02/06/2014
The Punto de Vista Seminar 2014 (Pamplona, 19th – 22nd February) is going to close with a special event which will be held on Saturday 22nd February at 8 pm at the SAIDE Carlos III Cinema in the centre of Pamplona. It is an event that is aimed not only at film-goers, but also at literature and art enthusiasts in general, as it will be presented by the novelist, poet and translator Menchu Gutiérrez, author of the brilliant essay, Decir la Nieve (Saying Snow).
The Punto de Vista Seminar 2014 (Pamplona, 19th – 22nd February) is going to close with a special event which will be held on Saturday 22nd February at 8 pm at the SAIDE Carlos III Cinema in the centre of Pamplona. It is an event that is aimed not only at film-goers, but also at literature and art enthusiasts in general, as it will be presented by the novelist, poet and translator Menchu Gutiérrez, author of the brilliant essay, Decir la Nieve (Saying Snow).
The Snow Movies session will take us from Japan to Russia, from the magic and subtlety of Yoshino Keiji, who dissected snow by the snowflake at the rate of haiku in 1939 under his microscopic gaze, to the harshness of the weather in the frozen limits filmed recently at a Russian military base away from it all by the Polish film-maker, Michal Marczak. In between, the snowmen as a one-man band by the ill-fated Hungarian film-maker, Zoltán Huszárik and the frenetic praise of the snowplough engine in 1963 by British born, Geoffrey Jones.
The following films will be shown at this special event:
Snow Crystals. Yoshino Keiji. Japan, 1939
This is a classic work of Japanese scientific documentary film which reaps the reward of the 1936 achievement of the Japanese physicist and essayist, Nakaya Ukichiro, by artificially creating snow crystals.
Capriccio. Zoltán Huszárik. Hungary, 1969
Snowmen become members of a mute orchestra set in the crude Hungarian winter and their biggest threat: melting when least expected.
Snow. Geoffrey Jones. United Kingdom, 1963
Snow is a documentary that shows the efforts of British Railway staff in coping with the cold spell that devastated the United Kingdom in 1963. It is an example of “pure cinema” based on research into a documentary on the British Railways Board. The research coincided with one of the coldest winters on record in the United Kingdom, and therefore Jones took advantage of the situation to tell the story that contrasts the comfort of the passengers with the efforts of the railway workers to keep the trains running.
At the Edge of Russia. Michal B. Marczak. Russia, 2010
Alexei is a 19 year old recruit who is transferred to the border in the north of Russia to do his military service. The base is located in an isolated area near to the Arctic Ocean. Another five soldiers live there, each with his own story and secrets explaining why he decided to withdraw from the real world. Each of the soldiers gradually reveals something about his private life whilst fulfilling the absurd duty of guarding a deserted and frozen base in no-man’s-land, hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest human settlement.
