Punto de Vista offers a first glimpse of its programme and highlights the retrospective devoted to the influential curator Amos Vogel

From 15th to 20th March 2021, Punto de Vista is to hold its 15th edition, once again becoming a meeting place for professionals and fans of non-fiction film. The festival released the first details of its programme today, and has launched the image of this year's edition.

The festival has chosen to keep the regular programme structure of previous years. Like this, it will be organised in seven broad sections, to be announced before the festival happens, which include the Official Section, Retrospectives, Dokbizia, Punto de Vista Labs, Contemporary Focuses, Special Sessions, the X Films project and the Educational Programme. The selection committee is already viewing all the films entered in the Official Section to choose the ones that will make up one of the highlights of Punto de Vista. While 2020 has been a difficult year for audiovisual production, around 900 films from countries all over the world have been submitted this year. For the moment there is a striking number of films made by women, especially in the Spanish, Latin and English-speaking regions. Feature-length films and shorts which, after the selection process, will make up the Official Section of Punto de Vista 2021.

Also, today saw the unveiling of the image for this year's edition. Once more created by designer Dani Sanchis, it represents the idea of the multiplicity of space, the subjective view, finding new ways to relate to landscape and nature in a year in which so many meetings with other people and places have been impossible. To do this he worked with the figure of Nancy Holt, as a film-maker and as an artist, and all her work about weaving these relations between art, human beings and the spaces they inhabit in order to rethink all these links in a poetic, subjective and positive way. The designs for this image of this 15th year are also complemented by an adaptation of a poem by Joseba Sarrionandia which serves as an inspiration, alluding to this year of prohibitions, cancellations, impossibilities and reorganisation of spaces and ways of being together, providing a place for those things that did not happen but are still there, the things that could not take place, that which did not exist yet do exist. The festival takes this as the most constructive, poetic way to approach this year which has made us rethink ourselves in so many ways.

With regard to the advance programme, a highlight is that the opening of the festival will feature 'Dardara', a film by the Navarrese film-maker Marina Lameiro about the farewell tour by the Navarrese rock band Berri Txarrak, which will have its world premiere at Punto de Vista. In 2019 the Navarrese film-maker Marina Lameiro joined the farewell world tour entitled “Ikusi Arte Tour”, with which the band wound up a 25-year career while at their peak. Like this Lameiro has built up a choral portrait based on a variety of stories from different parts of the world, all of them marked by a shared interest: the music of Berri Txarrak. In the film we can see the imprint left by their songs in a narrative that follows the final steps of a band who managed to transcend a style (rock), a language (Basque) and a generation (that of its members) to become a global phenomenon. This premiere, so eagerly awaited since its announcement, is to take place on 15th March. 'Dardara' was made with the support of the government of Navarra through its Ayudas Generazinema scheme.

The other big announcement concerning the planned content of Punto de Vista 2021 is the retrospective devoted to the figure of Amos Vogel, to be screened at the Filmoteca de Navarra. Vogel, a film programmer born in Vienna, founded CINEMA 16 in New York in 1947 together with his wife Marcia Vogel, a non-profit organisation devoted to showing 16mm films that could not be seen in commercial cinemas. In the 50s the association was one of the highlights of the New York arts scene, and its members went on to include famous names like Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, John Lennon and Leonard Bernstein, among others. This initiative brought thousands of people into cinemas and was of incalculable value in promoting the work of some great film-makers. Now, in 2021, 100 years on from the birth of Amos Vogel, Punto de Vista wants to pay homage to this figure as a curator in this retrospective, featuring a series of 6 programmes curated by Regina Schlagnitweit and Alexander Horwath, ex director of the Vienna Film Museum and of Viennale.

The Punto de Vista organisers are already working on different scenarios in response to whatever health situation may exist next March. The festival hopes to be able to stage physical screenings at its usual venues, complying with safety measures at all times. Moreover, part of this year's content will be available on an online platform in order to offer audiences a new showcase. The full programme to be screened physically and that available online will be announced nearer the time.

With regard to festival partners, Punto de Vista is in touch with various of its regular partners for this 15th edition and will be entering into new agreements. Thus, the festival continues to work with organisations like Red Civivox, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Huarte (CACH), Planetario de Pamplona, Filmoteca Navarra, Teatro Gayarre and the Goethe-Institut, while beginning a relationship with partners like La Fábrica or Museo Oteiza and continuing to work to generate new synergies with different potential partners.

From 15th to 20th March 2021, non-fiction film-making again has its meeting place at Punto de Vista.

YOUTH JURY

Punto de Vista is taking applications to form part of the Youth Jury that awards the Youth Prize for Best Film every year. Anybody aged between 18 and 25 who is interested can apply through the website www.puntodevistafestival.com. The enrolment period for volunteers will begin closer to the date of the festival, according to the possibilities that the health situation allows.