Punto de Vista 2011 award winners at the Navarra Film Library

Foreign Parts, Punto de Vista First Prize

On Thursday May 26, the Navarra Film Library is launching the Punto de Vista 2011 Award Winners programme, consisting of five sessions showing the films that were granted awards at the 7th Punto de Vista Film Festival, held in Pamplona in February. The first film will be Foreign Parts, winner of the Punto de Vista Award for Best Film. The show begins at 8:00 p.m. Tickets are €3 (or €2 for Film Library season pass holders).

Eighteen films from all over the world, offering multiple ways of capturing reality, entered the Punto de Vista 2011 Official Selection and were thus eligible for the Festival’s awards. The programme at the Navarra Film Library features the six films that won the Punto de Vista 2011 Awards plus Notas de lo efímero/Notes on the Ephemeral, the short film project that won the X Films Project 2010 competition and was shown at the Punto de Vista 2011 closing ceremony.

The Punto de Vista Official Selection award winners are films from the US (Foreign Parts, Punto de Vista Award for Best Film; Translating Edwin Honig: A Poet’s Alzheimer, Award for Best Short Film), the UK (The Arbor, Jean Vigo Award for Best Director), Spain (Color Runaway Dog, People’s Choice Award), Portugal (48, Honorary Mention), and Belgium (Ici-Bas/Here Below, Honorary Mention).

Directed by J.P. Sniadecki y Véréna Paravel, Foreign Parts is a film about the neighbourhood of Willets Point, an industrial zone fated for demolition hidden enclave in the shadow of the New York Mets' new stadium. Filled with scrapyards and auto salvage shops, lacking sidewalks or sewage lines, the area seems ripe for urban development. But Foreign Parts discovers a strange community where wrecks, refuse and recycling form a thriving commerce. Cars are stripped, sorted and catalogued by brand and part, then resold to an endless parade of drive-thru customers. But even more fascinating than the business itself, are the characters that are around. Joe, the last original resident, rages and rallies through the street like a lost King Lear, trying to contest his imminent eviction. Two lovers, Sara and Luis, struggle for food and safety through the winter while living in an abandoned van. Julia, the homeless queen of the junkyard, exalts in her beatific visions of daily life among the forgotten. The film observes and captures the struggle of a contested "eminent domain" neighbourhood before its disappearance under the capitalization of New York's urban ecology.