World Alzheimer´s Day 2017

Today is World Alzheimer´s Day or World Alzheimer´s Disease Day, which means that 21^st September is the date that has been chosen worldwide in order to raise awareness of this disease. Those of us who have found out what this disease entails as someone close to us has suffered or is suffering from it can fully grasp the importance of this day. You may think that this day doesn´t bear any relation to the theme of this blog but that´s not true because if you come to think of it, making, watching, speaking and writing about films implies dealing with the issues that affect all of us. Therefore, when yesterday I learned about this day, I couldn´t help thinking about a beautiful film which is based on a short story – The Bear Came Over the Mountain – by the Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro. I wrote a post about this film some time ago (“On short stories and films”  8^th November 2013) and I have thought that you may like to have a look at it. If you don´t know what Alzheimer´s  is about – I really doubt it – or you wish to learn about it in a different way,  why don´t you watch Away from Her, a film by the actress and director Sarah Polley? 

 There are other films which also deal with this disease. For instance, in 2015 a very famous actress won a BAFTA award as well as an Oscar award for her performance as a linguistics professor who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer´s , which film am I referring to?

It´s such a busy month!

September is usually a very busy month in our personal lives but also as far as films are concerned. After the Venice film festival, the beautiful city of San Sebastian takes the baton and this year Agnès Varda, Ricardo Darín and Monica Bellucci will be presented with the Donostia Award: a lifetime achievement award . But the premiere of a film does not only get a lot of media coverage when it takes place within the framework of a famous festival; sometimes what matters is the title of the film and the fact that that film is a sequel to a well-known story which managed to make an impact in the past. That´s what happens with Blade Runner, the 1982  Ridley Scott film, whose monologue  by Rutger Hauer as the dying replicant Roy Hatty is already part of our collective memory:

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

The 1982 film was a loose adaptation of the 1968 novel Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, a sci-fi writer, who claimed to be “a fictionalising philosopher, not a novelist”. If you are keen on learning a bit more about this interesting writer, and you are into sci-fi and philosophical matters, you can have a look at the following article:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/27/philip-k-dick-best-novels-blade-runner-minority-report

Blade Runner wasn´t a big box-office hit when it was first released but over the years it has become a cult film and therefore, critics and fans alike are worried that the new film – Blade  Runner 2049 – may not live up to their expectations.In the new Blade Runner Harrison Ford reprises his role as the replicant hunter Rick Deckard but Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright, Ana de Armas and Jared Leto are also part of the cast of the new film, which has been directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Today, Harrison Ford, Ryan Gosling and Ana de Armas have been to Madrid to promote Blade Runner 2049. 

Far from Madrid, in the north of Spain, the city of Santander hosts the International Film Week. The cultural and arts centre Centro Botín, which was inaugurated in June, and the Film Archive Centre are the venues chosen for this Film Week. It doesn´t matter whether you live in a big or in a small city, films-related events are taking place everywhere these days but if you are not really interested in red carpets, celebrities and famous film-makers, just go to your local cinema and enjoy the story that you decide to watch because that´s what films are really about, don´t you think?

A glamorous couple at the Venice Festival

As September begins we feel compelled to start our daily routines again, sometimes this month is a transition period, and we don´t know what lies in store for us. Perhaps, because of that, it is reassuring to know that some things are always the same , at least, with respect to films and festivals; these days the 74^th Venice International Film Festival is taking place in the Italian city and the oldest film festival has also turned into the most glamorous one if we have a look at the list of film stars that have walked along the red carpet in the opening ceremony and the premieres of the films that are being shown: Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Julianne Moore,  George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jennifer Lawrence, Michelle Pfeiffer, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz …. but my favourite ones are Robert Redford and Jane Fonda who star in Our Souls at Night, a film which has been described as a moving autumn romance. The film is an adaptation of a novel by kent Haruf (1943-2014) , an American novelist who used to write novels of small-town life. Our Souls at Night has reunited Robert Redford and Jane Fonda on screen for the first time since 1979. Regardless of their age – R. Redford is 81 and J. Fonda is 79 – the actors still have the same kind of chemistry which turned them into one of the most attractive screen couples in the 60s and 70s thanks to films such as The Chase (1966), Barefoot in the Park (1967) and The Electric Horseman (1979).  Our Souls at Night has been directed  by the Indian film-maker Ritesh Bartra and Redford is the producer of the film; he explained that he did it “in part because the youth-obsessed movie business doesn't make enough films for older audiences”.

Redford and Fonda  have received the Golden Lion, the lifetime-achievement award from the Venice Film Festival.

  Robert Redford and Jane Fonda in the poster for Barefoot in the Park 50 years ago.