L'Alternativa 2012

The 19th edition of Barcelona's Independent Film Festival showcases several films about space: multiplied, fragmented and diversified, they generate opportunities for reflection and critical debate.

The 2012 edition of Barcelona's Independent Film Festival L'Alternativa is back in its 19th year, brimming with features and short films by new directors, as well as features that don't get much exposure in today's audiovisual scene. Originally launched September 1992, the festival is an initiative of La Fàbrica de Cinema Alternatiu, and is working this year with different collaborating institutions to increase the number of venues in which the films will be screened.

It is important to stress the importance of festivals of this kind in the current climate in Barcelona and indeed the whole of Spain. The budgetary cuts of recent years have had a drastic effect on culture, with a damaging impact on the programming of well-known museums, even leading to the closure of some of the most active centres, for example Can Xalant. In this context, an independent festival also serves to generate reflection and critical debate through the films shown, which at this year's event fall into two categories: feature films (fiction and non-fiction) and shorts (fiction, non-fiction and animation).

Cinema is a great platform for communication, in which new and traditional technologies mix to present fictional or animated stories that are as diverse as they are interesting, recalling a conversation between Vicente Molina Foix and Susan Sontag, in which Sontag remarks: "...what kind of films are we talking about? [...] Making films is easy with all the new technologies available to us today. I'm thinking about the portability and low cost of video cameras. I think it's naïve to want to make difficult and sophisticated films and then get depressed because they don't reach a wide audience. But if you want to reach a serious audience that will really appreciate your art, there are plenty of alternative distribution options."
Top: Film still from <em>La casa Emak Bakia</em> ["The Search for Emak Bakia"], Oskar Alegria, Spain, 2012. Above: Film still from <em> J.M. Mondésir</em>, Alice Colomer-Kang, France, 2012
Top: Film still from La casa Emak Bakia ["The Search for Emak Bakia"], Oskar Alegria, Spain, 2012. Above: Film still from J.M. Mondésir, Alice Colomer-Kang, France, 2012
This year in particular, there are several films about space, as Georges Perec observed when he wrote: "To put it succinctly, spaces have multiplied, fragmented and diversified. There are all sizes and kinds of spaces, for every use and every function."
<em>L'Alternativa</em> film festival poster
L'Alternativa film festival poster
From this perspective, L'Alternativa 2012 offers up spaces that are fragmented but that have been brought together by the festival selection, acquiring unity and transmitting a message. A nossa forma de vida ["Our way of life"], by director Pedro Felipe Marques, presents a view of the world from the flat that is home to Armando and Maria, eight stories above the Douro river and where, in their daily lives, they comment on what a decadent country still has to offer them.
Visitors to the festival will find various techniques, issues and realities enhanced by different viewpoints
<em>A nossa forma de vida</em> ["Our way of life"],  Pedro Felipe Marques, Portugal, 2011
A nossa forma de vida ["Our way of life"], Pedro Felipe Marques, Portugal, 2011
On a wider spatial scale, in her film As above, so below, Sarah J. Christman uses the story of a woman who has turned her husband's ashes into a diamond to discuss serious issues such as pollution and the economy, pointing out that precious metals are nowadays extracted from obsolete electronic devices, something that causes the director and the audience stop to consider the role of landfill sites today. La casa Emak Bakia by Oskar Alegria tells the tale of the search for the house where Man Ray shot the 1926 film Emak Bakia. There are only three known shots of this house — the image of its front door, two window columns and a section of the nearby coastline.
Visitors to the festival will find various techniques, issues and realities enhanced by different viewpoints, such as the collaboration with the Mexican festival <em>Contra el Silencio todas las voces</em> ["All voices against silence"]
Visitors to the festival will find various techniques, issues and realities enhanced by different viewpoints, such as the collaboration with the Mexican festival Contra el Silencio todas las voces ["All voices against silence"]
The theme of space recurs in the short film category too, in the form of spaces that are urban or rural, open or closed. Un Archipel ["An Archipelago"] by Clément Cogitore tells the story of a nuclear submarine that mysteriously ran aground off the coast of the Isle of Skye in Scotland in 2012, and the effect of its presence on the island's inhabitants. From France, but focusing on an issue that has also become extremely important in Spain over recent months, most of all due to the huge social and economic problem of evictions, comes the short film J.M. Mondésir by Alice Colomer-Kang. Based on the story of a social housing complex in the "la buttes rouge" development, a garden city built between 1931 and 1965, the film tells the story of Georges Mondésir, who dies in the complex after a confrontation with the police. It is a pertinent metaphor for our times.
<em>Crulic – Drumul spre dincolo</em> ["Crulic. The Path to Beyond"], Anca Damian, Romania / Poland, 2011
Crulic – Drumul spre dincolo ["Crulic. The Path to Beyond"], Anca Damian, Romania / Poland, 2011
The parallel sections are also full of pleasant surprises. Visitors to the festival will find various techniques, issues and realities enhanced by different viewpoints, such as the collaboration with the Mexican festival Contra el Silencio todas las Voces ["All Voices against Silence"], which offers us the chance to see and understand realities parallel and complementary to our own experiences from a Latin American perspective. Ethel Baraona Pohl (@ethel_baraona)
<em>Nació</em> ["Nation"], Homer Etminani, Spain, 2011
Nació ["Nation"], Homer Etminani, Spain, 2011
Through 25 November 2012
L'Alternativa 2012 Independent Film Festival
CCCB, Filmoteca de Catalunya, French Institute, Casa Amèrica Catalunya
Barcelona
<em>N-VI</em> ["N-VI: vanishing roadsides"], Pela del Álamo, Spain, 2012
N-VI ["N-VI: vanishing roadsides"], Pela del Álamo, Spain, 2012

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