Film festivals today

Film festivals  have been held over the last weeks in different cities and in different countries. Among the most famous ones, we could mention the Venice Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival and the San Sebastian Film festival. Today I think that it´s worth noticing that film festivals do not only tell us about new worlds or realitites we are not aware of, film festivals are also a part of our societies and as such, they mirrow what is hapenening around us. This year, the debates which were triggered off by the #Me Too movement also hogged the limelight in some of those film festivals. For instance, in the 66^th edition of the San Sebastian film festival the idea that actors such as Juliette Binoche or the director of the festival – José Luis Rebordinos – conveyed was that equality in festivals should be targeted  at the jury, that is, there should be parity in the the members of the jury that decide on the films that are selected for the festivals rather than in othe types of choice because gender shouldn´t play such an important role in art in the sense that the fact that a film has been directed by a man or a woman doesn´t make it better or worse per se.

A biopic for this summer

If you´re interested in literature and you feel like learning a bit more about Mary Shelley (1797- 1851), the author of Frankestein, you shoud watch Mary Shelley, the biopic directed by Haifaa al –Mansour.  The novel Frankestein was published in January 1818 so this year we commemorate the bicentenary of the publication of the classic novel. Watching this film can be a good way of celebrating this anniversary as all of us are familiar with the story of Frankenstein but how many of us are are acquainted with the story of the author of Frankenstein, that is, the story of Mary Shelley? Haifaa al-Mansour gives us the opportunity of discovering the life of the young woman who gave birth to a monster at the age of 18 and her creation changed our views not only from a literary point of view but also from a philosphical and metaphysical one. If you wish to learn more about the influence that her work has had since its publication, you can have a look at:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/13/frankenstein-at-200-why-hasnt-mary-shelley-been-given-the-respect-she-deserves-.

However, what the film shows us is not the effect that the novel had after its publication but what lies behind the unsettling story of a new creature, which implies depicting the life of a young girl who lost her mother – the  writer and feminist campaigner for women´s rights Mary Wollstonecraft – at childbirth and was raised by her father – the writer and philosopher William Godwin – among books, her relationships with her stepmother and her stepsister and the moment she met Percy B. Shelley, which led to her elopement with him and her life with him in good times and in bad times, the loss of their baby, their meeting Lord Byron and Doctor Polidori , and the idea of writing  a ghostly story in Geneva – a  well - known anecdote; all  these episodes of her life undoubtedly contributed to her writing her most important work but in my view, what makes this film a great biopic is that it helps to depict Mary Shelly as a brave woman who loved her freedom and dared to challenge the conventions of her time.

Being a woman, it wasn´t easy for her to have her novel published and she could only get it published anonymously and accompanied by a prologue by Percy B. Shelley, which made the public think that the writer was him. Finally, her father William Godwin  managed to get the novel published under the name of his daughter.

Haifaa al-Mansour, a Saudi Arabian film-maker who also dares to challenge the conventions of Saudian society, which doesn´t allow women to direct films ( post  “ In the summertime” 18^th August 2013),  seems the right person to make this film.

Glamour at Cannes and “ Verano Azul”

The 71^st Cannes Film Festival started last Tuesday.  As you must know if you usually read this blog, I often pay attention to the official poster of this festival because it is one of the features that characterises and even distinguishes this festival from other film festivals around the world. The taste and the elegance with which the organisers of the festival choose the image which will become the poster of the festival can also be observed in other aspects of the festival. Some people may argue that those aspects are not so relevant and that the glamourous image that the festival projects can´t be diminished or obscured by the fact that the actors ot the guests of the festival take selfies on the red carpet – something which has been prohibited this year – but  I guess that the organisers have just made a point of trying to preserve the atmosphere of the old times when the only photos which were taken were the ones that the professional photographers as well as the paparazzi managed to take: sought-after photographs which would appear in the press or on TV without the immediacy of our contemporary social media. 

The poster features a woman and a man engaged in a passionate kiss, an image taken from Jean-Luc Godard´s Pierrot le Fou (1965); the author of the photograph was the renowed photographer  Georges Pierre (1927-2003).

The opening film of this year´s festival has been “Todos lo saben” (Everybody knows), a psychological thriller directed by the Iranian film-maker Asghar Farhadi but the production and the main cast of the film are Spanish.

I think that it is also worth mentioning that yesterday there was a women´s protest on the Cannes red carpet: 82 women stood in silence to highlight the lack of female directors at the festival. The gesture was intended to signify the difficulties for women “to climb the social and professional ladder”.

On this occasion, I´d like to use this post to pay tribute to a Spanish film-maker who died yesterday at the age of 82: Antonio Mercero. He is the only Spanish director who has ever won an Emmy Award for a film and he achieved one thanks to his film “La cabina” (The phone booth) in 1972 but apart from his films, he will always be remembered for his successful TV series which made a big difference in the history of Spanish television. Antonio Mercero had been diagnosed with Alzheimer´s a long time ago and he was honoured with a Goya life-achievement Award in 2010.

 Sometimes the stories depicted in the films that we watch take us to glamorous settings, like the Promenade de la Croisette which is full of film stars these days but at other times, the stories take us to  ordinary places such as a phone booth, a coastal village in the south of Spain, the chemist´s of our neighbourhood, a children´s hospital or a home for the elderly. Because, perhaps, the most important thing is not the setting of the story but the ability to portray the characters and their stories – painful stories on occasions – with tenderness and even with humour.