torn regions around the world.

“But in 2004, I returned to El Salvador to report on the Maras for Paris Match and did a series of portraits of the members of two enemy gangs. From that came La Vida Loca.”

Poveda (pictured left) found the country’s history of violence had left thousands orphaned, a lost generation whose only 'family' are the gangs, their only social structure the strict codes of honor, ritual, and ranking by facial tattoos akin to ancient tribal markings.

The '18' tattoo which virtually covers the face of a female gang member, is one of the most striking visual images at this year’s San Sebastian.

“We see cruelty and depravation, but its not intended to be sensationalistic,“ says Poveda,

“‘La Vida Loca’ is what life is really about over there. I want the audience to live with the youths and share their experience; understand how the world condemns them, and their need for a context in which to exist.”

Gunshots and funerals punctuate individual tales of gang members, all in their teens or twenties, who accept early death as a given. By the end of the film, seven of the main characters have been gunned down in the street, their bodies collected with casual indifference by local police.

“This film is really about absolute human solitude,“ states Poveda. “Daily contact with the gangs helped us understand how marginalized these young people are.”

Filming under the most dangerous conditions, Povenda is never patronizing nor judgmental and his ferocious slice of reality is undoubtedly a bruising experience but illuminates the extreme edge of an uneasily topical subject.

“El Salvador became a universal example for modern civil war,” says Poveda. “Now the phenomenon of gangs running riot in the country embodies the elements of what is becoming a global problem.”

by Martin Dale and Team Variety
"The key thing European film funds have to understand," declares Henning Camre (pictured), brimming with a sense of mission, "is that the way we've been supporting and making films is dead, you can't do repair work - instead of treating European cinema like a crippled child we have to make a fresh start".

A master strategist, often acclaimed as the "Godfather of modern Danish cinema", Camre now hopes to transform European cinema via the pioneering European ThinkTank on Film and Film Policy, set up in 2006, whose members include Europe's top film bodies in Germany, France, the UK, Spain, Denmark and Poland.

At the San Sebastian Film Festival, Camre has held sessions with the ThinkTank's Board members and the European Film Agency Directors (EFAD) in order to discuss the key conclusions and recommendations from the September 11-13 Forum, "Shaping Policies for the Cinema of Tomorrow", co-organised with the Council of Europe and the Polish Film Institute.

The Basque festival is a traditional sounding board for institutions. But few have the stats, analytical brawn and umbrella status of the ThinkTank.

"San Sebastian is an excellent environment in which to explore these issues - the organization is exemplary and the relaxed atmosphere has enabled us to build a more intimate dialogue," explains Camre.

The key priorities in the ThinkTank's masterplan for rebuilding European cinema include forging a new dialogue between public and private players, moving beyond the art vs. commerce divide and focusing on how to bring quality films to audiences.

"We need scale, policy harmonization, coherent strategies, simpler co-production rules and a much bigger emphasis on marketing and distribution" states Camre.

He believes that one of Europe's key weaknesses is fragmentation - 921 films a year and over 1100 distributors - and cites the recent Zentropa-Nordisk merger as an example of how it's possible to build scale, even in small countries.

Key elements of the ThinkTank's recommendations include critical mass, more films targeted at young people and children and greater digital content provision of European films.

Camre's emphasis on the need for a fresh start include redesign of European-level initiatives - he criticizes MEDIA for trying to put a dead system on a life-support machine and emphasises the importance of the Council of Europe's recent involvement in order to extend action to all European countries.

by Team Variety

(Warning: contiene spoiler)

Jaime Rosales, (tres premios Goya en 2007 por "La Soledad", que estuvo también en Un Certain Regard en Cannes) ha causado conmoción en San Sebastián con "Tiro en la Cabeza", a competición en  la Sección Oficial.

Su estreno coincide con un repunte de la actividad del terrorismo independentista en el País Vasco, cuatro atentados y un muerto en la última semana. Un problema que divide profundamente a la opinión pública en España desde hace cuarenta años.

Rosales descartó que "Tiro en la Cabeza" sea una película local, y defendió su interés para audiencias extranjeras. "La solución del problema tiene consecuencias positivas y ejemplares para todo el mundo."

"Me parece que es muy interesante que, desde el punto de vista extranjero, la película es ininteligible al extraer la ideología. Si para comprender el absurdo tengo que incluir la ideología, esto significa que la ideología es absurda."

A lo controvertido del tema se une la dificultad de una propuesta absolutamente radical en las formas. Ambos desafíos han provocado reacciones diversas, con un cruce intenso de entusiasmos y rechazos y un debate encendido en lo político y en lo creativo: "Tiro en la Cabeza" conmueve, y sólo por esto ya es un éxito rotundo.

En una rueda de prensa que se quedó inevitablemente corta, Rosales describió "Tiro" como "una experiencia cinematográfica de naturaleza mixta, uno de sus padres bastardos es el cine muy clásico, otro es el arte moderno. La película tiene algo de instalación"

Clave casi imprescindible: entendida como instalación, necesita la interacción con el público para tener un sentido completo. Así, las deserciones de la sala de proyección y la sonora incomodidad de la concurrencia contemplando los diálogos inaudibles de un hombre corriente en situaciones corrientes forman parte de la acción. La tensión no se percibe, casi nos amenaza el tedio, cuando estalla la violencia.

"Yo no soy un político, soy un artista" "He tenido que hacer una película que en un primer instante es desconcertante. He creado un objeto de no fácil adhesión ideológica".

Para Variety Team, la experiencia de ver "Tiro en la Cabeza" en una sala llena tiene algo en común con formar parte de una sociedad en la que se enquista la violencia: nos vemos convertidos en espectadores incómodos del sinsentido, y entramos a formar parte de él en la medida en que podemos oír nuestro propio silencio.  

(La película habla de Ion, un hombre corriente. Desayuna, pasea con su familia, ve sus abogados, conoce a una chica en una fiesta y pasa la noche con ella. Al día siguiente, viaja a Francia con un amigo. En un área de descanso, coinciden con dos guardias civiles. En el parking, Ion y su amigo les disparan en la cabeza.)

"Tiro" está basada en un atentado real: "Por qué este atentado y no otro es algo misterioso" explicó Rosales "Nunca había pensado en hacer una película sobre ETA. Pero el atentado tuvo algo atípico que ilustra algo muy absurdo. Quise hacer una película sobre el absurdo de la violencia".

by Martin Dale and Team Variety
A few stones throws from the French-Spanish border, San Sebastian is the gateway to Northern Spain and the largest Spanish resort along the Cantabrian coast.

Adopted as a summer residence by the Spanish court in the late 19th century, the city soon became one of Europe's most cosmopolitan cities, as a cluster of elegant buildings were erected around the stunning La Concha Bay.

Luis Bunuel summered here, eying ladies in their changing cubicles through gaps in the woodwork (remember “El”?)

The film festival, founded in 1953, is the largest and most prestigious film event in the Spanish-speaking world and has solidified the city's cultural projection - San Sebastian now hopes to be nominated European Capital of Culture in 2016.

In addition to catching the latest screenings and Sales Office events, visitors should make sure to get to know this charming and seductive city. Some suggestions:

1. Get your feet wet

Flannering down the Concja Bay promenade is de rigueur - only beaten by a barefoot stroll around the water's cusp.

2. Make a splash

Why not sample the adrenalin rush of a dive from the pier? (Ed: surely not?)

3. Head for the hills
The surrounding Basque countryside is green, fertile and littered with excellent Michelin 3-star restaurants.

4. See Jesus

San Sebastian has its own miniature sugar loaf mountain, topped by a Christ statue. A 20-minute stroll to the top offers magnificent views of the city.

5. Book a sea-view room in the Hotel Londres.
The spectacular views of La Concha bay from plush Hotel Londres are well worth the 10-year waiting list.

6. Dine in the Port
Many of the city's finest restaurants are located in the Old Town and Port.

7. Wheel-and-deal over tapas

Plaza de la Constitucion is an oasis of tapas bars and elegant yellow façade buildings in the heart of the Old Town.

8. Buy a yacht
San Sebastian is an excellent training ground for Cannes and yachts tend to be cheaper with more affordable mooring rates.

9. Walk the magenta carpet

Magenta can be seen everywhere in the Fest buildings, including the magnificent magenta carpeted entrance to the Kursaal Congress Centre.

10. See some great movies
If you can squeeze in the time.


The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by John Hopewell and Team Variety
Robert Downey Jr. is in trouble again. The crime? An insatiable sense of humor.  He’s unlikely, however, to go down by law on this one.

The scene of Downey’s contratemps was a press conference Saturday evening after the San Sebastian screening of “Tropic Thunder.”

Pic wowed the audience, suggesting Paramount has a big hit straight out of the gate as a newly standalone distribution op in Spain.

And Downey and Stiller were in no mood to let the comedy end with the film.  Their press conference was great fun sit-down comedy, with a straight-guy producer Stuart Cornfield, Stiller’s production partner at Red Hour Films, looking bemusedly on.

Much of Downey’s shtick turned on his faux reproach to Stiller that Sean Penn had been the first choice for his part. Stiller of course played this up. 

Stiller on casting, beginning reverantly: "For the role which Robert plays in the movie, it’s an actor who’s one of the greatest actors of his generation, so it was very important for me when casting the role to have somebody who was considered to be one of the greatest actors of his genration."

(Downey beams with mock pride)

Stiller continues... "and Robert does believe he is one of the greatest actors of his generation."

Downey crest falls.

More repartee:

Question: "Your character’s a bit like Russell Crowe..."

Downey: "Well, there I was thinking about how to do this. And, as I said, Sean Penn had turned my role down..."

Stiller: "You don’t know that!"

Downey: "Sure I do, you told me. But you’re right. As you said, just because you said it, does mean it’s true."

Etc, etc.

There’s something strange but very familiar about Ben Stiller’s jaw. How, when he’s doing comedy,  it kind of drops, then locks in cloddish determination.

But maybe the comic duo, though inspired, went one gag too far.

Someone asked about Antonio Banderas and Javier Bardem, in town Friday to pick up a Donostia Award and Spain’s National Cinema Prize respectively.

Downey feigned ignorance. He’d look them up on Google that very evening, he said. Stiller whispered solicitously in his ear. Downey acts like he’s cottoning on. Says he’s jealous. They’re so handsome.

It was fun... until Spanish press agency EFE brought out a story on the wires, which claims about half-way through, that Downey had to look up Bardem and Banderas on the web.

If EFE thought it was a joke, it certainly wasn’t admitting it.

(The El Diario Vasco in contrast, lead coverage of Stiller and Downey’s presence in San Sebastian with the title “Bardem? Banderas? I’ll look them up on Google to see who they are.” But it made clear in the article that this was a Downey boutade.)

Maybe of course it’s all George Bush’s fault.

A few Spaniards, a minority, seem to think that all Americans have the renaissance culture and intellectual incisiveness of the U.S. president.

Most probably, it’s just the hell of writing for a wire service, which is hardly a joke. So jokes for journos doing the wires are the last thing they’re going to have time to recognise, let alone explain.



The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

"You know, some folk said it was the typical ‘americanada’ - popcorn movie - but I really loved it and had a great time. The only thing I found disappointing was the cop asking the elder son to behave after the son conned an old lady: it's so unlikely!"

Not the reaction you'd expect from a Lindsay-Lohan-lookalike Spanish youngster but it was made by a member of San Sebastian’s Youth Award jury, speaking to a local tv station about "Frozen River."

A lot has been said about "Frozen River" and its take on social issues. This gal's reaction and those of a packed screening room at San Sebastian, suggest that, beyond the pic's indie-arthouse brand,  Courtney Hunt (above) may strike a chord with wider audiences by telling the adventure tale of two smuggler mothers. A vibrating story of outlaws which need to find an open KMart and risk their lives and money retracing their steps on frozen ice to find a lost baby.

"Everyone has a mother," Hunt said at the press conference. "Moms share a language."

"It seems that you're given a happy ending to an issue that isn’t solved at all," a journo asked.

"No," answered Hunt.

She explained that the movie just took on its own life as she was writing showing how this common language of motherhood brings two women together along some passages of what she called  "a long journey to solidarity."

Melissa Leo, speaking in Spanish, connected with the Spanish-speaking attendees at the press conference a recalling an old hit from Chilean folk music group Quilapayun:

"El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido," she said in Spanish.

“Frozen River” talks about how "people united really can change the world," she added.

Exhausting as it would be, Variety Team San Sebastian wishes - at least right now - that there was a festival in every single town:  Hunt, haloed in a curly gold mane, and flanked by thesps Misty Upham and Melissa Leo (right), would persuade an army of young reality show contestant wannabes to defect.


The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by John Hopewell
Woody Allen has such a sad quavering voice that it’s only when you got up close to him at San Sebastian - in other words, saw him on TV - that you could see that he actually looked rather happy.

He should have been. While his first British pic got the bird from many U.K. crix, Spanish reviewers were largely happy for Allen in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” to set up stereotypes of Spanish character - such as Javier Bardem’s macho, passionate paint-flinging painter - and then show the humanity behind the facade.

The festival audience also thought the ignorance of Spain shown by American tourists Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) -- "they’d never heard of Oviedo!"*  -- was a hoot.

Pic got good reviews: “Some genius (and ingenious) touches,” glowed daily newspaper El Pais.

And at his press conference Allen delivered, making the kind of bathetic off-the-cuff retort without which no Allen appearance would be complete:

Enthusiastic U.S. journalist: “I’m from New York and I live in Oviedo. I live near the statue that has been erected there in your honor. So every time I go to the news stand I have a chance to see you. And I just wanted to mention that your monument is the most visited monument of any monument in Oviedo.

Allen: Is that by pigeons or people?

* Oviedo is the capital of Asturias, a lush rural region in Northern Spain. Read Variety’s Asturias Spotlight here.


The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by Emiliano De Pablos
It must sound near like heavenly music for a Spanish film producer when he hears that there is a potential new market of three million people for his films, and that he can discuss how to reach them over a free glass or ten.

The San Sebastian Sales Office hosted its first Happy Hour cocktail Friday organized by CESyA, a Spanish public institution to promote a wider accessibility in film and TV for people with sight or hearing disabilities: aids includes subtitling and special audio commentary.

The Happy Hour lasted nearly two hours, which made people even happier. 


CESyA's technical director Belen Ruiz Mezcua (left) and Angel Garcia Crespo, responsible for social awareness.  "In Spain, there are a million blind people, another million are deaf, and yet another million are elderly people with difficulties in really getting into movies," Garcia said. Spain's new film law offers subsidies for subtitling and audio aids to cinema theaters.


Some major Latin American film industry heavyweights: Guadalajara Film Festival's industry director, Andrea Stavenhagen (left) and director Jorge Sanchez Sosa, sharing a glass with Argentine exec Bernardo Bergeret, its INCAA film institute's international affairs manager. 


The Madrid Film Commission's A-team: Samuel Castro, head of international and communications, and director Manuel Soria with actress Tirma Ayerbe and producer Luis Mendez. Mendez, a member of a dynasty of filmmakers, is backing CESyA's initiatives. 


Sogepaq international sales exec Gorka Bilbao smiles with Miami-based Venevision Intl. acquisitions execs Millie Luna and Jose Ramon Ganchegui - maybe just about to seal a movie package agreement for the U.S. Hispanic market? 


More than bulls. Beyond its San Fermin bull runs, Pamplona has a somewhat less dangerous film festival. The 9th edition runs October 6-11. Director Dimas Lasterra and press chief Iñaki Arrubia talk at the cocktail with San Sebastian-based producer Nuria Ruiz Cabestany. 


Madrid's Carlos III U is a frequent collaborator with CESyA. University's institutional relations execs Daniel Vega and Monica Souto (right).


The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by John Hopewell and Team Variety, San Sebastian
The San Sebastian Festival didn’t quite begin with a bang Thursday, but almost: it began with Javier Bardem and Antonio Banderas.

Spain’s two homeboys made good in Hollywood, they made for an interesting contrast.

Banderas was modesty to a tee. In town to tubthump Richard Eyre’s official fest opener “The Other Man,” and to pick up a Donostia Award tomorrow, he took the press conference with Eyre dressed in an orange-red shirt as bright as a soccer strip - a common touch. He looked gaunter than in his “Zorro 2" or “Desperado” uber-roles, but then he downscales everything.

“What had he achieved?” one journalist asked. “I feel I’m just beginning,” Banderas replied.

Had he really opened Hollywood for more Spaniards?  For Spaniards, probably not, maybe for Hispanos.

The Donostia Award?  He’d like to think it’s as much for what he’d achieve in the future as in the past.

Banderas will receive the award, San Sebastian’s career achievement award, from Pedro Almodovar, who discovered him as a curly haired 21-year-old in 1983's “Labyrinth of Passion.”

Almodovar’s presence could be felt in Banderas’ words. Was he disappointed not to gave been cast in the film version of “Nine?”

"En mi corazoncito, porque todo el mundo tiene su corazoncito, si." [“In my heart of hearts, yes.”]  The phrasing is pure Pedro.  Banderas wanted Hollywood. And he got it. Chapeau. He left Spain without knowing hardly any English.

And Hollywood wanted Bardem. They’ve rarely had him, though he’s been attached by the press to a litany of projects. 18 months ago, Variety went through IMDb’s list of Bardem’s future movies: for one reason or another, he wasn’t going to make any of them.

Dressed in sober black, Bardem took a press conference with Woody Allen, Rebecca Hall and pic co-producer Jaume Roures for the Spanish preem of “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” which was warmly received at the fest.

For most of the conference, Bardem’s manner was that of a perfect host, the gentleman hidalgo, welcoming Allen back to Spain. He hardly had to act that: he’s a great bohemian, a great friend to his friends and good causes.

But not everybody recognises that in Spain.

In an interview with The New York Times T Magazine early this month Bardem lamented “The Spanish are tough. They criticise my work and say I sold out. You want to say “Stop it - you’re a bunch of stupid people!”

The passing comment - aimed at a small clutch of Spaniards - nevertheless caused a media maelstrom in Spain, being taken as a national slur.

Even his Oscar-win caused howls of disgust among a minority in Spain’s right.  "I feel I’m on a river in my little boat discovering, developing my art. And beside there’s a channel of sometimes fecal waters, with words, images, acts that I’ve supposedly committed, and the only thing I get is the channel’s stink.”

Javier Bardem said wise and sensible things at the conference.

“Did he improvise the scenes with Penelope?”  No, you don’t really improvise when Woody Allen writes the script, Bardem replied.

Do you imagine Almodovar making “Vicky Cristina Barcelona?"  No, Almodovar makes his own masterpieces, Bardem replied.

But you can bet your bottom dollar that when Bardem’s press conference comments are covered by the press, many will lead with his laments on media coverage. Just Google it in Spanish.


The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by Maria Alvarez Rilla
Angel Amigo es un histórico en San Sebastián: histórico productor independiente (hizo la magnífica "Fuga de Segovia" de Imanol Uribe, en 1981), histórico factótum del Festival (el Equipo Variety recuerda haber visto su oficina convertida en base de operaciones de emergencia para la prensa internacional) e histórico protagonista y narrador de lo que algún día esperamos que pueda contar como el camino hacia la paz en el País Vasco.

Honesto, valiente y comprometido, y en ese orden, Amigo presentó el martes en San Sebastián "El año de todos los demonios", un documental que indaga en los factores que confluyeron en el momento de la desaparición de Eduardo Moreno Bergaretxe, "Pertur", militante de ETA político-militar, uno de los principales defensores de la opción política frente a la acción armada y antiguo compañero de camino del propio director y productor.

En la presentación, que no abría la opción del coloquio, Amigo hizo honor a su apellido (y disculpen que recurramos a un juego de palabras tan obvio): "me han preguntado muchas veces por qué he retomado la historia de Eduardo treinta y pico años después, como si pudiera haber alguna intención extraña, y no la hay. La razón es muy sencilla: él no está y, además, él hubiera hecho lo mismo".

En la sala abarrotada, un público mayoritariamente compuesto por la generación que vivió los hechos que narra el documental pudo asistir a la proyección de una cinta que, probablemente, será controvertida en España. "La magia del cine es que ha permitido que todos los protagonistas puedan conversar civilizadamente",   dijo con satisfacción. Gracias, Amigo.

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by Maria Alvarez Rilla
Esperen un momento: vale, no quiere fotos... ¡pero es Lou Reed!

Parece que el frenesí mediático de la prensa nacional por las estrellas se limita al documento gráfico, y la rotunda negativa de Mr. Reed a posar redujo sensiblemente la ocupación de la sala en la rueda de prensa que ofreció el jueves en San Sebastián junto a Julian Schnabel para presentar "Berlín", inmediatamente después del acribillamiento fotográfico al que fue sometido Samuel L. Jackson.

Sin embargo, Reed regaló la emoción del genio. A veces pasa: algunos intérpretes, actores, músicos, simplemente están y emocionan. No ha ocurrido con la profesionalidad de Gere, ni con el carisma de Mortensen, ni con el encanto desenfadado de Jackson, pero el semblante huraño de Lou Reed hizo la magia desde el instante previo a su entrada.

Dos grandes jarras humeantes y una taza le esperaban. Bebió café con leche incansablemente, y contestó con parsimonia a las preguntas de la sala. Sólo se animó al contestar que era "muy hermoso" que se percibiera la pureza que aportan las voces adolescentes del Brooklyn Youth Chorus a la sórdida historia que narra "Berlín", míticamente apodado el disco más deprimente que se ha grabado nunca.

Soltó una carcajada cuando una periodista le preguntó si había "un tipo de música para cada momento de la vida"."Si lo supiera, la escribiría: la música de la vida", contestó enigmático después de tomarse su tiempo.

Su anfitrión en San Sebastián y director de la cinta, Julian Schnabel ha tomado la ciudad por asalto casi como nunca.

Sus desembarcos son y han sido habituales en la que es la ciudad natal de su mujer, Olatz Garmendia, y  una de sus residencias, pero este año hace triplete: "La escafandra y la mariposa" (que algún cronista nacional ha comparado, favoreciéndola, con "Mar Adentro" de Amenábar), comparte espacio en la sección Perlas de Zabaltegi con la proyección especial de  "Berlín", donde filma el primer directo del mítico álbum de Lou Reed desde 1973.

Además, la antigua Tabacalera, aún sin restaurar, acoge una retrospectiva de su obra, apropiadamente titulada   "Summer"  ("el verano es la época que más me gusta, es cuando más pinto", ha dicho) pese al tiempo otoñal que ya padecemos por aquí.

Reed opinó que "las aventuras musicales de Julian son para él, no para ustedes" (el director, y pintor, también ha grabado un disco que "no, no me sirvió de ayuda para hacer la película", reconoció con bastante cachondeo), pero Schnabel parece puro rock & roll.

Director, surfista, pintor, músico ocasional y evidente bon vivant, desborda energía, creativa y vital. Sobre el carácter deprimente de "Berlín", dijo "aunque el tema sea trágico, el trabajo del artista siempre es optimista". Un día antes, hablando de "La escafandra", ya había declarado que "la vida se va, pero el arte se queda. El arte siempre es optimista."

"Berlín" termina con una excelente versión de "Sweet Jane", con Lou Reed en estado de gracia. "No está en el álbum, como otras piezas que se incluyeron por sugerencia del productor", explicó. "Pero nos parecía una buena manera de salir de la sala alegres,"dijo Schnabel. Y parece imposible no estarlo después de haber disfrutado la película.

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by Maria Alvarez Rilla and John Hopewell
Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón and Brazilian cinematographer Affonso Beato gave a workshop about film lighting at San Sebastián on Wednesday.

They stood on the landing of the town's vast Tabacalera, its former colonial tobacco factory (think "Carmen"). Sitting on the broad staircase sweeping up front of them were a score of DPs and a hundred other film students. The new digital Genesis camera stood like an impatient train at the end of a 12-foot stretch of rails.

This was the first workshop organized at the festival by Panavision and EPC in Spain, the brain child of Panavision France president Alain Coiffier, who's always thinking up something.

Cuarón has directed "Y tu mama tambien," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," and "Children of Men." Beatto lensed "All Aboout My Mother," "The Queen" and "Love in the Time of Cholera." They begin to speak, explaining the workshop. Two great practitioners of the art speak with passion and knowledge about the craft they care for.

Film festivals throw up these moments of privilege. Equipo Variety recorded a few exchanges:

Alfonso Cuarón : Many film schools have been creating new generations which turn out more commercial directors, advertising directors, than filmmakers. Film schools focus on a technical level and not on conceptual elements. A workship like this, where we're working on light as a conceptual element...

He's interrupted by journalist Benjamin B, and starts joking on his hip-hop name.

Affonso Beato: Setting [the camera] without a concept is like putting things back to front. Because you don't just put a camera in a room and then shoot a photo, you need a concept. And the concept affects the camera position, but also the takes. Without a concept, all basic principles are useless.

Soon, Cuarón and Beato jump into practical details. An actor and actress and called up from the crowd, go to their marks, and descend the wide, Gothic-like staircase where the scene's been set. Cuarón and Beato pass the camera to DP students, who shoot back-to-back takes with different lights, changing filters, mixing windows and spotlights as light sources.

On three monitors spread through two large rooms, students watch as the same scene changes from day to apparent-night, from a flattering warm orange-y tones to a graphic, dark-blue-tinted scene, take after take.

Over each take, Alfonso and Affonso discuss - and sometimes discover - effects, detailing framing, composition, a take's elements, its expressive force.

Beato explains one take, addressing the actors:

Beato: Can you stay on your marks and look at each other please? The light coming from this side; the other side is a little darker. If the light came from the other side, the shot would be totally flat.

Beato jokes in a lively mix of Brazilian, Portuñol, English, as Cuarón and he bark out instructions and ask for silence from the crew and students.

Beato: I don't want to seem authoritarian, maybe we're a bit pushy, but directors are pushy, you know, that's the reason why you become a director, to organize.

 Beato lights the actress using a natural source, a window, behind her, and a light set up in front.

Cuarón: You did that fantastically, Affonso. She has behind her a light source that's the window. But she still displays the bright side of her face against some dark shadow behind her, and the dark side of her face is against the bright window, creating dark silhouetting ... With cinematographers like you, masters that you are, in every single bit of the shoot there's something going on.

Beato: He's a nice guy, actually, he's my agent!

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

 
by Maria Alvarez Rilla
Lo primero que nos provoca Pedro Aguilera es envidia (sanísima, por supuesto): llega al Hotel María Cristina, cenro social del Festival de San Sebastían, recién salido de una comida familiar. Lo segundo es cierta sorpresa: aparece, acompañado de su madre, tan alegre y vital como su hijo.

La ópera prima de Aguilera, "La influencia", disecciona la depresión de una madre soltera con dos hijos.

"Dicen que la gente alegre hace cosas deprimentes, y al revés. Yo tendría que psicoanalizarme para saber de dónde ha salido esta historia, porque soy todo lo contrario", explica.

"La historia vino a mí, no la busqué. Intentaba una metáfora sencilla para un tema complejo: si uno se puede liberar de las influencias negativas. Tiene que ver con mi visión del sistema, creo que está enfermo y que es natural que los individuos también enfermen" 

La película, que se proyecta en San Sebastián dentro del Día del Cine Vasco, se presentó en Cannes en la Quincena de los Realizadores. "Creo que he tenido suerte, pero quiero bajar a tierra y aprender, estar muy atento y trabajar mucho porque es muy fácil que algo no salga bien".

Aguilera se entusiasma con todas las fases del proceso, incluyendo hablar de lo que hace, y desborda una mezcla de alegría, seguridad y humildad. ¿Tiene ganas de hacer cosas más mainstream? "Sí, sí, sí! Pero ahora que soy joven y no tengo familia, es el momento de investigar. No le tengo mucho respeto al cine, no soy cinéfilo, el cine está demasiado carcomido por la cinefilia"

Con sólo un corto previo y licenciado en Bellas Artes, su background es el del arte contemporáneo, el cine también le buscó: "coincidió que había aprendido a manejarme con los cortos y apareció la idea, que fui depurando a lo largo de unos dos años. Los mejicanos vinieron a verme mientras rodaba, si les gustaba el material iban a apoyarme, les gustó y me apoyaron en la producción"

"Los mejicanos" son los directores Carlos Reygadas y Amat Escalante, y la productora mejicana, Mantarraya. Por la parte española, la vasca Alokatu de José María Lara, que ha conseguido también la distribución nacional. Una vez seleccionada en Cannes, la francesa Bac Films se hizo con las ventas internacionales. 

Pero el proyecto arrancó con financiación propia, una pequeña cantidad conseguida por el propio director, y se financió sin ningún tipo de subvención, ni de Méjico ni de España, un caso insólito.

El próximo proyecto se titulaba "El perro negro", al menos, hasta la semana pasada.

Aguilera construye párafos, no frases. Este es uno, muy cortado:

"Llevo seis meses escribiendo, creo que voy a rodar en el sur de España y probablemente de nuevo sin actores, aunque no lo sé. Siempre depende de que la persona se parezca al personaje. No quiero una persona que se acerque al personaje, quiero una que sea el personaje. Me gustaría que fuera casi un documental, entrar en un lugar donde haya mucha gente y simplemente rodar. "El perro negro" es un regreso a lo arcaico, se trataría de encontrar una persona que se comporta casi como un animal."

De nuevo, es posible que estén de nuevo Alokatu y Mantarraya en la producción. Lo dicho: arrollador.

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

Celina Murga y su guionista Juan Villegas en Cine en Construcción.

by Emilio Mayorga
Hay películas que se quedan varadas a medias aguas, como un buque o un cayuco antes de llegar a tierra. O como algunos cetáceos. En el caso de los cetáceos la razón no parece estar muy clara; en el caso de las películas sí. Plancton financiero: dinero.

Bendito elemento que tiene la ocurrencia de escasear a punto de que la aventura llegue a su destino final. Muchas veces.

Cine en Construcción trata de buscar soluciones otorgando premios y propiciando que los ejecutivos de casas de pos-producción y televisiones, agentes de venta, y representantes de festivales compartan un desayuno a base de croissants y quizá un acuerdo financiero con los realizadores.

Es el decimosegundo año que se celebra esta iniciativa dentro del amplio paraguas (llueve ahora en S. S.) del festival. La responsabilidad de Cine en Construcción, además del festival español, es también de los Encuentros de Cinematografías de América Latina de Toulusse (Francia).

Este año se han examinado 129 producciones y de éstas se han seleccionado seis. Hoy se han podido ver tres.

De esa enorme bolsa de 129 películas, según los organizadores, el tema de la adolescencia está muy presente. ¿Por qué? Podríamos pensar en que los realizadores son cada vez más jóvenes o en que en algunos países está franja de edad está dejando de cumplir en taquilla. Y para muestras, botones.

La que ha roto el hielo "Acné", primer largometraje del uruguayo Federico Veiroj, premiado en el festival de Gijón y el valenciano Cinema Jove por su corto "Bregman, el siguiente".  Bregman es también el personaje principal de "Acné",  quien a pesar de haber perdido la virginidad, no ha besado todavía a ninguna chica. Produce Control Z Films ("Whisky", de Juan Pablo Rebella y Pablo Stoll).

Celina Murga (su primera y anterior "Ana y los otros" fue premiada en Thessaloniki, Venecia y el Bafici) es, quizá, la representante más prometedora de la generación última de realizadores argentinos. Quiere acabar "Una semana solos", una historia de un grupo de muchachos que se quedan solos unos días en una urbanización cerrada y de clase alta, una burbuja social que evoca "El señor de las moscas", de William Golding  con un personalísimo acento.

El actor brasileño Matheus Nachtergaele ("Ciudad de Dios", de Fernando Meirelles), galardonado dos veces con el premio nacional de interpretación en Brasil, se estrena como director con  "A festa da menina morta", producción de Bananeira Filmes. Un drama amazónico alrededor del mundo de las sectas y la asombrosa facultad del ser humano para generar fe. Honda expresión poética y simbólica que le hace a uno pensar en la herencia de Glauber Rocha.

Ojalá encuentren su plancton éstas y las que podrán verse mañana: "Gasolina", de Julio Hernández Cordón, "Sol na neblina", de Werner  Schuman, y "La extranjera", de Fernando Díaz. 

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by John Hopewell
Bob Flynn, a Scottish journalist in San Sebastián for "Esquire" and "The Scotsman," interviewed Nick Broomfield, pictured on the set of "Battle for Haditha." It had played Friday to a good reception.

"Haditha" is based on true events, Broomfield complained about his film being called a "docudrama." He loathes the term. Surely, he's right. Docudramas are events shot real-time in the hoof and then bashed into a drama in the editing room. That's way different from the recreation of real events months later, using non-actors and a documentary style.

Mind you, Broomfield's still trying to work out what he should call his sub-species of docu-fiction.

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by Maria Alvarez Rilla
El Festival propone la nueva Sala Club del Teatro Victoria Eugenia como plató para su "telefestival" y espacio de encuentros. Parece que los periodistas, como especie, preferiríamos no pertenecer a un club que nos admite como socios, y había quien echaba de menos la asistencia de más prensa a las convocatorias.

Sin embargo,  el equipo Variety recomienda la cita a los colegas que nos lean en The Circuit: la sala es acogedora y el aforo reducido, la ronda de entrevistas que hace el "telefestival"  a los invitados es breve y el aperitivo que se sirve a continuación es excelente: una ocasión perfecta para charlar con los presentes en un ambiente más pausado y con cierta intimidad.

El sábado, el equipo de "Cosmos" casi al completo respaldaba la presencia en Zabaltegi Nuevos Directores de esta "fábula realista de tintes oníricos", según su director Diego Fandos, sobre un industrial post-secuestrado, un cosmonauta ruso, un antiguo misionero jesuita y una joven necesitada de afecto. El veterano Xabier Elorriaga, uno de los protagonistas, habló de una historia de "soledades que se resuelven". Su productor, José María Lara, lamentaba que la galerna de la noche anterior frustrara el lanzamiento de miles de globos de papel previsto para celebrar el pase de la película.

Antes, Pierre Linesin, director de "Young Yakuza" explicó su incursión en la mafia japonesa, que describió como "empresa de servicios gangsteriles".

Por su parte, la chilena Carmen Castillo, miembro del Jurado y directora de "Calle de Santa Fé" nos ponía un nudo en la garganta recordando el terrible momento en que su compañero fue asesinado y ella misma gravemente herida en un ataque de la Junta Militar de Pinochet a su casa familiar. Tuvimos que sofocar las lágrimas cuando añadió que había merecido la pena: "La vida sin compromiso con los demás es, sencillamente, muy aburrida. Es menos vida".

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by John Hopewell
One scene in Nick Broomfield's "Battle for Haditha," which screened in San Sebastian Friday, has news footage of President George Bush in Iraq, addressing the troops, saying that the U.S. will not be intimidated by anybody. "Puto!" ("Rent boy!") shouted a Spaniard from the audience.

Spaniards are often taken to be anti-American. They're not. But, especially after the Iraq invasion, many are rabidly anti-Bush.

by Maria Alvarez Rilla
El equipo Variety ha decidido dedicar una mini-sección en The Circuit a los directores vascos, en merecido reconocimiento a la industria anfitriona del Festival. Y empezamos con un nuevo talento (Diego Fandos) producido por un talento veterano (José María Lara, de Alokatu)

Si estrenar tu primera película en un festival internacional pone a prueba los nervios más templados, cuando se celebra en tu propia casa la cosa se convierte en un arma de doble filo. Diego Fandos debuta como director con su primer largo, "Cosmos", optando al Premio Altadis-Nuevos Directores en Zabaltegi.

Fandos, fajado en publicidad y una trayectoria como cortometrajista, ha visto pasar nueve años desde que escribió la primera versión del guión de "Cosmos", un collage de historias de soledades que se resuelven y confluyen al final. Concebida aún bajo el impacto de los grandes secuestros de ETA, "Cosmos" se centra "en el padecimiento humano de la víctima. El mensaje de la película es el ABC de que la paz es mejor que la violencia, que hace falta un cierto tipo de comunicación. El personaje tiene secuelas, ha sufrido, pero hay que mirar hacia delante," dice.

Hay una reconciliación familiar en una de las tramas que también   "va por ahí" añade Fandos. A través del paralelismo entre el aislamiento del industrial secuestrado y el de un misterioso cosmonauta ruso que no consigue volver del espacio a causa de la disolución de la URSS, la historia toma un tono onírico, casi naïf, que aporta una mirada limpia a un tema "muy manipulado de uno y otro lado". Y añade: "a veces viene bien ser superficial".

"Aunque el título, "Cosmos", sea muy grandilocuente, juega a ser justo la antítesis de lo que estamos viendo: es una película pequeñita, que tiene lugar aquí, la historia del cosmonauta es prácticamente metafórica. La intención es invitar a soñar". Lo haremos.

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by John Hopewell and Maria Alvarez Rilla

Richard Gere arrived in San Sebastian Saturday to receive one of its two career achievement Donostia Awards. On Sunday, he gave a press conference. At times, it seemed more like a masterclass in geopolitics, Buddhism, the political situation in Tibet, "dirty wars" in 1980s Central America, Iraq (a big mistake), George Bush (overshadowed by dad), Sarajevo (you should go there), China (boycotts aren't a solution). Did you know that El Salvador is one of the most densely populated places on earth? You did after listening to Gere.

And that "bipolarism is a problem worldwide."?

Well, no, but I could have imagined it was.

Gere was a consummate professional, courteously flirting for a mo with a young femme journo-admirer, deflecting a question about why he had repeated so few times with the same directors, saying - no doubt sincerely - that he was honored to be considered at the same level as other actors who had won the award. But, as he said almost from the get-go, movies formed "only a minor part" of his life.

Somebody asked him - it was probably the most interesting question - why he played so many characters he were slightly shadowy, dodgy, not quite what they seemed. He said he'd thought about that, but didn't have an answer.

San Sebastian uses stars to get journos, hoping they'll also write about other things, like San Sebastian itself. Gere also uses his star status to get films made about Bosnia, or to push his real agenda. It was frustrating. I wanted an obviously intelligent person to talk more about films. But at least he was honest about the process. 

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by Maria Alvarez Rilla and Emilio Mayorga

An increasingly larger than life Antonio Saura (producer of “Fados") and new indie producer Javier Mart Domínguez, once one of the sharpest minds at TVE, celebrate San Sebastian’s first Bloody Mary agreement, signed 12 hours later at the Maria Cristina bar.

Argentina’s Film Institute INCAA’s Bernardo Bergeret, Miguel Angel Ivaldi and Alberto Urthiague. They are not missing the mate tea tonight. Benoit Ginisty, from Paris-based Fiapf producers org, Jesús Robles, from Spanish film book publisher Ocho y Medio and director Pablo Fendrik team up.

 
Deputy Director General of Promotion and International Affairs Pilar Torre and exec Rosario Alburquerque of Spain’s ICAA Film Institute: partying authorities.


San Sebastian’s opening gala party, Thursday, September 20, in the Maria Cristina Hotel, the festival’s social center. You can tell it’s the opening party just by looking at the photos. Everybody looks so young. Ten days later, many of the people here will look as if they’ve just served ten years of solitary confinement on Mars.

Variety’s decided to run an occasional section, blogging parties. Parties are one of the lifebloods of this festival, of Spain. In hell, the Spanish don’t get to give the parties.

The opening gala bash was essentially a huge networking occasion. Food: gazpacho, the inevitable croquettes, melon soup. Drink: Marques de Caceres Rioja, Catalan cava. Rating: three-and-a-half out of five Bloody Marys. Or four if the guests were foreign. “This was a wonderful party with charming people, and a good spread,” said guest Trini Rubio, who lives in England.

“It’s just amazing how everything at San Sebastian runs like clockwork,” said another foreign chain-festivaling exec, fresh (it’s an expression) from Venice.

Of course we old San Seb lags get blaisé about this fiesta-fiesta round.

For the record, the alcohol ran out and the lights went down at 2.30a.m. That's very early for Spain. Some distinguished Spanish producers roistered on to other bars. They came, they saw, they (probably) got slaughtered. 

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by John Hopewell
This year, the San Sebastian festival went discreetly New World-y in its opening ceremony on Thursday night. On stage, a troupe of dancers in glitzy grey, full-bodied swimming costumes and huge sunglass goggles did a mechanical-movement dance. Two musicians bonged away softly at wooden xylophones. (photo courtesy San Sebastian International Film Festival)

A huge poster of San Sebastian’s celebrated horseshoe Concha Bay, blue in sunlight, added a blowsy air. There were a few highlights. Actress Asunción Balaguer, the eighty-something widow of Francisco ceive his Donostia Award,” she then said.

Rabal died on a plane August 29 2001 returning to Spain, after the Festival had already announced he’d receive one of that year’s prestigious lifetime achievement Donostia prizes.

Cristian Mingiu (pictured), director of Cannes Palme d’Or winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days,” picked up the Fipresci film of the year. David Cronenberg, who opened San Sebastian with “Eastern Promises,” and has a fine line in drollery, said he was “hugely excited” to be at the ceremony, especially having come down the steep-banked stage staircase without falling over.

But you always wonder how many of the one-liners or gushingly emotional speeches are staged, or at least prepared. There was one moment, however, of blinding humanity which just couldn’t have been scripted. Jury chairman Paul Auster walked on stage, took a felt tip pen from one of the swimmers, and walked arm-in-arm with her to a big board where he scribbled his signature in a theatrical flourish.

So far, all by the script.

But returning the pen to the swimmer, he dropped the pen cap. And he instinctively, immediately, let out a “Sorry” and scrambled down the stage to pick the cap up. Really, he didn’t have to bother. Coming on stage, he’d just received the biggest applause of the night. He was a festival jury chairman. And there he was being so polite, and apologizing.

You here and read terrible things about festival juries. I remember William Goldman’s account of serving at Cannes and how he was psychoanalyzed by a fellow jury member. You hear stories - and I’m not just talking about San Sebastian - of how prizes are divided up by the winners’ friends on the jury, or the jury members’ countries. And you wonder how much of a truth there is in all this.

Auster went on - dressed in an immaculate blue suit: I’d love to know his tailor - to make a little joke. The Jury had made two promises: “To open its eyes, and not fall asleep.”

That was prepared, of course.

But I got a feeling that this year’s jury could be a happy jury. That there wouldn’t be so many stories of ego face-offs, cadre voting or dictatorial bullying. The jury chairman has simply been too well brought up.

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by Maria Alvarez Rilla
Se le pide a menudo a San Sebastián más glamour y más estrellas. Ok: hoy los ha habido, Mortensen despertó la merecida expectación, y esta edición promete más figuras de relumbrón.

Pero no teman que las lentejuelas empañen el refinado sentido del glamour donostiarra: Olaciregui ha tenido el exquisito gusto de dejar claro el primer día qué entiende San Sebastián por "alfombra roja", y la receta es tan genuina y eficaz como la del bacalao al pil-pil: tomen una estrella de Hollywood que cita a filósofos polacos en un delicioso español y saluda con naturalidad en euskera acompañado de un director de prestigio internacional y fuste intelectual, y emparéjenla con uno de los pocos autores nacionales capaces de llevar al público a las salas a reflexionar sobre la naturaleza de las relaciones humanas.

Arranca el Festival, y la Sección Oficial sorprende con un doblete insospechado: el drama gangsteril de Cronenberg  ("Promesas del Este") y el collage sobre las relaciones humanas de Iciar Bollaín ("Mataharis") reflexionan sobre la familia, la proximidad afectiva, el sentido del deber y la necesidad de mantener ciertos secretos.

De propina, las dos introducen una cierta crítica política sobre los excesos del sistema capitalista. Cronenberg considera que la nueva Rusia "nos recuerda el aspecto brutal del capitalismo antes de pasar por cien años, doscientos años de sofisticación", como apuntó en la rueda de prensa (y añadió, entusiasmando al aforo: "creo que a Putin le encantaría esta película").

Bollaín, por su parte, introduce un dilema ético alrededor de los recortes de empleo en una empresa en proceso de externalización. Les parecerá atrevido buscar el paralelismo entre la brutalidad de "Promesas" y el intimismo y la cotidianeidad de "Mataharis", la historia de tres mujeres detectives convertidas en espías de sus propias vidas.

Sin embargo, la jornada inaugural del Festival  apunta a la línea de flotación de la dicotomía entre cine de evento y cine de autor.

Es fácil que cualquier espectador que tenga el -improbable fuera del marco de un Festival de cine- privilegio de ver las dos el mismo día, salga del cine revisando el delicado equilibrio entre sus convicciones, sus afectos, la necesidad de proximidad y la del silencio. Y habrá disfrutado del espectáculo, con todas las letras, en un caso, y de la sencillez y la proximidad en otro.

El bacalao necesita que se mueva la cazuela con firmeza cada cierto tiempo. ¿Cuánto? Bueno, la tradición dice que el que se necesita para bajar a tomar un txikito al bar. En este caso, entre sacudida y sacudida ha pasado el necesario para volver a tomar contacto con la cosmopolita gastronomía local. Disfruten.

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.

by John Hopewell and Maria Alvarez Rilla

The flight from Madrid to San Sebastian went like clockwork, a highly predictable half an hour late. But the short hop to north San Sebastian was just 40 minutes, a breeze. And that's the first thing which hit us when we stepped out of the plane onto the tarmac at the San Sebastian airport.

The air's fresh, blowsy, after Madrid's nicotine-colored smog, it's a gulp of good health, tinged with a hint of sadism. The sadism comes from the landscape shock. Arrive at San Sebastian on the eve of the festival and one or two of the plane's passengers will be first time fest guests. You sense their sense of befuddlement as they stare past the airport building to the steep rampart green hills beyond.

San Sebastian, the Basque Country at large, is hardly typical sun-baked Spain. It's more like Wales or Scotland. The weather at the Festival is a dramatic mix of dazzling sun, squalls and drizzle. If you were planning on ten days of power-sun-bathing on the beach, closing deals to the odor of ambre soleil, forget it. And throw away your castellano if you really want to go local. "Alletu berandua" said a stout passenger as the plane came to a halt. That's Basque. Anybody who catches a plane to San Sebastian knows what it means, because it's repeated so much: "It's late again."

We boarded a taxi. It's a dramatic drive into town, past green fields, oak, beech and pine woods, with hills banking up to limestone buffs on either side. And, 20 minutes later, we're in San Sebastian. We dash over to the festival H.Q., housed in the Kursaal, two Chinese lantern-looking cubes of modern architecture (pictured), just in front of San Sebastian's Gros surfing beach. They look as natural there as the geometric plinth in Kubrick's "2001."

We arrive at 7.30 p.m. just in time to get there too late.  So we sit down at the pub-ish cafe on the pavement opposite the Kursaal and talk about the festival. It would be arrogant of us to say what the 55th edition of San Sebastian was all about even before it starts tomorrow with David Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises." So we'll just say what part of it's about.

In the good old days, the festival list of industry activities used to cover about half a page. Now it spreads over three, at least. There are round tables, workshops, press conferences, a swathe of happy hours, a plethora of fori. One theme, with variations, links much of the yak-fest: regional Europe, smaller countries, emerging film axes. The last are vast: Latin America and the Arab and Mediterranean world.

On Monday, Fapae and Cinema do Brasil stage a co-pro forum. Cinema in Motion, which unveils four unfinished films from the Arab world and its environs, takes place the same day. But another leitmotif threads many events: market decline in Spain as Spain's young become stay-at-home Internet buffs, vidgame fanboys, P2Pnistas. A new Avei Spanish vid lobby unwraps on Saturday; a Tuesday round table plumbs "New Film Consumer Trends."

So the 55th San Sebastian Festival would appear from the get-go to frame a paradox. As trade markets flatten or falter in Spain - and it isn't the only country - governments in emerging regions are taking film-making to their hearts. The question is whether government will soon be called on to do far, far more - in Spain at least - to compensate for ravaging new consumer patterns.

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.