Films by Rebecca Baron, The Sound We See, and Ainara Vera will be shown at the Punto de Vista Special Sessions

The 12th edition of Punto de Vista will include special sessions led by filmmakers. This section of Special Sessions is based around four major blocks: three films proposed by Rebecca Baron, two of her own productions and another by Robert Frank; two films framed within the movement known as The Sound We See, created by the Los Angeles Echo Park Film Center; a session featuring films made in the Basque Country and Navarre by Jesús María Palacios, Iñigo Jiménez, Koldo Almandoz, Inés García, Arantza Santesteban, Irati Gorostidi and Jaione Camborda; and the opening and closing sessions, featuring a film by Ainara Vera and The Sound We See, respectively.

REBECCA BARON'S SPOTLIGHT

A member of the festival's international jury, Rebecca Baron is a film director, curator and teacher. She lives in Los Angeles. She is known for her cinematographic essays. She is currently a curator for @SEA, a multidisciplinary programme run by the Los Angeles Poetic Research Bureau. Her work, which has received various awards, has been shown at the Whitney Biennial, at Documenta, and at the Rotterdam, London, Toronto, Rotterdam, Ann Arbor and New York film festivals. Rebecca has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Since 2000, she has been teaching on the CalArts Audiovisual Programme.

THE IDEA OF NORTH.
Rebecca Baron (USA, 1995, 14’)

Under the pretext of narrating the final moments in the lives of three explorers abandoned on an ice floe a century ago, Baron's film investigates the limits of images and forms of recording, revealing the past and paradoxical interaction of cinematographic time, historic time, real time, and the specific moments captured by photography. The practical narration, together with allusive fragments of sound, tests and illustrations, in the words of Baron "drift away".—New York Film Festival, 1997, notes from “Views from the Avant-Garde”.

DETOUR DE FORCE.
Rebecca Baron (USA, Austria, 1995, 14’)

Detour de Force presents the world of the ‘thoughtographer’ Ted Serios, a charismatic bellhop from Chicago who, in the mid 60s, produced hundreds of Polaroid images directly from his mind. Using the 16mm recordings of Serios' sessions and audio recordings of conversations between Serios and Dr. Jule Eisenbud, the Denver psychiatrist who defended his abilities, the film is more ethnography than biography, and portrays the social and scientific surroundings in which Serios emerged. The film includes close-ups of the image and sound recording technologies of a period that was so important in the emergence of Serios' ‘thoughtography’. It is also a document of the filmographer's meetings and the archive materials themselves. The film features the rich soundscape of Ernst Karel, Kyle Bruckmann and Guiseppe Ielasi.

THE PRESENT.
Robert Frank (USA, 1996, 27’)

Objects, photographs and simple activities drive Frank towards self-reflection. From his home in New York and Nova Scotia, and visiting the home of friends, the artist observes his relationships, the anniversary of his daughter's death, his son's mental illness, and his work.

THE SOUND WE SEE

Lisa Marr and Paolo Davanzo will direct The Sound We See, a project that will collectively create a symphony of the city during the festival. Lisa and Paolo are directors, teachers, and community activists, and their work is a catalyst for creative collaboration and positive social change. Originally from Canada and Italy, respectively, they are currently working and living in Los Angeles, where they run the Echo Park Film Center, a local art centre aimed at cinematographic resources and analogue film resources. In 2008, they embarked on the EPFC Filmmobile project, an old school bus that they transformed into an ecological movie theatre and mobile film school. Under the name The Here & Now, Marr and Davanzo have travelled the world, sharing traditionally made films and music

ECHO PARK FILM CENTER PROGRAMME

The Sound We See: A Los Angeles City Symphony
(2010, 26’)

Accompany the creators of this piece on a magical 24-hour trip around Los Angeles. Over the course of four months, 37 teenagers aged 11 to 19 sketched out a map of their city and filmed in places that are important from a personal, cultural, or historical perspective. First they used 16mm film to shoot those places day and night, and they edited each segment so that it would last exactly one minute on screen. Then they joined together the 24 segments and created the first part of the series entitled ‘The Sound We See’ City Symphony. The live music was composed especially for the film by Ezra Buchla & Friends.

The Sound We See: A CDMX City Symphony
(2017, 28’)

The Sound We See: A Mexico City City Symphony was filmed over 24 hours in Mexico City and processed manually over two days in the Experimental Film Laboratory (Laboratorio Experimental de Cine - LEC). Accompanied by live music, it premiered at the Tamayo Museum on 20 January 2017. The version that will be shown tonight is an extended version for cinemas performed on the Electromagnetic Spectrum by Colectivo de Cinema Expandido La Trinchera, with live music by Ezequiel Guido, Carlos Alegre, Fernando Vigueras and others.

After the showing, there will be a Q&A session with the creators of the project, Lisa Marr and Paolo Davanzo.

BASQUE-NAVARRA PANORAMA

Home-grown filmmakers, "family" as we call them, will also have a very important space at this edition. The opening of this section will feature the national premiere of the latest film by Ainara Vera, a filmmaker from Navarre, and the official section will also include the world premieres of films by several filmmakers from the city. We will also show the recent work of filmmakers who are causing quite a stir.

RAPA DAS BESTAS.
Jaione Camborda. (Spain, 2017, 10’)

Tradition and spectacle show us the bodily confrontation between man and beast in a fighting context.

EURITAN.
Arantza Santesteban, Irati Gorostidi (Spain, 2017, 21’)

The film Euritan proposes a revision of the narration Klara eta biok, written by Itxaro Borda in 1985. By holding the author up against the words of her past, a contemporary view is provided of the peripheral relationship established around the Basque character.

WINTERREISE.
Inés García (Spain, 2017, 7’)

In the midst of a winter journey, a walker wandering aimlessly questions living conditions and the meaning of life.

PLÁGAN.
Koldo Almandoz. (Spain, 2017, 10’)

Plague: From the lat. plaga 'blow', 'wound'. Def. Massive and sudden appearance of living beings of the same species that cause serious damage to animal or plant populations. Abundance of something harmful.

UR ARTEAN.
Jesús María Palacios, Iñigo Jiménez (Spain, 2015, 25’)

For over twenty years, the lighthouse keeper José Manuel Andoin and his mother, María Torralbo, lived on the Island of Santa Clara, just 500 metres from the city of San Sebastian, but cut off from the rest of society. “Ur Artean” is the story of the enigmatic relationship between a strong-willed mother and an obliging son, with a parallel life that turned him into a forgotten Olympic figure.

OPENING SESSION

HASTA MAÑANA SI DIOS QUIERE.
 Ainara Vera (Spain, 2017, 62’)
Spanish Premiere.

Following its world premiere at IDFA, this documentary film from Navarre will be shown for the first time in the city at the opening session. It is an upbeat film about daily life in a community of Franciscan nuns. Seventeen women all in their eighties live together in a convent in Navarre. Their life is a beautiful succession of small everyday chores: sweeping, ironing, praying, looking out the window, chatting. Their conversations combine the spiritual and the earthly, the transcendental and the banal, in a very natural way. The camera is as patient and serene as they are. Will this lifestyle continue to exist when they are no longer here to tell us about it?

Ainara Vera (Navarra, 1985) studied Audiovisual Communication at UNAV and earned a Masters' Degree in Creative Documentary Film from Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Her first documentary short film, “Sertres”, premiered at the Locarno Festival (2014). In 2013, she co-directed the film “Demonstration”. Her developing project “Mira, mi rey”, was shown at “Punto de Vista” in 2016. She is Victor Kossakovsky's first assistant director.