By: Esther Pedrós Martorell
Head of Press of The BIG Screen!
Barcelona will host, from June 6 to 9, 2019, La GRAN pantalla, the International Film Festival of the Elderly. This new cultural event will be free and will be held at Cinemes Girona, one of the benchmark venues in the city.
This festival, unique in Barcelona, wants to offer a space for the elderly and, at the same time, seeks to become an intergenerational cinematographic meeting place that allows to dismantle the prejudices and stereotypes towards the elderly, which are disseminated by the mass media, especially television and advertising.
In this way, taking as a thematic focus the representation of the elderly, the Festival seeks stories that contribute to generating new readings and discourses, to go beyond the conventional representations that are usually associated with this stage of life and diversify the existing looks . Likewise, intersections with little visibility will be put on screen, such as ‘LGTBIQ+ elderly people’, ‘elderly migrants‘ and ‘elderly people and feminisms‘, among others.
“The Big Screen is a space for dialogue, meeting, reflection and leisure. A place to share stories, to appreciate them, to reflect on them and look at each other with dignity. On the other hand, the Barcelona International Film Festival for the Elderly is an opportunity to recognize the cinematographic work of older people and young people who are interested in their stories”, says Katherina Harder, artistic and programming director of the Festival.
The selected films and the different colloquiums that will take place during the festival will allow us to reflect, analyze, understand, think, look and offer new cheerful, fresh and positive looks and looks at people in their aging process.
The BIG screen! is an original idea of elParlante with the financial support of the Barcelona City Council, and has the special collaboration of Cinemes Girona, Goethe Institut, Fundació FiraGran, Festhome, Iosphera, ACRA, Caramel Films, Compacto, Fundació Enllaç and Cactus docs.
The program of La Gran Pantalla will feature an international sample of feature films and an international competitive section of short films, and will be divided into 5 sections: Film Opening; Closing Film; Official Section of Feature Films; Official Short Film Section (competition) and Cineforum Section.
The film that will open La Gran Pantalla 2019 is Muchos hijos, un mono y un castillo , the feature documentary by Gustavo Salmerón, winner of the Goya for Best Documentary Film 2108.
For its part, the film that will close this edition is Visages, Villages (Faces and Places), the latest documentary by Agnès Varda. “We want to close the Festival paying tribute to a filmmaker who, until her 90th birthday, has worked making films with a unique degree of reflection and from an empathy that stands out in all her films,” explains Katherina Harder.
As for the Official Selection of feature films, fiction and documentary genre films will be shown, which tell stories starring elderly people and provide a new look at old age. Productions from Colombia, Japan, Mexico and Germany. You can check the titles at this link.
The Official Selection of Short Films is made up of the sixteen films selected from the more than 200 that have been received in this call, which will compete in the category of Best Short Film The BIG Screen, Special Mention of the Jury (if applicable) and Audience Award. “From this selection, we would like to highlight that all films are made by young directors who portray older people and create a very valuable intergenerational bond,” says Harder. With this selection of short films made in Spain, Brazil, Argentina and Peru, and that narrate from fiction, documentary and animation, the audience of La GRAN Pantalla will travel through different cultures, characters and different perspectives with many touches of humor. You can check the titles at this link.
Finally, in the Cineforum Section , films will be screened accompanied by a colloquium with guests from the world of culture and the social field, with whom, together with the audience, they will talk about topics of great current interest and little visible. In this edition of The Big Screen, we will have two colloquiums: “LGTBIQ+ elderly people” and “elderly people and feminisms“.
The Festival La GRAN pantalla is an original idea of elParlante , who for 10 years has been working with young people from different neighborhoods of Barcelona and with the elderly, developing participatory projects from an intersectional perspective, linking various sensitivities in the same context. Interculturality, ageism, intergenerational relations or gender diversity are some of the intersections currently being worked on.
The Festival is free, with limited capacity!