The 29th International Women’s Film Festival represents another step forward, making the case for women film directors with a highly ambitious programme in June and July.
First held in June 1993, the goal of the Barcelona International Women’s Film Festival is to promote films directed by women by giving visibility to women’s audio-visual culture and screening works by women filmmakers from around the world. The festival now reaches its 29th edition, having evolved into a stable cultural event for showcasing different content and creative processes.
While the initiative has been in progress since February, within the framework of the Xcèntric at the CCCB, the programme really comes into its own in June and July. The summer programme actually got under way on Tuesday, with the screening of Facce + Due Scatole Dimenticate. Just over a month later, on Wednesday 7 July, the festival winds up with Cecilia Mangini vista per carolina Astudillo.
A panoramic look at women’s lives
The festival groups together screenings by themes, one of which is the Panoràmica. This is one of the most varied sections, offering fifteen works reflecting on women’s relationships with spaces and worlds which surround them, based on filmic accounts of their life experiences, frustrations and desires.
In this section you can discover stories such as the one about Bar, a band who are making their way towards a music competition and come up against different learning experiences and obstacles which will shape their future. The director, Manijeh Hekmat, sets the film in in her native Iran and takes the opportunity to pay homage to the landscape and music of the country. And if you like transgressive narratives, with Maes do Derick you can delve into the everyday lives four women, lesbian, bisexual, anarchist and non-monogamous, who bring up a nine-year old boy between them.
In honour of women
Besides contemporary productions, the festival pays homage to great women directors in the history of cinema. One of them is Cecilia Mangini: during her active years, the author was a committed film director and documentalist, as well as a photographer, scriptwriter and producer. Cecilia left a legacy of important productions for understanding contemporary history. Topics such as the fight against fascism in Mussolini’s Italy or the Cold War consistently feature in her documentaries, and now, just over a year after her death, we can enjoy her work with Facce + Due Scatole Dimenticate.
Besides Mangini, the festival also remembers Dorothy Arzner, the only woman director in Hollywood in the 1930s. Arzner suffered long periods of censorship, along with sexist discrimination which inevitably affected the world of film too. Despite this, she directed nearly twenty films during that time and was also the first woman to direct a film with sound. The festival will be showing films such as Working Girls, Get Your Man and Craig’s Wife, all built around a well-crafted critique of the values of marriage, romantic love, the role of working women and the relationship between social class and gender, offering a feminist example for future generations.
Special mention for little ones
Naturally, there’s also a space for children at the festival. The kids section invites youngsters to make their way around the flora and fauna of wetlands and paper, with the film Bon dia, món!. This is an ideal chance for little ones to grasp the magnitude of life, of nature and the importance of looking after both.
This year’s various activities are being held at the Filmoteca de Catalunya, the Arts Santa Mònica and the Filmin platform. Check the times and the films still available here.