Morelia International Film Fest

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Check out the winners of the 9th FICM here

Past Editions

Special Guests 2011

Béla Tarr

The Camera is a Machine

I have been influenced by Béla Tarr's films and, after reviewing the last three works, Damnation, Sátántangó, and Werckmeister Harmonies, I find myself attempting to rethink film grammar and the effect industry has had on it. This is the way I see it. Cinema started as simple single-shot full-length proscenium compositions resembling theater, the only thing that it could find to reference to commercialize itself. By the next twenty years there was a new vocabulary. The close up, montage, and parallel storytelling fragmented the continuity of the previous proscenium-encased static-frame full-figure images. Separate fragments were now placed together to form meaning, the director could play with time and cinematic space. It was exciting. Was this an absolute inevitable direction or just one road cinema chose to take?
I believe these cinematic innovations complimented industry and created an Industrial Vocabulary. The director could tell you how to think about scenes by the way he played with separate pieces. He could control his characters, he could control time and story, and he could control you. Left behind were the proscenium and the static take, which were old-fashioned.

Luis Valdez: Founding the Chicano Nation From "Actos" to Activism

The U.S.-Mexico border was first crossed on screen in Wirejumper! (¡Alambrista! ,1977). Although written and directed by Robert M. Young, an Anglo filmmaker, the movie has an "honorary" place in Chicano cinema because it was the first to address the drama of undocumented Mexican farm workers in California. In real life, Luis Valdez had been using art to better the conditions of the farmers whose plight Wirejumper! could only hint at. In 1965, to boost the morale of César Chávez's striking farmers in Delano, Valdez had started an itinerant theater company called "Teatro Campesino," in which a troupe would travel around the fields and stage small pieces to create public awareness of the farm workers' cause. These were one-act plays, called "Actos," and they functioned both as performances and as acts of resistance and social mobilization.

German Cinema During the "Years of Lead"

At the end of the sixties, Volker Schlöndorff emerged as a new critical voice that reflected the cultural climate of the post-war period. With a singular perceptivity, his films questioned the totalitarian mentality and its disastrous consequences, as well as the authoritarian attitudes that prevailed in the relentless struggle against leftist extremism during the late seventies.

His first work is linked to two key movements in European cinema: the rise of the French New Wave, and the so-called New German Cinema, both of which constituted definitive departures from the narrow constraints of the dominant aesthetic at the time.

Gael García Bernal was FICM's honored guest in 2007, when he presented his directorial debut film Déficit. In 2005, he and Mexican actor Diego Luna founded the Ambulante film festival, whose call for entries coincides with the Morelia International Film Festival.

Jean-Christophe Berjon, former delegate of the Cannes Festival Critics' Week, described García in 2007 as an "eclectic" actor: "Gael García Bernal captivated us in the successful film Amores Perros (Love's a Bitch)," Berjon said. "Then he became an international star with Walter Salles' Motorcycle Diaries, Pedro Almodóvar's Bad Education and then with Babel alongside Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett."

Michel Gondry entered the artistic world with a post-rock band called Oui, Oui. Gondry illustrated the group's song with his singular aesthetic, full of bold colors, and demonstrating his natural technical skills. Later on, he became a renowned videographer. In this area, he worked with the likes of Chris Cunningham and Spike Jonze, as well as with musical talent, including The White Stripes, Massive Attack, Björk and Draft Punk. The last two launched him to fame with "Around the World." He has also made successful spots for companies like Air France, Gap and Smirnoff.

Marisa Paredes began studying music and drama when she was 14 years old. She had her theatrical debut under the direction of José Osuna and in 1960, when she was 14, she had a part in José María Forqué's television crime/drama 091, Police Speaking (091, Policía al habla).

She started working in cinema during the 1960s in films like Gritos en la noche (1962) by Jesús Franco, El mundo sigue (1965) by Fernando Fernán Gómez and Las salvajes en Puente San Gil (1966) by Antoni Ribas.