Sitges Film Festival

SITGES 2012: The End of the World

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200

The Sitges 2012 International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia is dedicating its image to an iconic concept in the science fiction genre:

The end of the world.

Few historical situations have been as opportune to reflect on the expiration of everything. 2012, year of financial and spiritual crisis, of the new white-collar warlocks guiding us smilingly towards the precipice, of the return of the nuclear sword of Damocles, of the Roman finis hominis engraved in the stone of a Mayan temple. And all recorded on a 4X2 cm. device.

The end of the world as we know it has been present in literature, comics and the cinema in all time periods and from different slants. Sometimes focusing on the catastrophes themselves that cause a hypothetical apocalypse, or on the day after and the survivors’ odyssey, fiction has imagined hundreds of scenarios for Armageddon: from natural and social disasters to nuclear wars or alien invasions. This is why Sitges wants to turn this idea that’s so cinematographic and indelibly entrenched in the popular imaginary, into the conceptual framework of its 45^th edition.

Likewise, the Festival would also like to emphasize that the sign of the times is leading us to an apocalypse being broadcast live, through infinite, interconnected witnesses, armed with cameras in their cellphones, linking the genre’s increasingly clearer relationship with the immediate. Who could have explained to the great masters concerned about the evolution of the film medium that in the future, every person would be carrying around a movie camera… that the world would merge into an eternal network, with a feedback loop, of image creators in motion. Sitges couldn’t be oblivious to this phenomenon, so cameras with phones (yes, you heard it right), will also play an important role at Sitges 2012.

To start livening up its end-of-the-world party, Sitges will be rescuing hidden gems in apocalyptic cinema, as well as recent pieces that are renovating this subgenre of anticipation.

And since there are those who interpret the finis hominis as a change, a new beginning, our program will provide elements for cinematographic reflection that will be a platform towards the infinite for this new man-cinema that the less pessimistic predict: we will be celebrating the 20^th anniversary of an emblematic film that premiered in Sitges, Reservoir Dogs, and examine the role of Tarantino as a generator of a new current that has renovated the so-called cult cinema, designing a retrospective and a publication revolving around this entire concept.

The poster for the 45^th SITGES International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia has been created by China, the Festival’s advertising agency, in collaboration with Inocuo Design, Barcelona’s pioneering design, photography and illustration studio. The general public will be able to see it on a giant, 4 meter high canvas, on exhibit at the Salón del Comic in Barcelona from May 3^rd to 6^th.

SITGES 2012: THE BEGINNING

SITGES with the premiere of [REC]3 GÉNESIS

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0200

SITGES International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia is a part of the [REC] franchise’s history. The saga’s first two installments premiered in Sitges, which has undoubtedly been a lucky setting for the film’s success.

Regarding [REC]3 GÉNESIS, premiering on March 30th, the Festival shows it commitment by acting as a motivator of the film despite the fact that audiences won’t be able to enjoy this third part at this year’s Festival.

What was seen exclusively, on the other hand, at last year’s Festival was the movie’s trailer, welcomed with screams of euphoria by attending viewers.

For Ángel Sala, director of the Festival: "The screening of [REC] at SITGES 2007 showed a very demanding audience an agile and innovative proposal that opened the door to new ways of enjoying genre in a movie theater. The [REC]2 opening of SITGES 2009 meant the continuation of the journey of a saga that has established new guidelines in worldwide horror cinema. Now, with [REC]3 GÉNESIS, once again we will be able to enjoy this direct, dynamic and ferocious horror in full dress for a great occasion”.

In the words of Julio Fernández, producer of the entire [REC] saga, “the Sitges Festival is the best showcase a film like [REC] could have. Its audience is devoted and grateful. Filmax has always been closely connected to Sitges because of the kind of films we produce and that’s why we are very proud that the Festival unconditionally supports [REC]3 GÉNESIS, outside the dates the Festival is actually held”.

For further information:

www.rec3genesis.com
www.facebook.com/RECfilmax
www.twitter.com/RECfilmax
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REmQ3gHFPro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTJgdC4QEu4&feature=relmfu

www.sitgesfilmfestival.com
www.facebook.com/sitgesfilmfestival
www.twitter.com/sitgesfestival

Angel Sala, Director of the Festival, exonerated of charges derived from the screening of 'A Serbian Film' in October 2010

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0100

The direction team of the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia would like to express its satisfaction for the dismissal of the case against Festival Director Angel Sala, for screening A Serbian Film in 2010's edition.

We would like to thank all the signs of support from every corner of the world during the past few months, and in particular the trust shown by the public institutions involved in the Festival (the Government of Catalonia, Sitges Town Hall, Spain's Ministry of Culture), as well as all Festival Foundation board members, sponsors, and collaborators that make the festival possible. We would also like to extend this gratitude to our lawyers and the legal assistance team in charge of the case.

The Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia takes on the events that have taken place with a positive spirit. Due to this entire situation and its outcome, its direction team is committed to continuing the debate that has emerged around the limits of film and freedom of expression in a responsible manner. We understand that this issue has been an experience that will allow us to produce the next editions of the Festival in an even more successfull way.

2011 Awards: Red State, best motion picture

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

OFICIAL FANTÀSTIC IN-COMPETITION – SITGES 44
J. A. Bayona, Quim Casas, Lisa Marie, Ryoo Seung-Wan, Richard Stanley

Best Short Film
Ex aequo to Dirty Silverwear, by Steve Daniels, and The Unliving, by Hugo Lilja

Best Production Design
Marc Thiébault by Livide (Alexandre Bustillo & Julian Maury)

Best Make Up FX
Steven Kostanski for The Divide (Xavier Gens)

Best Special Effects
Lluís Castells and Javier García for Eva (Kike Maíllo)

Best Original Soundtrack
Steven Price for Attack the Block (Joe Cornish)

Best Cinematography
Markus Förderer and Tim Fehlbaum, for Hell (Tim Fehlbaum)

Best Script
Lucky Mckee and Jack Ketchum, for The Woman (Lucky Mckee)

Best Actress
Brit Marling for Another Earth (Mike Cahill)

Best Actor
Michael Parks for Red State (Kevin Smith)

Best Director
Na Hong-jin for The Yellow Sea

Special Jury Award
Attack the Block, by Joe Cornish

Best Motion Picture
Red State, by Kevin Smith

OFICIAL FANTÀSTIC IN-COMPETITION ÒRBITA
Àlex Aguilera, Paco Cabezas, Manlio Gomarasca

Special Jury Award
Colour Bleed, by Peter Szewczyk (shortfilm)

Best Motion Picture
Guilty of Romance, by Sion Sono

CARNET JOVE JURY
Eric Antonell, Gerard Fossas, Alberto Martin, Sergi Marí, David Vilaplana

Best Motion Picture OFICIAL FANTÀSTIC A COMPETICIÓ – SITGES 44
Bellflower, by Evan Glodell

Best Motion Picture MIDNIGHT X-TREME
Detention, by Joseph Kahn

NOVES VISIONS
Anaïs Emery, Javi Giner, Loris Omedes

Best Motion Picture
Night Fishing, by PARKing CHANce (Park Chan-wook and Park Chan-kyong)

Non-Fiction Motion Picture Diploma
Knuckle, by Ian Palmer

Discovery Motion Picture Diploma
Invasion of Alien Bikini, by Oh Young-doo

Dark Fiction Motion Picture Diploma
Kill me please, by Olias Barco

Best Shortfilm Diploma
Coup de grace, by Clara van Gool

Special Mention
Underwater Love, by Shinji Imaoka

CASA ÀSIA
Jordi Ojeda, Carles Santamaria, Pil Sung-Yim

Best Motion Picture
The Unjust, by Ryoo Seung-wan

AUDIENCE AWARD EL PERIÓDICO DE CATALUNYA

Best Motion Picture
Attack the Block, by Joe Cornish

NOVA AUTORIA BUÑUEL INSTITUTE of FUNDACIÓ AUTOR
Arnau Bataller, Sílvia Munt, Maria Ripoll

Best Director
La gota, by Daniel Piera and Beatriz Escolar (Universitat Ramon Llull-Blanquerna).

Best Screenplay
Ex aequo to Camille, by Carme Puche (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya – UOC), and to Exercici, by Raúl Pérez (Bande à Part).

Best Original Score
Chroma, by Juan Andrés González (Universitat Pompeu Fabra).

Special Mention for the interesting documentary work Me llamo Peng, by Jahel Guerra and Victoria Molina de Carranza (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona – UAB).

Special Mention for the interesting animation work Desde el averno, by Raúl García, Núria Argemí, Mariona Consuegra, Saúl Darú, Maria Moreira, Clara Vallvé and Bernat Vilaseca (Escola d’Animació de Catalunya, 9 Zeros).

ANIMA'T – Gertie Award
Jordi Ojeda, Carles Santamaria, Pil Sung-Yim

Best Animated Film
Tatsumi, by Eric Khoo

Best Animated Short film
Dripped, by Léo Verrier

Best Sitges Family Film Diploma
Leafie, by Oh Sung-yoon

SILVER MÉLIÈS
Àlex Aguilera, Paco Cabezas, Manlio Gomarasca

Silver Méliès for Best European Motion Picture
Kill List, by Ben Wheatley

Special Mention
Hell, by Tim Fehlbaum

Special Mention
Krokodyle, by Stefano Bessoni

Silver Méliès Award for Best Europea Short Film
The Unliving, by Hugo Lilja

Special Mention
Magic Piano 3D, by Martin Clapp

GOLDEN MÉLIÈS

Golden Méliès for Best European Motion Picture
Balada Triste de Trompeta, by Álex de la Iglesia

Golden Méliès for Best European Short Film
Suiker (Sugar), by Jeroen Annokkee

CRITIC AWARDS
Desirée De Fez, Carlos Losilla, José Luis Losa

Jose Luis Guarner Critic Award
Attack the Block, by Joe Cornish

Citizen Kane Award to an up-and-coming director
Ex aequo to El páramo, by Jaime Osorio, and Trabalhar cansa, by Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra

BRIGADOON Paul Naschy
Adrián Cardona, Rafa Dengrà, Leticia Dolera

Best short film
8, by Raúl Cerezo

Killer Joe, SITGES 2011 surprise film

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

So you can’t complain. Sitges always has some ace up its sleeve, and this year we’re bringing you a five fingers up dish. One of the films that generated the most enthusiasm at the Mostra in Venice. Killer Joe: the return, as loud as a burst of machine gun fire, of William Friedkin, one of the essential directors in seventies and eighties North American cinema. The director of The Exorcist, one of the best horror movies of all times, continues to be in tip top shape, as he already showed us in Bug (Sitges’07), and he now brings us a super violent black tragi-comedy, a runaway film noir that doesn’t exactly leave the human race in a very nice place. Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch and Juno Temple star in Killer Joe, which can be seen tomorrow in the Auditori, at 13:00 and 1:00 in the last marathon.

EGEDA Day

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Today EGEDA held, as a part of the parallel events at the 44^th Sitges-International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, its Board Meeting, presided over by Mr. Enrique Cerezo and that was attended by His Excellency the Mayor of Sitges, Mr. Miquel Forns, and the Director General of the ICIC, Mr. Fèlix Riera. Throughout the day, EGEDA has held a series of activities related to promoting the cultural industry of audiovisuals in Catalonia. The day began with the signing of the collaboration agreement between ICIC/EGEDA and EGEDA and Catalan Films & TV; following this was the EGEDA board meeting and afterwards, the institutional act with the Mayor of Sitges and the EGEDA board of directors, finishing up with the annual lunch held by the EGEDA and institutions representing the Catalan audiovisual industry.

Sunday marathons

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The movies that will be screened on the Sunday marathons are:

10:00h 3D Marathon (Auditori)
Twixt
Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai
Sector 7

12:00h Anima't Shortfilms Marathon (Prado)
Animales de alquiler
Drawer Hobs
La femme à cordes
Céu, inferno e outras partes do corpo
A Morning Stroll
Conto do vento
Feed Me
Dripped
The Tannery
Guard Dog Global Jam

12:30h Official Fantàstic Section Shortfilms Marathon (Retiro)
Leyenda
Decapoda Shock
Bobby Yeah
Junk Love
Sons of Chaos
Dirty Silverware
Suffer

15:00h Prado Marathon
The Woman
Kill List
Burke and Hare
El páramo
Juan de los muertos

15:15h Retiro Marathon
Red State
A Lonely Place to die
The Yellow Sea
Attack the Block
Inbred

15:30h Auditori Marathon
Detention
Killer Joe
Livide
Troll Hunter
Extraterrestre

Coming soon: The Last Days

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

When directors that are as different as Lars von Trier and Abel Ferrara seem to agree on talking about the end of the world in their latest films, it means that something big is truly happening.

A couple of years ago, brothers David and Àlex Pastor debuted in feature-length films with Carriers, a film that offered a suggestive treatment of the subject of movies with infected people that became so popular a few seasons ago. Their new project, “The Last Days”, promises to do the same with post-apocalyptic films. Yesterday, in the Tramuntana Room, they presented the first teaser that goes way beyond the typical promo device you usually get to see in these cases: “There are no scenes or characters from the movie in the teaser. It is more of a short film that happens within the movie’s universe, David Pastor explained. The piece presents a group of characters locked up inside a building. It seems that there is something they need out on the street, but a sign tells us that certain agoraphobia has spread around the planet. One character ventures outside and we see that his horror is as psychological as it is physical: his ears begin to bleed and he falls over, dead, while the other observe him from the window, unable to do anything for him.

The idea of agoraphobia, hardly explored at all on the silver screen, promises to add an interesting approach to the film: “We found it interesting to explore what would happen if we panicked when going outside and we had to survive without leaving buildings. Or, even more complicated, how would we get it together to go from one place to another in these cities without even stepping out onto the street. ”

One of the final scenes in the teaser offers us a desolate view of the Passeig de Sant Joan in Barcelona, with the Arc de Triomf in the background, made into a setting of totally deserted devastation. Playing with the settings we see appears to be one of the aspects the directors want to promote: “Our intention is to make an apocalyptic movie set at home, and that audiences can recognize the spaces and the society we live in. We wanted to stray away from the idea that, in cinema, when the world ends we always wonder what the Pentagon or what the marines are doing. We want to see what the people of Barcelona would be doing when the catastrophe arrives.

The Pastor Brothers are currently negotiating the final cast for the film, which they plan to start shooting next spring. Things would have to go terribly wrong for “The Last Days” not to be one of the most disturbing and celebrated at the end of 2012, the apocalyptic year par excellence.

Malaga Festival Day in Sitges

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The Malaga Festival Day in Sitges will be taking place on Friday October. This initiative, presented by both festivals, consists of each one of them dedicating a day of their programming to the other, creating a synergy between both competitions, the one in Malaga revolving around Spanish cinema and the one in Sitges, around genre cinema.

The Sitges Festival will continue its collaboration started at the last Malaga Festival with an event in the Tramuntana Room at the Hotel Meliá, where there will be a debate on Spanish genre cinema, at a round table designed to unite the predominant reasons for the two festivals.

The day will then continue with the presentation, within the Noves Visions-Special section, of Carles Torres’ movie Open 24h, a film that participated in the Official Selection at the past Malaga Festival.

The climax of the Malaga Festival Day in Sitges will take place at the Auditori with the awarding of the Honorary Maria to director Pedro Olea, filmmaker who is presenting his movie Akelarre in the Sitges Clàssics section.

Schedule

11:00 Sitges Forum. Tramuntana Room
Round table: Spanish Cinema. Genre and Identity. Presided over by Carmelo Romero and Ángel Sala.

16:30 Prado
Presentation of Open 24h. By director Carles Torras; actress Alicia Bocci, Malaga Film Festival director, Carmelo Romero; Mirito Torreiro, film critic and member of the Malaga Film Festival selection committee; actress Judith Uriach; and Inga Arutyunyan, from Zabriskie Films.

17:40 Prado
Post-Screening of Open 24h.

18:45 Auditori
Awarding of the Honorary Maria to Pedro Olea. With Carmelo Romero and Ángel Sala.

Balada Triste de Trompeta, by Álex de la Iglesia, wins the Méliès d'Or

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Balada Triste de Trompeta, the new film from Spanish director d’Álex de la Iglesia, picked up the Méliès d’Or for best film. De la Iglesia will be coming to Sitges tonight to accept the award presented by the European Fantastic Film Festival Federation (EFFFF) at the Méliès Ceremony (10:30pm, Auditori). Nine Fantastic Film festivals from around all of Europe award the Méliès d’Argent to the best film screened at each competition (Balada Triste de Trompeta won it at the Amsterdam Festival) and only one of them wins the Méliès d’Or for best motion picture of the year.

The other nominated movies were: Transfer (Damir Lukacevic), The Last Employee (Alexander Adolph), Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (Jalmari Helander), Rubber (Quentin Dupieux), Troll Hunter (Andre Ovredal), Secuestrados (Miguel Ángel Vivas), Hideways (Agnès Merlet) and Attack the Block (Joe Cornish).

The Méliès d’Or for best short film has gone to Suiker (Sugar), directed by Jeroen Annokkee. This short had won the Méliès d’Argent in Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival.

This year’s jury is made up of Àlex Aguilera, Manlio Gomarasca and Paco Cabezas.

The film El Monje (Dominik Moll) and the shortfilm La gota (Daniel Piera) will be shown at tonight’s gala.

Moritz, SITGES 2011 official beer

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

SITGES and MORITZ have signed an agreement to collaborate for three years, during which time the emblematic Barcelona brand will be the Festival’s official beer.

After several years of collaboration, Moritz has strengthened its relationship with the SITGES – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia for three more years during which time a series of brand activities will be developed related to the Festival’s theme.

Besides designing a limited edition of the bottle for guests and the Festival’s official parties, Moritz reaches fantastic cinema fans through social networks, contests and very special gifts.

In the social networks where Moritz is present, a series of activities to give away tickets and SITGES – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia and Moritz merchandising packs. In Facebook the beer brands fans are invited to attend the premiere of the film Eva” by Kike Maíllo that opened the Festival and to the opening party with the MoritzBus. There will also be a contest to attend the screening of the closing film “The Thing” plus the Festival’s closing party.

Moreover, Moritz –in collaboration with ABB– has recreated a robot that will ‘offer’ a bottle –limited edition– to some of the visitors who stop by the Hotel Melià. This robotic arm is programmed to be able to pick up a bottle, open it and offer it to the customer.

In addition, an actor encourages the people in line to see movies to participate in a contest imitating the movements of a robot, inspired by the Festival’s theme, Artificial Intelligence. The best robot imitators will win Festival and Moritz prizes.

As for Twitter, Moritz is daily giving away invitations for films screened at the Festival through contests where the ask fans questions about the Festival.

Moritz has designed a specific communication campaign for SITGES 2011. “Beer and microchips”, connected to the Festival’s leitmotif this year, artificial intelligence and the robot environment.

Catalan Films & TV conferences

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

There is life beyond the movie theaters. The Sitges Festival also functions as a stage for seminars that the professional sector makes the most of to meet. Last Monday there where two parallel encounters, held thanks to the impulse of Catalan Films, the promotional agency for the Catalan audiovisual industry in the international market, with a constant presence at film festivals around the world.

The first, entitled Internet and Europe: challenges and opportunities for our cinema and organized in collaboration with the Filmin platform, was focused on the evolution of the distribution and consumption audiovisual products since the inrush of video on demand (VoD), the a la carte contents platforms that exist online. The speakers highlighted the opportunity that VoD means for filmmaker and producers, seeing that it allows them to increase and make the exploitation of films more profitable. “We have to leave the traditional approaches to distribution behind” Sitges Festival director, Ángel Sala, maintained during his introduction to the talk, that included the collaboration of the Media program and Filmotech, a streaming cinema gateway.

Filmin director Jaume Ripoll described an apocalyptic landscape marked by films that don’t recoup the investment, public subsidies that never actually arrive and festivals that are forced to dissolve. “VoD can bring a little light to this world of darkness”, Ripoll commented. His project was founded four years ago, as the result of a strategic alliance between nine Spanish independent film distributors (Alta Films, Avalon, Cameo, El Deseo, Golem, Tornasol, Wanda Visión, Versus and Vértigo). Ripoll spoke of the need to “protect indie cinema in the salvage Internet market” and said that “you can’t consider a product to be just for indie geeks”, because it has “an enormous potential audience”. The director of Filmin explored new models of distribution simultaneous to exploitation in cinemas, and urged people not to be afraid, since it could offer new opportunities for movies premiering with few copies or that have a reduced commercial career.

Another proposal was to establish group initiatives on a European level, like the development of the EuroVoD network, which brings together online distribution platforms from eight countries: France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, Finland, Poland and Spain. Its coordinator, Dragoslav Zachariev, attended this conference, as well as guests from the rest of Europe, like Jean-Yves Bloch (UniversCiné France), Maxime Lacour (UniversCiné Belgium), Harald Baur (from the German distribution company Arsenal) and Andrew Low (from the Irish Element Pictures), who explained the VoD situation in their respective markets.

In the afternoon, Sitges held the 4^th Videogame and Audiovisual Production Conference, organized by Catalan Films and Televisió de Catalunya. Some of the most relevant personalities and companies in digital leisure passed by the Festival to explore collaboration with the film sector, like the vice-president of the Academy of Interactive Sciences, Gonzo Suárez, or the person responsible for the Gamelab fair, Iván Lobo. The session was opened by the director of the Catalan Institute of Cultural Industries (ICIC), Fèlix Riera, who acknowledged “the current uncertainty regarding the satisfactory exploitation of investments in videogames”, but recommended “developing synergies between fantastic cinema and the videogame”, considering that they cannot live with their backs to each other”.

Representatives from national and international companies like Ubisoft, Mercury Steam, Abylight or Bittoon Games, as well as digital leisure development representatives from Catalan TV Televisió de Catalunya, who have been investing in videogames for years.

Hiroshi Ishiguro masterclass

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

“I have a problem in my life. I created an android in my image and that has brought me problems. My life is harder since then”. This confession was the introduction of Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, one of the most internationally famous specialists in computing and robotics, director of the laboratory named after him at the Japanese Osaka University. Ishiguro designed the faces of the geminoids that can be seen on this year’s Festival posters.

Once through the formal introductions, done by Ángel Sala and Jordi Ojeda, professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, using videos and slides Ishiguro showed the robots he’s been working on for almost a decade, convinced that “you can understand humans based on a robot”. The Japanese scientist explained that one of the key lines to his research consists of analyzing and discovering to what point it is important that, in a hypothetical future interaction between humans and robots, they look like real people. Speculating on his presence in Sitges and the fact that, technically, it could be hard for the naked eye to tell a human from a robot, Ishiguro ironically commented: “I think that right now you are all here wishing I was an android”. The researcher explained different experiments he’s done, among them one he carried out at a café, where half of the people present there didn’t realize the inscrutable man sitting at a table was a robot, operated remotely by Ishiguro, who gave him his own voice.

What does being human consist of? As the minutes went by, the conference turned to philosophical questions. Ishiguro talked about his participation as a consultant in the film Surrogates and he added that something happened to him that was similar to one of the situations in the film when he went to a faculty with his android and they commented that he looked more and more like his substitute. “It should be the other way around! They should be telling me my substitute looks like me”, Ishiguro exclaimed. “We are a piece of fresh meat, just like a steak or a chop”, he added. The question would be what will be left of the human condition once the human body is substituted by a machine. Ishiguro said goodbye to those attending in the Tramuntana Room, offering his services, as of now, to the film industry, while he assured them that he will continue “trying to understand the human being”.

CANAL + Cine Basura meeting

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Who hasn’t used funny stories and insults to tear a bad movie apart with their friends on any given night? That’s what Paco Fox and José Viruete must have thought when they started out on their adventure with Cine Basura (Trash Cinema). The exercise is real easy: a real time commentary in public on a Z movie with the only requirement that, as they say themselves, it’s “so bad you feel like slitting yourself open”. "Cine Basura" is an initiative that will soon reach its one year anniversary and whose novelty lies in its streaming broadcasting and Free to Air by the new CANAL + Xtra channel. A different program where the audience is an active part of the show thanks to recording with an open microphone.

Last Saturday we had the pleasure of witnessing this outlandish event, including special collaborator Paco Cabezas (who competed at last year’s Festival with Carne de neón and who is repeating this year as a Méliès Jury Member). After a brief presentation where Fox praised CANAL + Xtra’s minority condition as something advantageous as it allows them to openly aim at a specialized audience, the evening’s victim was the bizarre S.O.S Invasión, first, last and only film by Silvio F. Balbuena, shot in 1969. “It’s got even less rhythm than Jane Eyre”, Viruete joked, a comment that got a big laugh out of the public since this film was being screened at the moment in the Auditori.

In a few months CANAL+ Xtra will be broadcasting some of the movies competing in the official selection like Attack the Block, Juan de los Muertos, Saint and Gantz.

"Canal 3XL=Sitges 365 days a year" marathon: Detention + The Incident + Grave Encounters

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Tonight at 1:00h at Auditori.

An essential evening for the most demanding Sitges audience, lovers of stylized gore and the most unashamed slasher movies are informed that they won’t be disappointed with this marathon. And to start revving engines, a little teen cinema. Detention (Joseph Kahn) is the story of a serial killer who importunes a group of kids punished with spending all day Saturday at school. This kind of The Breakfast Club (John Hughes) turned slasher is, in the words of its director, “no more and no less than a movie about teenagers for teenagers from the YouTube generation”. This hilarious low-budget comedy´s good fame is spreading like wildfire and even some have dared to brand it as the direct heir of the Scream saga (Wes Craven).

And afterwards, the turn is for the insane asylum that’s the ideal place to give free rein to the worst nightmares. In The incident (Alexandre Courtes), a group of young, aspiring musicians make a living as cooks in a mental hospital. Everything is going fine until one night the patients –skillfully presented by its director, as their dehumanization subtly brings them closer to a zombie appearance- take over the place and torture all those they find in their path at will. The movie moves straight into an escalation in violence that will delight an audience thirsty for some good gore.

Part of the specialized press has labeled Grave Encounters as the most terrifying movie since The Ring (Hideo Nakata). For others, it is none other than the bastard child of the Blair Witch Project. Whatever the case may be, the film made by the Vicious Brothers is one of the Festival’s most eagerly-awaited. Picking up the style of REC or Paranormal Activity, Grave Encounters simulates a faux documentary with footage from the night a television crew wanted to record the presence of ghosts in an abandoned insane asylum. The movie gives the people what it promises: dramatic effects and clichés that will scare even the most seasoned spectator.

Experts on videogames and VOD meet today at the Sitges Festival

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Today the Tramuntana Room at the Hotel Meliá will be the venue for the fourth professional conferences organized by Catalan Films & TV. These will be about the exploitation of contents on VOD platforms and the videogames industry, held in the morning and the afternoon, respectively.

These conferences have brought together the main international agents from each business model, and they will perform as speakers or collaborators during these sessions. Free admission.

An American werewolf in Sitges

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The Twilight saga is undoubtedly one of the most profitable ones of the century and possibly in history seeing that out of the five movies, two haven’t even premiered yet. This is directly thanks to having divided teenage girls’ tastes between wolves and vampires like years ago when they had to choose between Brandon or Dylan or Newman or Redford. The franchise has revived the fan phenomenon like no other movie; and if you don’t believe it ask Ana and Alberto, both 16 years old, residents in the town of Sitges that camped out starting at 6:00 a.m. on Friday at the doors of the Melia Hotel. The reason: to see Booboo Stewart, one of the werewolves starring in Eclipse and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg up close. Both, exceptional masters of ceremony for the event organized by the Festival along with its distribution company Aurum, anticipating the premier of Breaking Dawn, the fourth installment of the saga. “I tweeted him several times, and without even asking, Booboo came down to say hi to us” Alberto remarked still excited about the actor’s hug. “You see?” he said to Ana “we put up with the cold, slept in the toilets and missed class but it was worth the wait!” You bet it was: almost thirty hours later and with 400 people behind them, this couple was first in line to enter the Auditori.

The Meliá was still two hours away from opening its doors when fans – from all around Catalonia and even Valencia or Zaragoza– were screaming like mad while waiting to photograph their idol. And once inside, more screaming: almost hoarse by now, they continued to scream while Booboo walked down the aisle to shouts of “You’re so hot!”. Once the audience finally calmed down a bit, and after Melisa explained how challenging it was to adapt Stephenie Meyer’s work for the silver screen, the North American actor delighted his followers with a few word’s he’d learned in Spanish: “Hola, muchas gracias por venir. Es un placer estar en España.” (Hi, thanks for coming. It’s a pleasure to be in Spain). Then it was time for the Q&A session, when a brassy fan managed to make the young werewolf blush asking him why he was so hot. And for his grand finale, Booboo was eager to show off his martial arts kills, conquering all the Twilighters with a flip. Sitges surpassed all expectations at the event with the screening of the Spanish trailer and a preview of some of the hottest scenes from Breaking Dawn.

The Festival closer to the citizens of Sitges

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The Town Council encourages new actions to bring the Festival back closer to the citizens of Sitges with proposals for all ages

As an initiative of the Sitges Town Hall, in 2011 different actions will be carried out to bring the SITGES - International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia back closer to the citizens of Sitges and to create new synergies. For this reason, the Town Council has been working with the Festival’s organization to program new activities involving Sitgetans.

One of these proposals is the recovery of the theming of 1r de Maig St. from Indústria Square to the Passeig de la Ribera Promenade, thanks to the collaboration of the Jack Daniel’s company. The street will be decorated like an upside-down cemetery and it´s whole transformation will begin on Monday for it to be ready on October 5^th.

Another action will be organized by the Sitges Hospitality Industry Association. During the 10 days of the Festival, 21 of its members will be offering special fantastic menus. All the participating establishments and their suggestions are on a flier that will be distributed at the restaurants themselves and the Festival’s different screening and activity points.

This year there is a new collaboration between the town’s schools and the FECES (Federation of Storekeepers and Businessmen of Sitges). So these last few days, students from the Agnès de Sitges, Maria Ossó, Esteve Barrachina, Miquel Utrillo, Escola Pia and Escaan schools have been working on drawings inspired by the fantastic genre and starting this weekend they can be seen in the show windows of the different businesses participating in this initiative. In this joint action between schools and storekeepers, nearly 600 drawings have been produced.

Along the same lines, there was a proposal for high school students from Sitges’ different educational centers to attend a free screening of the movie Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001) and to do a guided tour led by someone from the Festival’s management of the exhibition on the film in the Miramar Building. On the other hand, students from 8 to 14 will have an opportunity to attend a student´s screening of the animated film The Great Bear.

All of these initiatives are added to the Jack Daniel’s Zombie Walk, held for the third year straight and bringing a spectacular parade of zombies and other gloomy characters to the center of Sitges on Friday October 14^th.

Nova Autoria awards

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

For the eleventh year running, the Fundació Autor’s (Author Foundation’s) of the Buñuel Institute, along with the SITGES - International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, have organized the Nova Autoria Awards, born with the intention of promoting and helping to publicize the new audiovisual productions made by students from film schools around Catalonia. These awards, conceived as an open window to discover the talent of the audiovisual creators of the future, are in collaboration and agreement with the main Catalan film schools.

This year the Nova Autoria Awards were given to students from the Ramon Llull-Blanquerna University, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Pompeu Fabra University, the Open University of Catalonia and the cinema school Bande à Part. The official award giving ceremony will be on Saturday October 15th at 19:30 in the Auditori at the Hotel Melià Sitges, during the closing ceremony of the International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia.

The 2011 Nova Autoria Awards jury, made up of Arnau Bataller, composer; Sílvia Munt, director, producer, screenwriter and actress, and Maria Ripoll, director, producer and screenwriter, decided on the following awards:

The 2011 Nova Autoria Award for best direction-production goes to La gota, presented by the Ramon Llull-Blanquerna University, a work made by Daniel Piera and Beatriz Escolar.
The 2011 Nova Autoria Award for best screenplay ex aequo goes to Camille, presented by the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), written by Carme Puche, and Exercici, presented by the Bande à Part Film School, written by Raúl Pérez.
The 2011 Nova Autoria Award for best original music goes to Chroma, presented by the Pompeu Fabra University, composed by Juan Andrés González.

The jury also decided to give a Special Mention to the interesting documentary piece Me llamo Peng, presented by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), made by Jahel Guerra and Victoria Molina de Carranza.
They also decided to give a second Special Mention to the interesting animation piece Desde el averno, presented by the Animation School of Catalonia, 9 Zeros, made by Raúl García, Núria Argemí, Mariona Consuegra, Saúl Darú, Maria Moreira, Clara Vallvé and Bernat Vilaseca.

Through these awards, the Societat d’Autors i Editors, the Fundació Autor, the Institut Buñuel and the International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia offer emerging creators a possibility to exhibit their work and make them known to the general public within the setting of an event with an international scope.

The members of the jury highlighted the excellent level of the 36 works presented, from a dozen different film schools. The jury followed specific criteria to select them. “We tried to give awards to those students who best explained their truth. We preferred honesty over pretension or technique. As a filmmaker, the most important thing is to have something to explain and not let yourself be defeated from the start. You must always bear in mind that this is a long-distance race”, explained actress and director Sílvia Munt, a member of the jury, next to composer Arnau Bataller and producer Maria Ripoll, who said she was “impressed” by the excellent quality of the works presented by this youth team of filmmakers. “All the shorts share the fact that they dare to say different things and that they give off a feeling of enthusiasm and an urge to learn. Without passion, this profession makes no sense”, Ripoll concluded.

The WEB APP is now available

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The WEB APP for the Festival’s website is now available for iPhone, Android, iPad and BlackBerry devices. Simply entering our home page sitgesfilmfestival.com using one of these devices, a notice will pop up offering you a direct access. This way you can be totally up-to-date on what’s new in SITGES and enjoy trailers, making-off material and the photo gallery. This has been made possible thanks to Festival collaborators Links40.

SITGES 2011 and CosmoCaixa present Hiroshi Ishiguro

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

This prominent expert will be presenting his innovative research with androids at two different conferences: the first, more film-related, during the SITGES – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia and the second, primarily scientific, at the CosmoCaixa.

SITGES 2011 - International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia and CosmoCaixa, Obra Social "la Caixa’s" Science Museum, have organized two conferences for Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro, professor at the University of Osaka and head of the ATR Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory, to be able to impart his knowledge in Catalonia. The two events will be moderated by Jordi Ojeda, professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), an institution that has also contributed to this initiative.

Two of the lshiguro Laboratory’s creations, the Geminoid H1-2 and Geminoid F androids, have become the image for this year´s Sitges Festival, dedicated to the tenth anniversary of Steven Spielberg´s movie "AI. Artificial Intelligence". Geminoid H1-2 is an accurate copy of Dr. Ishiguro himself.

Ishiguro, one of the top experts in artificial intelligence and interaction between humans and robots, will be giving two public conferences at the CosmoCaixa and the Sitges Film Festival. He will be speaking, above all, about the Geminoid series, androids created in the image and likeness of real human models. One of the pillars of Dr. Ishiguro’s work is the Japanese concept of "sonzai-kan" or "presence", and how to transmit it over distances through expressive robots.

This research opens numerous questions about how humans perceive other humans, what our relationship with the machines we create is like and what the role of robotics and artificial intelligence will be in the near future.

Humans, androids and communication

Dr. Ishiguro and his team head some of the most advanced research of the moment in robotics and artificial intelligence, with the goal of managing to transfer human "presence" through robots. This work has important applications in telecommunications and the study of the mind and society. According to Dr. Ishiguro’s vision, the information age we are presently living in will go on to slowly fuse with the robotics age, in a process of changing of human societies. Before we actually wind up sharing our day-to-day life with robots, as we’ve seen in countless movies, artificial intelligence will be fundamental in many aspects of our lives. In this transition, the contributions of art and philosophy will be the key to understanding how we need to comprehend, use and create technology: the leading research is going beyond the boundaries that delimit the fields of knowledge known until now.

In his own words: "Humans have a brain that´s prepared to interact with humans. This is why we’re interested in humanlike robots. To research human nature and understand in depth what it is to be human, I have developed a series of androids that are very humanlike. The most interesting android is the Geminoid, which is a remotely operated android. We have confirmed that the operator can actually adapt him or herself to the android’s body and accept it as his or her own body, meaning that he or she can transmit his or her presence through the robot, in a distant place. At these conferences I will explain why we developed these robots and what can be learned from this research".

Hiroshi Ishiguro’s Biography

Hiroshi Ishiguro (M’) received his PhD in systems engineering from the Osaka University, Japan in 1991. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Systems Innovation in the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University (2009–), and group leader (2011 -) at the Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR). His main research interests include distributed sensor systems, interactive robotics, and android science. He has published more than 300 papers in major journals and conferences, such as Robotics Research and IEEE PAMI. Moreover, he has developed many humanoids and androids, called Robovie, Repliee, Geminoid, Telenoid, and Elfoid. These robots have been reported on many times by major media outlets such as the Discovery Channel, NHK, and the BBC. He has also received the best humanoid award four times at the RoboCup. In 2007, Synectics Survey of Contemporary Genius 2007 selected him as one of the top 100 geniuses alive in the world today.

Conference: Humanlike robots: science fiction or reality?

SITGES – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia
Tramuntana Room / Sitges Fòrum – Hotel Melià
C / Joan Salvat Papasseit 38 (Port de l’Aiguadolç) – 08870 Sitges

Day: Sunday 9 October 2011, at 11:00
Free activity. Limited capacity.
Live simultaneous translation in the room.

An encounter with Hiroshi Ishiguro, professor at the University of Osaka
Moderated by Jordi Ojeda, professor at the UPC and Cosmocaixa collaborator

An encounter with enthusiasts attending the Film Festival. Professor Ishiguro will present the research projects he is working on in the field of humanlike robotics. We will analyze his experience and his vision of the state of robotics and artificial intelligence and its evolution in the future and impact on people´s day-to-day life. We will find out his opinion on how cinema and art reflect the subject approached here, his particular recommendations and his prediction of the technology in sight for the upcoming years in fantastic cinema.

For more information about this conference:
SITGES 2011 Press Department
Maria Castells: 93 894 99 90 / premsa@sitgesfilmfestival.com

Conference: Humans, Androids and Communication...

CosmoCaixa
C / Isaac Newton, 26 - Barcelona

Day: Tuesday 11 October 2011, at 19:00
Free activity. Limited capacity.
Individual simultaneous translation.

An encounter with Hiroshi Ishiguro, professor at the University of Osaka
Participation by Alberto Sanfeliu, director of the Institute of Robotics and Industrial Information (IRI-UPC)
Moderated by Jordi Ojeda, professor at the UPC and Cosmocaixa collaborator

A Master Class presenting the research projects at the laboratory directed by Professor Ishiguro, especially his experience with humanlike Geminoid robots and his work in social robotics to facilitate interaction between humans and robots.

For more information about this conference:
Obra Social "la Caixa" Department of Communication
Irene Roch: 93 404 60 27 / 669 45 70 94 / Iroch@fundaciolacaixa.es

Sitges Fòrum: Sala Tramuntana and Espai FNAC

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

In Sitges, films go way beyond the screen and are complemented with a series of Festival-related talks. Debates on videogames, a new look at the Internet, the creation of visual effects accessible to everyone, an incredible exhibition on artificial intelligence… All this and much more will be in the Sitges Fòrum, where movie lovers can enjoy presentations and master classes, and conversations with the protagonists that will be attending SITGES 2011. The Sitges Fòrum will be held in two different areas: The Tramuntana Room and Espai Fnac. Among all the activities programmed there are the A. I., Eva, Verbo or Extraterrestre Master Classes; presentations of the upcoming films by J.A. Bayona or the Pastor Brothers; the filming of the program Cine Basura (Canal +); the presentation of the Festival book, “Twilight Zone” or the videogame roundtable programmed along with Gamelab. In addition, there will be encounters with Official Fantàstic Selection film directors and with actors and actresses that the Festival is paying tribute to.

To see the programme at Sala Tramuntana, click here.
To see the programme at Espai Fnac, click here.

Nova Autoria. With new talents

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The SGAE’s connection with the Sitges Film Festival, through the Fundació Autor (Author Foundation), today is a long-running tradition thanks to their wish to contribute to promoting and publicizing the newest, more emergent, starting creations which are the ones that have the hardest time getting known, recognized and valued. This connection is expressed through the NOVA AUTORIA AWARDS, which acknowledge the new talent emerging in the direction-production, screenwriting and musical composition of audiovisual productions. And this is done hand in hand with our country’s film schools, which are the true connoisseurs of the new audiovisual creators’ talent and of their efforts.

And the pieces that have been selected are as follows:

TITLE AND CONTESTANT SCHOOL (in alphabetical order)

- 1991-2011 UNIVERSITAT ROVIRA i VIRGILI
- Camille - UNIVERSITAT OBERTA DE CATALUNYA (UOC)
- Chroma - UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA
- Dead Body – ECIB – Escola de Cinema de Barcelona
- Desde el Averno - 9 ZEROS – Escola d’animació de Catalunya
- Ejercicio - BANDE À PART – Escola de cinema
- Flejos y reflejos - ESCAC – Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya - Escándalo Films.
- HamletMachine – CECC - Centre d’Estudis Cinematogràfics de Catalunya
- In a Killer’s Mind - EMAV – Escola de Mitjans Audiovisuals
- La gota - UNIVERSITAT RAMON LLULL – BLANQUERNA
- Me llamo Peng - UAB – Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
- No molestar - TALLER DE CINEMA
- Uróboros – UNIVERSITAT ROVIRA i VIRGILI

BRIGADOON 2011. Luigi Cozzi, Jean Rollin and José María Oliveira

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

This year’s SITGES 2011 - International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia includes a Brigadoon section (Miramar Building) full of names of their own.

After classics like Starcrash (1979) or Contamination-Alien Arriva Sulla Terra (1980), Italian filmmaker Luigi Cozzi touches down at Brigadoon to receive the Nosferatu Award for his lifelong career devoted to the fantastic genre and, while he’s at it, to present his latest film to date, the documentary Roma Fantastica (2010).

The now deceased French filmmaker Jean Rollin (1938-2010) will have a place of honor at Brigadoon with a remembrance of his most emblematic titles, Le Viol du Vampire (1967) or Les Raisons de la Mort (1978), the recovery of his interesting film La Nuit des Horloges (2007), and the premiere of his final movie La Masque de la Méduse (2010) along with the documentary about Jean Rollin himself, Le Rêveur Égaré (2011), directed by Damien Dupont and Yvan Pierre-Kaiser. And let’s not forget the also deceased Juan Piquer Simón and the screening of his classic par excellence: Mil Gritos Tiene la Noche (Pieces - 1982).

Las Flores del Miedo (1972) and Los Muertos, la Carne y el Diablo (1973), two accursed titles from among our country’s filmography directed by José María Oliveira, will finally see the light, after being buried for so many years, to the delight of fans of the darkest pieces in Fantaterror.

8, 70m2, Agustín del Futuro, El Espectador, Grasman, Hojas, Inquietos, La Granja, Luz, New Order, Sabrina, Sonia, Under the Apron and Versus are the short films selected to compete for the Brigadoon Paul Naschy Award.

In the premiere section, among others, we find Mr.Bricks: A Heavy Metal Murder Musical, the new production from Troma; The Orphan Killer, the latest sensation in the slasher genre; Last Cares, a deserving tribute to giallo from French lands; the national films Carne Cruda and Cop Models, Mission: Turbozombies or las Zombificadas Bong of the dead, Eaters or Morituris.

As for documentaries we can see the latest production by Sebastián D’Arbó, El Misteri de Fassman; The Terror Group, an interesting review of current national horror movies with the appearance of filmmakers Jaume Balagueró, Nacho Cerdà, Paco Plaza or J.A. Bayona or On Vampires and Other Symptons, where Celia Novis introduces us to the life and work of Catalan filmmaker José Ramón Larraz.

The Imagen D.E.A.T.H., CineAsia or Asian Trash Cinema sections, along with Japan Madness, where you can see the eagerly-awaited Horny House of Horror, I Love the Video Nasty List!, or the collaboration with FIB Cortos (where a selection of shorts films like Il garibaldi sensa barba, Pionner, Los 4 mcnifikos, L’accordeur or Animal beatbox will be screened) complete a varied, dark and brutal lineup.

To see the complete 2011 Brigadoon lineup click here

Jack Daniel's SITGES Zombie Walk 2011 will be held on October 14th

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The Jack Daniel’s SITGES Zombie Walk 2011 will be held on October 14th, beginning at 20:30h at the Miramar Building (*), with the participation of the stars of the movie Juan de los Muertos for the starting signal, and will travel around Sitges until finishing at the Passeig de la Ribera promenade.

Following the Zombie Walk there will be a free party on the beach (starting at 22:00 on the Passeig de la Ribera promenade) with performances by Los Tiki Phantoms, presented by the FIB (Benicássim International Festival) and DJ Niño (The Pinker Tones). The party will continue on 2 de Mayo Street, with the participation of the local bars and clubs and Jack Daniel's.

And for the bigger film lovers, a new La Noche + Zombie Marathon at the Retiro Cinema starting at 1:00 at night with titles like DeadHeads, World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries or Exit Humanity, among others.

The Jack Daniel's Sitges Zombie Walk is made possible thanks to the sponsorship of Jack Daniel's, FOX - The Walking Dead, Planeta/Minotauro Publishing Company, the FIB (Benicássim International Festival) and Gòtic.

* Starting at 12:00 noon there will be a free make-up zone set up in the Miramar Building (limited seats).

The eagerly-awaited prequel of The Thing to close the Festival

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The SITGES 2011 – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia is finalizing its lineup by announcing The Thing (2011) as its closing movie. The eagerly-awaited prequel of John Carpenter`s classic, this time directed by debut director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., will be bringing the 10 days of the Festival to a close. The movie investigates the events that occurred at the Norwegian base neighboring the North American one where the 1982 movie took place, revealing what was only hinted at through clues and answering long-awaited questions, like the nature of the alien that’s terrorizing the Antarctica.

Francis Ford Coppola, Kevin Smith and the duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury will complete the Official Fantàstic Selection

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The Festival continues to present important contemporary films in its lineup like the latest from Francis Ford Coppola with his Twixt, a 3-D horror movie; Kevin Smith with his terrifying vision of religious fundamentalism in Red State or the return of a couple discovered in Sitges with A l’intérieur a few years ago, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, who will be presenting their new piece Livide.

Official In-Competition Fantàstic Selection

Another Earth: a story of redemption revolving around a young girl traumatized by a tragedy in her past, and who will find the answer to her innumerable questions in a bizarre phenomenon, the appearance of a closely orbiting replica of the Earth. This film by Mike Cahill was one of the big winners at Sundance 2011.

The Divide: Xavier Gens, director of Frontieres, is back with the apocalypse as a banner to show the relationship between a group of survivors of an explosion in New York who hole up in a bunker waiting for the nightmare to end. A science fiction movie with echoes of post 9/11 paranoia.

Hell: Roland Emmerich backs this post-apocalyptic thriller directed by Tim Fehlbaum that announces the barbarism of a society that only believes in survival following the disaster that has turned the planet into a veritable inferno with unbearable temperatures.

Livide: controversial French directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury (A l’intérieur) now return with a free version of children’s tales and an authentic tribute to classic horror movies ranging from Hammer to Mario Bava’s cinema.

Lobos de Arga: lycanthropy and humor come together in this Spanish production directed by Juan Martínez Moreno with a trio of aces: Carlos Areces, Gorka Otxoa and Manuel Manquiña. Spanish cinema recovers the classic werewolf theme but with a fine parodic touch, meaning we are in the presence of a worthy successor of El bosque del lobo or Paul Naschy movies.

Red State: Kevin Smith directs another film that´s distant from his previous ones (Chasing Amy, Clerks) depicting, with flickers of Rob Zombie’s cinema, backwoods America through a sect. A group of teens runs into some religious fundamentalists, causing a violent struggle when SWAT teams intervene. Fantastic performances by John Goodman, Michael Parks and Academy Award winner Melissa Leo.

Saint: following in the wake of last year´s big winner, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, director Dick Maas (famous for cult films like The Lift or Amsterdamned) presents Saint Nick as the star of this teen horror film that connects with the best 80’s genre cinema 80.

The Woman: controversial novelist Jack Ketchum, along with director Lucky Mckee, returns with the actress from Offspring Pollyanna McIntosh in a film where a “normal” family keeps a wild woman abducted in a cellar on their estate. A reflection on the internal mechanisms of violence in the heart of a typical American family.

Official Fantàstic Panorama Section:

Apollo 18: Spaniard Gonzalo López-Gallego (King of the Hill) presents a faux documentary about a trip to the moon, so graphically spectacular that the people at NASA themselves had to report that they didn’t give him any of their material to complete the film. A science fiction style Paranormal Activity.

Detention: presented at SXSW where it was a huge hit among audiences and critics, Joseph Kahn describes the bad moments in adolescence in a shameless, bloody comedy with some touches of science fiction that many have defined as the Scream for the new generations.

Extraterrestre: after presenting Timecrimes in 2007 (the Americans have already bought the rights for its remake) Nacho Vigalondo returns with this comedy with a science fiction undertone and that is one of the most original, funny and complete films of the year.

The Innkeepers: the director of the magnificent The House of the Devil, Ti West, is back at it again with a film full of suspense, frights and more than one burst of laughter where the protagonists try to prove, with a recorder and a flashlight, that a hotel is haunted.

Pouler aux prunes: The creators of Persépolis, Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud, once again take a comic of Marjane Satrapi to cinema. A renowned Iranian violinist tryes to find a replacement for his broken instrument in this exciting story halfway between animation and real actors.

Twixt: Francis Ford Coppola directs Val Kilmer in a film of murders, ghosts and other surprises, based on a dream the director had where he even dares to introduce Edgar Allan Poe himself as a character. Visually avant-garde, Coppola even uses 3-D technology interactively.

Verbo: Eduardo Chapero-Jackson’s feature film debut is approached as a daring, courageous proposal in a tale where science fiction is mixed with a story line about juvenile urban tribes that wouldn´t displease even Gus Van Sant himself. The most innovative debut film in contemporary Spanish cinema starring Miguel Ángel Silvestre, Verónica Echegui and Najwa Nimri.

Special Screenings:

The Artist: the Sitges Festival wanted to include one of the surprise sensations of the year directed by Michel Hazanavicius. The Artist is an unforgettable fantasy revolving around the silent movies that rightfully becomes the best tribute the seventh art has ever paid itself. Impressive job by Jean Dujardin that won him the award for best actor at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Intruders: recently screened as the opening film at the San Sebastián Film Festival, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s new movie is a study of children´s fears in a dark thriller format that doesn’t renounce moments that are markedly fantastic and terrifying.

El Monje: brilliant adaptation of one of the founding novels of the gothic genre (admired by Buñuel himself), Dominik Moll delves into the story of a 17^th century monastery where a monk discovers the way of the devil. It has an all-star cast including Vincent Cassel, Geraldine Chaplin and Sergi López.

Gantz and Gantz: Perfect Answer: Kei and Masaro are run over by a train. They suddenly find themselves in a room with other people and where a giant ball dominating the entire place invites them to participate in a macabre game. The winner will walk away with a very longed-for prize: returning to life. An adaptation in two feature-length films of the more than thirty volumes of Hiroya Oku’s manga with flesh and blood characters following the new trend in Japanese cinema of making screen versions of their popular graphic novels.

Bryan Singer, SITGES 2011 Grand Honorary Award

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The director of modern classics in fantastic cinema like the X-Men saga, Superman Returns and creator of the series House will be receiving the Grand Honorary Award for his innovative vision when it comes to approaching the screen versions of comic book heroes, as well as accurately and brilliantly investigating the mechanisms of evil, something he already demonstrated in his debut movie Public Access (which he personally presented at Sitges ‘93) or in disturbing films like The Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil.

Bryan Singer will be giving a master class on Wednesday October 12^th at 17:00 in the Tramuntana Room - Sitges Forum, and afterwards he´ll be signing autographs for his fans.

Born in New York in 1965, Singer studied cinema first at the New York’s School of Visual Arts and later at the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles. His debut movie, Public Access (93), showed him to be a director with an unusual gift for suspense, something that would be confirmed with The Usual Suspects (95), a film that made him famous among audiences and critics and that would be one of the high points of the contemporary thriller. He subsequently adapted Stephen King in Apt Pupil (98, Sitges’ closing film that same year) and he would change fantasy with X-Men (00) and X-Men 2 (03), screen versions of Marvel comics that can largely be considered the models for many of the superhero movies that have come out in recent years. The filmmaker would continue investigating the subject with Superman Returns (06) to later surprise us with the historical thriller Valkiria (08). He’s executive producer for series like House (04-) and Sexymoney (07-09) and is currently finishing up an adventure movie, Jack the Giant Killer and preparing a big screen version of the series Battlestar Galactica.

Discover this year's commercial spot

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The Festival commercial spot is almost as eagerly awaited by the general public as its lineup, and yesterday Rafa Antón, creative director of the China agency and the man responsible for its campaigns over the last ten years, presented this year’s commercial, along with Festival director Angel Sala and one of Sitges 2011’s partners Moritz Beer (the presentation was done at the Velodrome, property of the brand).

As announced at the presentation of the SITGES 2011 posters, artificial intelligence is this year’s central theme, represented through the geminoids created by professor Ishiguro in Japan. For the commercials, Rafa Antón stated that he’d “continued with the same commemorative leitmotif of the tenth anniversary of Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg), with a piece set in the perfect minimalism of the robotics world, where two identical characters are shown leaving the spectator wondering which is the robot and which is the human”. Alex Rodríguez is the director of ‘Alter Ego’, produced by Sopa de Toro.

In addition, as usual, China has also developed a spot related to fantasy’s imaginary, with the claim “reality kills us” and opening up a wide range of interpretations, from the Festival’s genre to the tough social times we’re presently going through. Oriol Segarra is the director of ‘Reality Kills Us’, produced by Albiñana Films.

Rafa Antón added that working on SITGES’s image means having values available to him like creative freedom, wide-ranging and interesting themes, an intelligent audience capable of understanding any type of code (“like that of any detergent, although we forget this when we do more commercial advertising”) and, above all, a good platform for experimentation. This experimentation, among other things, has led them to win awards at festivals like Cannes, San Sebastián or the Anuario del Club de Creativos and to even become a part of the permanent collection at Reina Sofía Museum.

In the last ten years SITGES has been able to count on Rafa Antón and the teams of Vitruvio Leo Burnett (1999-2009) and the Festival’s present agency China (2010-2011), as well as the production companies that have collaborated throughout this decade on the elaborate productions at each year’s Festival:

In 1999 with the leitmotif “Things that don’t happen in real life” they created everyday situations that seem impossible to us, like a piece of toast falling on the right side, a charming Parisian woman helping us to find our way or a husband helping his set the table during the crucial stage of a football match.

In 2002, after an interval of two years, with “Fantastic cinema and much more” they showed a typical interview set with the Sitges church in the background where a small, blue character with pointy ears asks not to be type-cast for fantastic roles and demands to do other types of roles: “I want to do drama, adventures, comedy... Take a look at Robert de Niro…”

In 2003, with “Anything can happen in Sitges”, in a mysterious atmosphere, normal people, using the power of their minds, managed to open the automatic doors of a pharmacy or foresee that a traffic light was going to change from red to green.

In 2004, the slogan “Fantasy, science fiction and other that are hard things to explain” went a little further beyond and questioned, just a week away from the presidential elections in the USA, the unconditional support president Bush was receiving for a second term. The campaign was complemented with “Some stills going beyond reality”, A disturbing exercise in style

In 2005, with the 30th anniversary of Jaws, they went straight for more direct humor with the totally true concept of “We all grow old” seeing an exhausted shark after giving its victim up for lost. In addition, the creative team wanted to give it a more surrealistic and artistic touch producing four pieces making it clear that if fantasy didn’t exist, everything would be more boring.

In 2006 they told us “Don’t expect imagination anywhere else”, showing a game of puppets where the children simply saw hands and sticks, instead of watching the story of kings, princesses and faraway lands. This year the tribute to the 20th anniversary of Blue Velvet focused on the director’s complex universe: “Time enough to understand David Lynch”.

In 2007, on the occasion of the Festival’s 40th anniversary, SITGES’ intention was made clear by using the claim “40 years making reality a little less harsh”, where a zombie was the only nice part of the commercial, in comparison to the humans. This year we also celebrated the 25th anniversary of E.T. and the recognizably hands of the alien most loved by audiences delighted us by playing John Williams’ famous song on the piano.

In 2008, with the 30th anniversary of 2001, A Space Odyssey, they made fun of the pedantry of many who didn’t consider Kubrick and his work to be a film revolution, adding “40 years of a unique visual experience”. This year they also made a commercial dedicated to Festival fans, always faithful, with a werewolf getting made up to go see films and the sentence “Sitges fans aren’t like the ones at other festivals”. LINK. A special dedicated to space ships offered a curious reflection set in an office where absolutely everything was black.

In 2009 the spot left everyone holding on to their seats with shots, blood and general nastiness, the main attractions in “A massacre that begins with an egg breaking” to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Alien. LINK

In 2010 they returned to Kubrick with the 30th anniversary of The Shining, in an elegant commercial stating “You never forget a Kubrick".

www.youtube.com/sitgesfilmfestival

Casa Asia: special attention to oriental cinema

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

SITGES 2011, once again this year, continues to pay special attention to the Asian continent (Japan, China, Hong Kong, Korea, India and Indonesia, among others) and its revolutionary genre cinema. Besides the specialized section, Casa Asia, Asian cinema will also be present in the Festival’s different sections, from the In-Competition Official Fantàstic selection or Noves Visions to Anima’t.

It’s important to point out the presentation of the second film by Korean Na Hong-jin, The Yellow Sea, in the In-Competition Official Fantàstic selection. In this same selection, Japanese Takashi Miike will be presenting the premiere of Hara-Kiri: Death Of A Samurai, a movie shot in 3D that was screened at the past Cannes Festival.

In the Noves Visions section we will be able to enjoy, for instance, Arirang, the new and bewildering movie by Korean director Kim Ki-duk, or Himizu, the suggestive, brilliant adaptation of the manga by the same name, directed by Japanese Sion Sono.

Finally, one of the most long-awaited films for those lovers of special effects and spectacular action scenes is Sector 7, by Kim Ji-hoon, that will be screened in the Casa Asia section. Also in this section, veteran director Ryoo Seung-wang will be presenting The Unjust, a thriller about the corruption of the Korean legal system, and Hong Kong director Wong Ching-po promises to surprise us with his forceful Revenge: a Love Story.

The films with the Casa Asia hallmark that have been confirmed are:

Panorama Official Fantastic Section - Casa Asia
Bollywood: The Greatest Love Story (Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Jeff Zimbalist)
Haunters (Kim Min-suk)
Revenge: a Love Story (Wong Ching-po)
Sector 7 (Kim Ji-hoon)
Shaolin (Benny Chan)
Smuggler (Katsuhito Ishii)
The Raid (Gareth Evans)
The Unjust (Ryoo Seung-wan)
Tormented (Takashi Shimizu)

In-Competition Official Fantàstic Section
Guilty Of Romance (Sion Sono)
Hara-Kiri: Death Of A Samurai (Takashi Miike)
Scabbard Samurai (Hitoshi Matsumoto)
The Sorcerer and the White Snake (Tony Ching Siu-tung)
The Yellow Sea (Na Hong-jin)

Midnight X-Treme
3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (Christopher Sun)
Karate Robo Zaborgar (Noboru Iguchi)
Ninja Kids!!! (Takashi Miike)
Yakuza Weapon (Tak Sakaguchi, Yûdai Yamaguchi)

Mondo Macabro
Endhiran (S. Sankar)

Official Section Noves Visions
Arirang (Kim Ki-duk) – No Ficció
Hanezu (Naomi Kawase) – Ficció
Himizu (Sion Sono) – Ficció
Invasion of Alien Bikini (Oh Young-doo) – Discovery
Kotoko (Shinya Tsukamoto) – Ficció
Night Fishing (Park Chan-wook) – Ficció
The Day He Arrives (Hong Sang-soo) – Ficció
Underwater Love (Shinji Imaoka) – Dark Ficció
Vampire (Shunji Iwai) – Ficció

Von Trier's 'Melancholia' and Soderbergh's 'Contagion' head a spectacular OF Panorama Selection

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The end of the world will be the main theme of Official Fantàstic Panorama Selection, complementary to Official Fantàstic in Competition section, demonstrating the paranoia experienced by today’s society, an after effect of the September 2001 bombings in the USA and prompted by the obsession for this date in the year 2012.

Melancholia, Danish director Lars Von Trier’s long-awaited film, will be one of the Festival’s important titles, with its poetic vision of a global cataclysm caused by the collision of the Earth and a wandering planet. Melancholia has an all-star cast including, among others, Kirsten Dunst (winner of the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Festival for this film), John Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Charlotte Rampling.

On the other hand, Steven Soderbergh also deals with a global catastrophe in Contagion, in this case the spreading of a lethal virus throughout the entire planet. Contagion (currently being presented at the Venice Festival), also includes important actors like Matt Damon, Gywneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne or Jude Law.

In addition to these titles there is Béla Tarr’s apocalyptic vision in the previously announced The Turin Horse (winner of the Special Jury Award at the latest Berlin Festival). The selection will also present other important events in this year’s fantastic cinema like the terrifying Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, produced by Guillermo Del Toro; the vampire epic The Moth Diaries, by Mary Haron, director of American Psycho; the spectacular 3D Korean blockbuster Sector 7 or the sinister version of the Jane Eyre, starring Michael Fassbender. Added to all this is the previously announced Mientras duermes (Sleep Tight), Jaume Balagueró’s disturbing psychological thriller.

The Official Fantàstic Panorama Selection will also be offering excellent proposals like the adult animation film Eric Koo’s Tatsumi, or the adrenaline-packed Drive, by Nicolas Winding-Refn, best director at the last Cannes Film Festival.

Noves Visions 2011: an exquisite selection

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Continuing with its consolidation and influence in the Festival line-up, this year the Noves Visions section promises to be a category dedicated to the most innovative and transgressive approaches. This edition is committed to both widely acclaimed artists and new talents, with a noteworthy presence of works by women.

Below is a preview of the film selection, divided into four sections:

Ficció:
A selection that combines big names in contemporary film with young artists appearing around the festival circuit.

-The Day He Arrives (Sang-soo Hong): A game of meta-language in the Korean master’s most accessible film.
- Vampire (Shunji Iwai): The director of All About Lily Chou-Chou travels to North America to explore juvenile anguish in a generic key and paying tribute to Martin of George A. Romero.
- 22 mei (Koen Mortier): The director of Ex Drummer is back to explore post 9/11 paranoia.
- 4:44: The Last Day on Earth (Abel Ferrara): A reflective, intimate exercise from the director of The Addiction revolving around fear of the end of the world.
- Kotoko (Shinya Tsukamoto): The return of the director of Tetsuo to the most reflective and transgressive horror cinema.
- Hanezu no tsuki (Naomi Kawase): Mythological meditation on the loss of transcendental values in today’s society.
- La belle endormie (Catherine Breillat): A very personal and atypical version of Perrault’s story.
- The Tempest (Julie Taymor): A spectacular, fantastic adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s strangest works by the director of Titus and Frida.
- Le petit poucet (Marina de Van): Another feminine, atypical version of a famous children’s story from the director of Don’t Look Back.
- Beyond the Black Rainbow (Panos Cosmatos): A bizarre science fiction exercise with roots in the 70’s genre tradition that was one of the big sensations at this year’s Tribeca festival.

No Ficció:
Confirmation of the growth of the creative documentaries that have been screened during recent editions of the Festival.

- Arirang (Kim Ki-duk): A self-reflective exercise from the director of The Isle, winner of the Un Certain Regard category at Cannes 2011.
- Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place (Alison Ellwood and Alex Gibney): Reconstruction of Ken Kesey’s psychedelic trip and a passionate study of LSD culture.
- Project Nim (James Marsh): The Academy Award winning director of Man on Wire delves into a fascinating experiment about animal intelligence.
- The Bengali Detective (Philip Cox): A blend of social documentary and comedy that surprisingly explores the complex society of present-day India.
- Knuckle (Ian Palmer): An incredible documentary on street boxing.
- Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles (Jon Foy): Award winner at Sundance for best documentary director and a real science fiction experiment with a dose of millenarian paranoia.

Discovery:
A selection of films made from independent, experimental postulates and investigating new possibilities of film language and the fantastic genre.

- Vlogger (Ricard Gras): A Catalan produced audiovisual experiment that translates the mixture of material from the Internet and generic fiction into a fictional plot. Its world premiere will be in Sitges.
- Hellacious Acres: The Case of John Glass (Pat Tremblay): The apocalypse as a theme, this time playing with textures and images and dispensing with dialogue.
- Invasion of the Alien Bikini (Young-doo Oh): A superhero movie, with large doses of pop culture and zany comedy. A surprise that goes way beyond its title.

Dark-Ficció:
A selection of auteur approaches with a cult vocation.

- Onna no kappa (Underwater Love) (Shinji Imaoka): Un indescribable blend of pink eiga and musical starring a mythical Japanese creature. With cinematography by Christopher Doyle.
- Meat (Victor Nieuwenhuijs and Maartje Seyferth): A butcher’s erotic fantasies in a film experimenting with textures that brings Lynch or Greenaway to mind.
- Kaidan Horror Classics (Shinya Tsukamoto, Msayuki Ochiai, Sang il-lee, Hirokazu Koreeda): An omnibus film revolving around traditional horror legends directed by masters like Tsukamoto or Koreeda.

SITGES invites you to enjoy the long-awaited film SUPER 8

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0200

SITGES, International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, and PARAMOUNT PICTURES present a special screening of SUPER 8 at 8.30pm on Wednesday August 10th at the Comedia cinema (Passeig de Gràcia 13, Barcelona).

To get a ticket for two of the 220 available just access www.facebook.com/sitgesfilmfestival.

SUPER 8 is directed by the highly acclaimed J.J. Abrams (creator of series like Alias, Lost and Fringe) and produced by Steven Spielberg, Abrams himself and Bryan Burk. This summer’s most awaited movie boasts performances by Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Ron Eldard, Noah Emmerich, Basson Gabriel, Courtney Joel, Lee Ryan, Zach Mills and Amanda Michalka.

In the summer of 1979, a group of young friends in a small Ohio town witness a catastrophic train crash while they are shooting a super 8 movie. When a series of unusual disappearances and inexplicable events begin to take place in town, the friends suspect it was no accident and the chief of police tries to uncover the truth.

SUPER 8 will be in cinemas and IMAX on August 19th and is distributed by PARAMOUNT PICTURES.

More information at:
www.super8-lapelicula.com
www.sitgesfilmfestival.com
http://facebook.com/sitgesfilmfestival
www.twitter.com/sitgesfestival

SITGES in FIB Cortos with The Perfect Host

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200

FIB Cortos, Festival Internacional de Cortos de Benicàssim will pre-release The Perfect Host, by Nick Tomnay, one of the movies of SITGES 2010 Official Competition, which is scheduled to premiere in theaters on August 26th, distributed by Festival Films.

The Perfect Host screening will be on Wednesday July 13th, at 21h in Teatro Municipal de Benicassim (Bayer Street, 31) within Sitges Special Program.

Synopsis: When an ex-con realizes the robbery he had meticulously planned has wound up being front page news, he’s forced to look for a place to hide until things die down. Passing himself off as a friend of a friend, he manages to crash a residence where the owner is having a dinner party. A perfect hideout if it wasn’t for the host... If you considered Frasier’s fussy brother to be a charming, harmless character, wait until you see his darkest side in this unpredictable psychological thriller where appearances can be mortally deceptive and surprises come one after another.

www.cortos.fiberfib.com

SITGES 2011, an edition inspired by artificial intelligence

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200

SITGES 2011 delves into the concept of artificial intelligence, examining how it’s been discussed in film and what its future prospects are as regards to fiction and reality.

With the tenth anniversary of A.I. (Steven Spielberg, 2000) as a point of contact, the Festival will consider the questions that inspired Kubrick and Spielberg for this project: the emotional intelligence of machines and communication between synthetic intelligences.

China, The Festival’s advertising agency, has developed this year’s posters based on the geminoids created by Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro in Japan. According to Rafa Antón, founding partner of China: “we often take artificial intelligence as something that’s exclusive to fantasy and science fiction. But it’s actually much closer than we think. And proof of it is this year’s image: two apparently normal portraits of two ordinary people, only they aren’t people. They are two robots. And they exist. Our intention with these posters is to arouse people’s curiosity, for them to question things that appear to be real. We thought it was a good idea to play with this ambiguity.”

The Festival and China appreciate the collaboration of professor Ishiguro and his team in Osaka and Kyoto, the photographer who was responsible for the portraits, Jose Aragón, and the Enri Mür agency that coordinated the entire production.

Eva, by Kike Maíllo, will be opening the Festival's 44th edition

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The Catalan production Eva (Escándalo Films), distributed by Paramount Pictures and with the international participation of companies like Wild Bunch, will be opening the Festival’s 44th edition on 6 October.

Eva, Kike Maillo’s first work, explores science fiction through a very coherent approach with this year’s leitmotif, and is a new commitment to new talents, following the Festival’s line in recent years (J.A. Bayona, Guillem Morales...).

At the opening gala the film will be screened in Catalan and the following public screening will be in Spanish, with press screenings in both languages.

Program preview: long-awaited Catalan and Spanish film productions and outstanding international films

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200

In addition to Eva, there will be other long-awaited Catalan and Spanish film productions like:
Mientras duermes (Sleep Tight), by Jaume Balagueró, a filmmaker who will be receiving one of the Festival’s tribute awards, The Time Machine.
La Mujer del Eternauta, by Adán Aliaga, a documentary revolving around the comic, an allegory of Argentinean society in the times of Videla.
The Spanish Cuban co-production Juan de los Muertos, an ironic vision of Cuban reality, that will be the main attraction on Zombie Walk day, 14th October.
Emergo, by Carles Torrens and produced by Rodrigo Cortés for Versus Entertainment.

Some of the outstanding international films that will be participating include:
The Turin Horse, by Béla Tarr.
The Yellow Sea, by Na Hong-jin, director of The Chaser (Korea).
Les Contes de la Nuit, 3D animation, by Michel Ocelot.
Grave Encounters, directed by The Vicious Brothers, a recent blockbuster in Italy.
Burke and Hare, by John Landis.
Continuing with our commitment to Latin American genre film, we will be including productions like Trabalhar cansa, from Brazil.

Once again the Festival will focusing on 3D Cinema in different sections, with movies like Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy, in Midnight X- Treme, one of the big box office hits in Hong Kong, or The Mortician, by Gareth Maxwell Roberts, in the in Competition Official Section, an innovative stereoscopic technology proposal.

Asian cinema will continue to be represented in several movies programed in the Festival’s different sections, identified with the Casa Asia hallmark.

Noves Visions (Fiction, Non-Fiction and Discovery), Anima’t, Nova Autoria, (in collaboration with SGAE), Seven Chances, Brigadoon and Midnight X-Treme, the Festival’s main sections, will be announced over the upcoming months.

Collaborations: Filmotech.com, Catalan Films & TV and Carnet Jove Jury

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200

EGEDA, through EGEDA DIGITAL, will be creating a specific platform for the Festival within its FILMOTECH.COM portal, VEOSITGES.CAT, a virtual room where the official jury, press and film industry will have access codes to view certain films.
FILMOTECH.com is presently made up of one of the largest audiovisual catalogues in existence and has developed similar projects at the Goya Awards or the Gaudí Awards.

Catalan Films & TV will be organizing a series of activities at the Festival on 10 October, with the symposium “Internet and Europe: challenges and opportunities for our cinema”, where speakers from different countries like Germany, France, Belgium, Poland, Ireland and Switzerland will explain their VOD film distribution and promotion strategies.
In the afternoon there will be a Videogame conference, organized once again with Televisió de Catalunya, divided into 2 large sections: “Videogame and audiovisual production” and “Multi-platforms” as new business models.

For the seventh year in a row, the Carnet Jove Jury, promoted by the Agència Catalana de la Joventut (Catalan Youth Agency), will be presenting two awards: the Award for Best Feature Film in the Official Fantàstic Section and the Award for Best Feature Film in the Midnight X-Treme Section.

VII Carnet Jove Jury - SITGES 2011

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The five members of the 7^th Carnet Jove Jury for the SITGES 2011 – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia will be able to experience an affair with the seventh art during the days of this event. They will be a part of an official jury and be handing out two awards: the Carnet Jove Jury Award for Best Motion Picture from the Official Selection and the Carnet Jove Jury Award for Best Motion Picture from the Midnight X-Treme section.

If it’s your dream to become a film critic... download the regulations and participate here!

*The presentation deadline is 14th July.

Tickets and Programme - Casa Asia Film Week

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Tickets on sale of the new contest of Asian cinema of Barcelona: Casa Asia Film Week. The festival will be held between the 6th and the 8th of June at Casa Asia Headquarters (with free activities and screenings) and between the 9th and 12th at Girona Cinemas, and will present a varied cinematographic programme, with a total of 30 films, 11 of which compete at the official section.

Likewise, the lovers of the seventh art will find films that go from comedy to drama, going through science fiction, martial arts or Bollywood films. The films, mostly unknown and of recent production, are made by new and acknowledged directors, such as the case of the Hong Kong film-maker Ann Hui, who has been devoted a retrospective at this first edition.

http://www.casaasia.eu/

Neither Dead or Buried - Ficomic 2011

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0200

The 29^th Barcelona International Comic Fair will be held from 14 to 17 April in Hall 8 of the Fira de Barcelona.

One outstanding part of the Fair’s versatile program (workshops, stands, talks, concerts, etc.) will be the exhibition ZOMBIES. NEITHER DEAD OR BURIED, curated by Ángel Sala, director of the SITGES International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia. The installation entails a journey through this genre that is so successful in cinema, comics and, more recently, on television. The show is structured in different sections that will allow you to get to know the different zombie types and how they’ve spread like a plague through celluloid and vignettes.

On Friday 15 April at 19:00 there will be a round table discussion entitled Film Zombies with Ángel Sala and the directors Jorge Grau and Jaume Balagueró. In addition, included in the activities related to this genre, there will also be make-up workshops, master classes on how to draw a zombie, the first Cosplay Zombie competition with several categories and awards, and concerts by the groups Los Tiki Phantoms, Motorzombis and Los Toros.

www.ficomic.com

7th Base Film Festival

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0200

On 11^th-15th April 2011 will take place in Terrassa the seventh edition of Base Film Festival, which has become a festival linked to the idea of the debut, and the leap from short to long feature as the dominant motor.

Base Film Festival kicks off this year’s edition in collaboration with the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival by giving its director, Ángel Sala, Carte Blanche to select and present a film, a first work, which he considers interesting.

The chosen film is Amer by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, presented in the Discovery category at the 2009 Sitges Festival.

Base Film Festival places special emphasis on the work carried out at film festivals to support first works, and for this reason it has also organized Talks between Festivals with Ángel Sala, director of the Sitges Festival and José Luis Cienfuegos, director of the Gijón Festival.

Finally, the Base Film Festival has asked Angel Sala to gives a Festival Workshop.

With these three events, the Base Film festival hopes to consolidate a continued relationship with the Sitges Festival.

http://www.basefilmfestival.com

Press Note regarding charges against Ángel Sala, Festival Director, for the screening of A Serbian Film in 2010

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100

SITGES International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia wishes to show its complete support for Ángel Sala and, by extension, the decisions that he has made while exercising his role as Director of the Festival.

Regarding the recent statements concerning the screening of A Serbian Film, the Festival wants to state that the above mentioned title is not a pornographic film, but, in fact, a fictional horror film, and is not meant as an attack or humiliation against the sexual dignity of minors.

SITGES wants to thank all the support it has received from its audience, other film festivals (1) and important cultural figures.

A Serbian Film was screened after carrying out all necessary informative and control measures in order to prevent any minors from accessing the screening. These measures consisted of information placed in the Festival media to guarantee awareness about the content of the film to the audience before its viewing, as well as demanding proof of age from viewers entering the theatre.

The path this film has followed has been the standard one within the conventional commercial circuit, having been screened, amongst many others, in the following international festivals and markets: Brussels, Montreal (Fantasia), San Francisco, Toronto, Austin, Porto, Sofia, Hamburg, Helsinki, Puchon (South Korea), Ravenna and Stockholm.

It is also worth mentioning that the film has been awarded several times, thrice in Montreal (Best Film, Best European Film, and the Innovation Award), the Special Jury Award at Fantasporto Festival in Porto (less than a week ago) and the Best Script Award at FIPRESCI Festival in Serbia.

A Serbian Film has also been screened at the two most prestigious markets in the world, the Cannes Film Market and Film Festival and the American Film Market in Santa Mónica, California, and will be commercially distributed in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.

SITGES wants to thank again all support shown, as well as to express its respect to all the criticism that has given room to a necessary debate about the importance of freedom of speech and creation in the programming of film festivals.

SITGES International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia considers that it has acted rigorously in providing the audience with all the information it might require beforehand. Nevertheless, the rise of critical voices will make the Festival reflect on their communication mechanisms in the future, emphasizing child protection, and defending freedom of speech and creation as it has done from the beginning.

(1) SUPPORT LETTER BY THE SPANISH FILM FESTIVALS

We, the undersigned, directors of Spanish film festivals, wish, in view of the leak to the press published this weekend, to state our surprise at the legal action taken against Ángel Sala, director of the Sitges International Film Festival of Catalonia, for having included in the 2010 programme of the said event, at sessions for adults only, A Serbian Film, which it is claimed contains violent, pornographic scenes conflicting with the rights of the child.

Over and above our surprise at pinning responsibility of this kind on a cultural programmer, and not on those theoretically responsible for the content in question (the director and the producers, if anyone at all), we wish to recall, in addition to our support of Ángel Sala, that the film has been screened over the last twelve months in festivals in Brussels, Montreal, London, Oporto, Austin, San Francisco, Toronto, Sofia, Hamburg, Helsinki, Puchon (South Korea), Ravenna and Stockholm, among others. A Serbian Film has also enjoyed screening at the two most prestigious film markets in the world: Cannes, and the American Film Market in Santa Monica, California. All of this without anyone, to date, having taken legal steps of any kind against the film, those responsible for it or its programmers.

We must also add that the film has won prestigious awards including three at Montreal (Best Film; Gold Award for Best European Film and Most Innovative Film); the Audience Award at the Fantasporto Festival in Oporto (less than a week ago); and the Best Screenplay Award at the FIPRESCI Festival in Serbia.

We also condemn the fact that behaviour such as that shown by the Office of the Public Prosecutor in Barcelona appears to be taking us back to times of censorship limitations on freedom of expression and cultural programming that we sincerely believed belonged to the past.

Signed by:

Javier Angulo (Festival de Valladolid)

Josetxo Cerdán Los Arcos (Punto de Vista / Pamplona)

José Luis Cienfuegos (Festival de Gijón)

José Luis Rebordinos (Festival de San Sebastián)

Carmelo Romero (Festival de Cine Español de Málaga)

José Sánchez Montes (Festival de Granada / Cines del Sur)

Claudio Utrera (Festival de Las Palmas)

Javier Martín Domínguez (Festival de Sevilla)

Eduardo Trías (Festival de Huelva)

Josemi Beltrán (Semana de Cine Fantástico y de Terror de San Sebastián)

Vertice and Sitges invite you to the SECUESTRADOS preview in Madrid

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Vertice and Sitges invite you to the SECUESTRADOS preview in Madrid, next Wednesday February 23rd at 22h, at Palafox Cinemas (C/ Luchana 15). Finally, one of the most acclaimed film on SITGES 2010 reaches theatres. The 60 first fans writing their first names and surnames on the Facebook post will receive 2 free tickets, and, among these, the first 10 will also get a film t-shirt. Good luck!

www.facebook.com/sitgesfilmfestival

The great Ingrid Pitt, queen of the undead, has left us

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The Sitges – International Fantastic Festival of Catalonia would like to pay tribute to the Polish-British actress Ingrid Pitt (1937-2010). Iconic image of the Hammer and Amicus factories with her roles as a vampiress in the sixties and seventies, she was discovered by the film director from Segovia José Antonio Nieves-Conde who, thanks to his prophetic vision, gave her a role in the exceptional Sound of Horror in 1964. This was the springboard that, with the aid of her exotic central European accent, would catapult her into the laps of Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare. Afterwards, a series of unforgettable movies for fantaterror fans would appear like The Vampire Lovers, from the recently deceased and very much esteemed Roy Ward-Baker, Countess Dracula, The House That Dripped Blood and Robin Hardy’s masterpiece The Wicker Man. To your health, Ingrid Pitt. You will never die, queen of the undead.

'Inventiveness and technique in fantastic cinema' conference, by Ángel Sala

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The UNESCO Chair of Technology and Culture at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and the Catalan Society of Technology are organizing the fourth session of the conference series “Comic, science and Technology”.

The subject of the session is: Inventiveness and technique in fantastic cinema, and the speaker is Ángel Sala, lawyer turned writer, screenwriter and film critic, and director of the International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia for the last ten years. Sala just published the book Profanando el Sueño de los Muertos (Profaning the Sleep of the Dead), published by SCIFIWORLD, a genuine trip through the memory of Spanish fantastic cinema, from its beginnings, in the late 19th century, to present. In it the author does a very personal and at the same time rigorous task of recovering the historic memory of fantastic cinema.

The chat will discover the origins of fantastic cinema, postwar experiences and the genesis of the emblematic fantastic genre authors in the sixties and seventies. He will be presenting the expansion of genre and the role it had in the democratic transition, the revolution of the decade of the nineties and the reappearance of a new golden age in recent years with titles and authors of acknowledged international prestige.

For more information please visit the next link: http://comiccienciatecnologia.blogspot.com

Conference information:
2010 conference series: «Comic, science and Technology»
'Inventiveness and technique in fantastic cinema'
Tuesday 23th November 2010 at 7pm
Escola Tècnica Superior d’Enginyeria Industrial de Barcelona – ETSEIB
Aula Capella - Av. Diagonal, 647, 08028 Barcelona
Inventiveness and technique in fantastic cinema with Ángel Sala, lawyer and fantastic cinema promoter and with Jordi Ojeda as moderator, professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and coordinator of conference series.
Free entrance.

Fandom Sitges 2010 Winners

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The first edition of Fandom Sitges has received more than 35 videos of a great quality and originality.
The winners of this year are the following ones:

SITGES 2011 VIP SEATING:
Tapas of death (Anders Hattne)
For his aesthetics and sense of humor on mixing Sitges's vision as a tourist international destination with the zombies genre, the Zombie Walk and the Festival.

SITGES 2011 MATINÉE PASS:
Faster pussy cat, run run!!! (Capitán Urías)
For showing a fresh vision of the Festival and the day after day from a point of view of the audience.

2010 CRYPTSHOW FESTIVAL VIP ACCREDITATION:
ARP (Albert Riu Esteve)
For his immediacy and planning in one plane sequence to show a vision of the Festival from the hand of an infected.

With all the videos received we will make a summary piece of this first edition, coming soon!

Fandom Sitges is a project from the website specializing in fantastic and horror cinema Judexfanzine, Road to the Cryptshow promoters and multimedia artist Garbi KW in collaboration with Brigadoon and SITGES 2010 – 43rd International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia.

More information: www.fandomsitges.com

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, by Jalmari Helander, wins the Best Motion Picture

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0200

OFFICIAL FANTÀSTIC IN COMPETITION SITGES 43

JURY
Francesco Barilli, Jaume Collet-Serra, Colin Geddes, Jan Harlan & Elena Manrique

Best Short Film
THE LEGEND OF BEAVER DAMM by Jérôme Sable

Special Mention to the short film
VICENTA by Sam Millor

Best Production Design
Yuji Hayashida for THIRTEEN ASSASSINS

Best Make Up FX
Vitaya Deerattakul & Andrew Lin for DREAM HOME

Best Special Effects
Gareth Edwards for MONSTERS

Best Original Soundtrack
Seppuku Paradigm, Alex & Willie Cortes for NUITS ROUGES DU BOURREAU DE JADE (RED NIGHTS)

Best Cinematography
Mika Orasmaa for RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE

Best Script
Nicolás Goldbart for FASE 7

Best Actress
Josie Ho for DREAM HOME

Best Actor
Patrick Fabian for THE LAST EXORCISM

Best Director
Jalmari Helander for RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE

Special Jury Award
WE ARE THE NIGHT by Dennis Gansel

Best Motion Picture
RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE by Jalmari Helander

OFFICIAL FANTÀSTIC COMPETITION PANORAMA

JURY
Philipp Engel, Annick Mahnert & Carlos Pumares

Best Motion Picture
TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL by Eli Craig

Best Short Film
THE FAMILIAR by Kody Zimmermann

CARNET JOVE

JURY
Gerard Alonso, Alba Carmona, Anna Gual, Marian López & Daniel Mourenza

Best Motion Picture FANTÀSTIC
RUBBER by Quentin Dupieux

Best Motion Picture MIDNIGHT X-TREME
MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD by Noboru Iguchi & Yoshihiro Nishimura & Tak Sakaguchi

NOVES VISIONS

JURY
Ferran Audi, Rafael Maluenda & Laurent Pécha

Best Motion Picture Sponsored by SEAT
SIMON WERNER A DISPARU (LIGHTS OUT) by Fabrice Gobert

Special Mention
SOUND OF NOISE by Ola Simonsson & Johannes Stjarne Nilsson for its unique blending of story, visuals and sound.
5150 RUE DES HORMES by Éric Tessier groundbreaking blend of classical cinematography and fantasy opening up new moral issues.

Non-Fiction Motion Picture Diploma
VAMPIRES by Vincent Lannoo

Discovery Motion Picture Diploma
TONY by Gerard Johnson

CASA ÀSIA

JURY
Daniel Cohen, Rubén Lardín & Joan Pons

Best Motion Picture
COLD FISH de Sion Sono

NOVA AUTORIA SGAE – FUNDACIÓ AUTOR – INSTITUT BUÑUEL

JURY
Xavier Capellas, Maria Ripoll & Albert Solé Millor

Best Director
Sílvia Subirós for LA EDAD DEL SOL, presented by l’Escola de Cinema de Barcelona (ECIB)

Best Screenplay
Jaime Serrano for LA LONA, presented by Centre d'Estudis Cinematogràfics de Catalunya (CECC)

Best Original Score
Gonçal Perales Roy for THE SMILEY, presented by l’Escola d’Animació de Catalunya-9 Zeros

ANIMA'T – Gertie Award

JURY
Daniel Cohen, Rubén Lardín & Joan Pons

Best Animated Film
JACKBOOTS ON WHITEHALL by Edward McHenry & Rory McHenry

Best Animated Short film
UNE NOUVELLE VIE! (A NEW LIFE!) by Fred Joyeux

Best Animated Feature for Kids
THE UGLY DUCKLING by Garry Bardin

Audience Award El Periódico de Catalunya

Best Motion Picture
THIRTEEN ASSASSINS by Takashi Miike

SILVER MÉLIÈS

JURY
Philipp Engel, Annick Mahnert & Carlos Pumares

Silver Méliès for Best European Motion Picture
RUBBER by Quentin Dupieux

Special Mention
RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE by JALMARI HELANDER

Silver Méliès Award for Best Europea Short Film
LES BESSONES DEL CARRER PONENT by Marc Riba & Anna Solanas

GOLDEN MÉLIÈS

Golden Méliès for Best European Motion Picture
BURIED by Rodrigo Cortés

Golden Méliès for Best European Short Film
EL ATAQUE DE LOS ROBOTS DE NEBULOSA –5 by Chema García Ibarra

CRITIC AWARDS

JURY
Carlos Losilla, Joan Millaret & Xavi Serra

Jose Luis Guarner Critic Award
UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Citizen Kane Award to an up-and-coming director
Quentin Dupieux for RUBBER

BRIGADOON

Paul Naschy JURY
Joan I. Alonso, Jorge Manrique & Dani Moreno

Best short film
ST. CHRISTOPHORUS ROADKILL by Gregor Erler

SONY competition winners

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0200

Over one hundred people participated in the SONY in SITGES competition with the WX5 camera

The winner of the SONY WX5 camera award was César Antón, and the 3 winners that won 2 tickets for the closing Festival’s closing film (Mother’s Day) and party were Ramón Molinari, Carla Xifra and Olga Geis.

In the Blogs competition, the Bloggie de SONY camera wad picked up by
Las horas perdidas
Uruloki
Aullidos

Thanks for participating!

Sunday 17th marathons

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0200

The Festival announces the marathons that will be shown the last day, sunday 17th, at the Auditori, Retiro and Prado.

AUDITORI MARATHONS, 10 h

HYBRID 3D
THE SHOCK LABYRINTH: EXTREME
AMPHIBIOUS 3D

AUDITORI MARATHONS, 16h

FASE 7
TUCKER & DEVIL VS EVIL
THE LAST EXORCISM
MONSTERS
SECUESTRADOS

RETIRO MARATHONS , 14 h

INSIDIOUS
SUPER
RED NIGHTS
DETECTIVE DEE & THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME
MOTHER’S DAY

PRADO MARATHONS, 14 h

STAKE LAND
14 BLADES
I SAW THE DEVIL
DREAM HOME
CARNE DE NEÓN

Sitges Film Festival

SITGES 2012: The End of the World

SITGES with the premiere of [­REC­]3 GÉNESIS

Angel Sala, Director of the Festival, exonerated of charges derived from the screening of 'A Serbian Film' in October 2010

2011 Awards: Red State, best motion picture

Killer Joe, SITGES 2011 surprise film

EGEDA Day

Sunday marathons

Coming soon: The Last Days

Malaga Festival Day in Sitges

Balada Triste de Trompeta, by Álex de la Iglesia, wins the Méliès d'Or

Moritz, SITGES 2011 official beer

Catalan Films & TV conferences

Hiroshi Ishiguro masterclass

CANAL + Cine Basura meeting

"Canal 3XL=Sitges 365 days a year" marathon: Detention + The Incident + Grave Encounters

Experts on videogames and VOD meet today at the Sitges Festival

An American werewolf in Sitges

The Festival closer to the citizens of Sitges

Nova Autoria awards

The WEB APP is now available

SITGES 2011 and CosmoCaixa present Hiroshi Ishiguro

Sitges Fòrum: Sala Tramuntana and Espai FNAC

Nova Autoria. With new talents

BRIGADOON 2011. Luigi Cozzi, Jean Rollin and José María Oliveira

Jack Daniel's SITGES Zombie Walk 2011 will be held on October 14th

The eagerly-awaited prequel of The Thing to close the Festival

Francis Ford Coppola, Kevin Smith and the duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury will complete the Official Fantàstic Selection

Bryan Singer, SITGES 2011 Grand Honorary Award

Discover this year's commercial spot

Casa Asia: special attention to oriental cinema

Von Trier's 'Melancholia' and Soderbergh's 'Contagion' head a spectacular OF Panorama Selection

Noves Visions 2011: an exquisite selection

SITGES invites you to enjoy the long-awaited film SUPER 8

SITGES in FIB Cortos with The Perfect Host

SITGES 2011, an edition inspired by artificial intelligence

Eva, by Kike Maíllo, will be opening the Festival's 44th edition

Program preview: long-awaited Catalan and Spanish film productions and outstanding international films

Collaborations: Filmotech.com, Catalan Films & TV and Carnet Jove Jury

VII Carnet Jove Jury - SITGES 2011

Tickets and Programme - Casa Asia Film Week

Neither Dead or Buried - Ficomic 2011

7th Base Film Festival

Press Note regarding charges against Ángel Sala, Festival Director, for the screening of A Serbian Film in 2010

Vertice and Sitges invite you to the SECUESTRADOS preview in Madrid

The great Ingrid Pitt, queen of the undead, has left us

'Inventiveness and technique in fantastic cinema' conference, by Ángel Sala

Fandom Sitges 2010 Winners

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, by Jalmari Helander, wins the Best Motion Picture

SONY competition winners

Sunday 17th marathons

SITGES with the premiere of [REC]3 GÉNESIS