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FESTIVALS / AWARDS Spain

This year’s Cinema Jove to fling open its doors in December

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- Owing to the health crisis, the Valencian festival has shifted its dates to the last month of the year, but is still intent on showcasing films by directors under the age of 40

This year’s Cinema Jove to fling open its doors in December
Batega! by Andreu García

Cinema Jove 2020 kicks off this Saturday, 5 December, and will continue unspooling until the 9th as a physical, in-person event in Valencia, just as it has done annually for the last 35 years. Normally, its dates coincide with the beginning of the summer, in late June, but this year it is taking place in late autumn. The reason? The same reason that has caused so many other gatherings to alter their plans: the coronavirus pandemic (see the news). But despite having fewer screenings than it did in previous years, the festival still retains all of its hallmarks, putting its faith in films by directors under the age of 40.

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“As a festival promoter, lately I’ve been having conflicting feelings: my enthusiasm and determination to make Cinema Jove go ahead, plus my desire to show off the programme to the audience, have been thwarted mainly by uncertainty. But as a new edition gradually takes shape, optimism comes to the fore, and we are spurred on by the conviction that it will indeed be possible,” states the director of this cultural rendezvous, Carlos Madrid. “The programme is being pared down and the capacities are being reduced, and the organisers will have to be flexible in order to guarantee the safety of the viewers at all times, but our enthusiasm to celebrate the 35th edition of Cinema Jove remains completely intact,” he sums up.

And so, this year, the event is premiering various Spanish films, one of which is Batega!, a documentary by Andreu García that plunges the viewer into the heart of the Jove Orquestra de la Generalitat Valenciana, showing the personal lives of four of the orchestra’s young musicians and how they need to learn how to feel and play together if they want to sound like one, harmonious unit. Another Spanish premiere is Esclats de llum, a faux docudrama by Nacho Ruipérez starring 19-year-old Iris, who is doing a professional training course in order to realise one of her dreams: to be an artist for the Falles festival. In search of inspiration, she decides to make a documentary for her class in which she interviews a number of bonfire makers and other people involved with the festival, whom she has tracked down on social networks… but her project is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of the pandemic. Then there is Pérez Arroyo, alma de animador by Carles Palau and Raúl González Monaj, which tells of how, in the early 1940s, the titular pioneer created one of the first animation studios in Valencia, but now, 80 years later, memories of it have faded. Another title getting an airing at the gathering is Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Miguel Llansó
film profile
]
, a sci-fi satire directed by Miguel Llansó.

The programme is rounded off by the official competitive sections for short films and web series (14 in total, hailing from Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, Switzerland, Australia, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and Spain, which broach subjects such as homosexuality, immigration, artificial intelligence and mental disorders), and a master class by the art director of the series Money Heist, Spaniard Abdón Alcañiz, who also served as production designer on features of the likes of The Uncovering [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Nacho Ruipérez, Mil coses que faria per tu by Dídac Cervera and The Return of Elias Urquijo by Roque Madrid.

This edition of the festival – which is dedicated to author Mario Benedetti on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, and is topped off by a concert by chamber-music quintet Spanish Brass, who will perform several legendary soundtracks from the films of Federico Fellini – will hand out its Premio Un futuro de cine (lit. “A Future in Film Award”) to two Valencian actors: Gloria March and Raúl Navarro.

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(Translated from Spanish)

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