BAFICI | Wander Argentina

Porteño Corner: Javier Porta Fouz, Director of BAFICI

Javier Porta Fouz
Director, Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Film
Age: 42
Lives: San Cristobal

• How did you start working with the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Film (known by its acronym, BAFICI)?

I started working in the BAFICI in its third edition, when Quintín became the director. I worked on the catalog for fourteen years. I also worked with books, newspapers and the advertising for the movie theaters. I also worked in programming for ten years and I worked on movie selection. Now I’m the artistic director.

• How would you describe your role as artistic director?

You have to pay more attention to a general view of the festival and work with very different parts, like the press, a lot of work with the programmers (who select and schedule the movies), and just paying attention to the general design. You have to think about how you want the next edition of the festival to look.

• What was your favorite part this year? Is it your first year as artistic director?

Yes, it’s my first year as director. When we confirmed the participation of Peter Bogdanovich (as a guest) it was a very important moment because he is a very important director for the history of cinema, and he has made movies that I value a lot. ‘The Last Picture Show’ or ‘Texasville’ are fundamental for anyone who is interested in cinema. They are very important movies.

• And what is the part that you liked the least?

(laughs) I was going to say doing interviews, but that’s not true. No, to be honest I’m enjoying every minute of it. It’s one of those things that when you’re a child you don’t even know what a film festival is, but once you know what it is any cinephile would love to direct one. And to be able to direct a festival in your own city, it’s incredible.

• Were there any surprises, or things that were harder than you thought they would be?

There were a few things to do with production and management that I paid less attention to before (I became director). And the difficulty of putting together an event, that surprised me. Everything that goes into putting together a press conference, there’s a lot of people involved. Apart from that, I was very involved in the negotiations for the films with Paloma Dema, the BAFICI coordinator, and that was actually a very fluid process, I was surprised by how smooth it was.

• Is there anything you tried to do differently this year compared to past years?

Yes. We tried to segment the festival as much as possible, to create something that was less of a panorama and more divided into thematic sections, with distinct focuses. And then in each section there were outstanding films with more openings, and more possibilities to be selected for the competition. We tried to have more ‘focus.’

• You also brought the BAFICI to new neighborhoods this year, neighborhoods where films from the festival weren’t shown previously?

The idea with the neighborhoods is to bring the festival to many more neighborhoods than before. And this means that the presence of the festival is much more spread out, and people are closer. The cultural policy is to offer diversity and access.

• Is there anything particular that you look for in a movie when you select a film for the festival?

I look for something surprising, with a very personal vision. Festivals tend to have pre-established formulas for films, and we tried to stay away from that. We tried to include things that were surprising, fresh, and genuinely personal.

Where do you get the movies you are showing? Do you travel to other festivals to find them, or do people send them to you?

I travel a lot, and people send many in as well. So it is a mix.

• Do you go to many other festivals then?

I have another job as a curator for a video platform, and I travel a lot for them as well. I went to the Toronto (International Film Festival). I went to Lima (Film Festival). I went to Berlin.

• Do you have a favorite film festival other than the Bafici?

The Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).

• Do you try to find a balance between South American movies and movies from the rest of the world? Or do you strive to have a bit of everything?

We try to be as inclusive as possible, and show films from different countries. But Latin America is an important focus, because we know that the festival is important to many Latin Americans. So to us it is important that Latin America have a strong presence (in the BAFICI).

• Do you have a favorite movie of those showing at the BAFICI?

Of the films that are in the festival, yes I have many favorites: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and the films of Peter Bogdanovich. I’m only going to say older films, because I don’t want to put any of the newer films above the others. But yes, I love many of the films showing in the festival. And there are many that I would love to see again if I didn’t have to work.

• Are you originally from Buenos Aires?

No. I am from Marcos Paz in the Province of Buenos Aires.

• How did you first get interested in cinema?

Since I was a kid I’ve loved going to the movies.

•You lived next to a movie theater right?

Yes, I’ve lived next to two movie theaters in Buenos Aires. One was the Gaumont , which is now going to host the BAFICI opening ceremony. So I’m very happy about that.

• When you aren’t working on the BAFICI, what do you do?

I work for Qubit, a video platform. I’m a content curator for them, and I also write film reviews for La Nación (newspaper).

• If you could do anything, what would your next professional project be?

I don’t know. Right now the BAFICI is enough for me. After that, I still don’t know. I don’t want to make plans for the future right now.

-interview: Sam Harrison

2012 Buenos Aires International Indie Film Festival

Tickets are on sale for the 2012 Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival, taking place from the 11th until the 22th of April.

Known by its Spanish acronym, BAFICI, this is the yearly festival’s 14th edition. Buenos Aires’ largest festival will be bigger than ever with a total of 449 films screening in 11 locations throughout the city.

The Films

The festival’s opening film is El Último Elvis (The Last Elvis), which premiered at Sundance earlier this year. It’s the directorial debut of Aramando Bó III, co-writer of 2010’s Biutiful and the grandson of the legendary Argentine director of the same name. The film is about a Buenos Aires-based Elvis tribute artist who is forced to reassess his iconic obsession.

Among the feature length films that will have their worldwide debut at the festival is comedy, Aqui estoy, aqui no (Here I am, Here I’m not) by Chilean Elisa Eliash.

The International Sign for Choking, by US director Zach Weintraub takes a look at Argentine idiosyncrasies through the lens of a North American. It follows a dejected college grad who decides to go to Buenos Aires to teach English and stalk an Argentine sweetheart.

La casa Emak bakia (The Search for Emak Bakia) by Spanish director, Oskar Alegría, will also debut at this year’s BAFICI. The documentary follows the director as he searches for a house on the Basque coastline where avant-garde photographer Man Ray made a 1926 movie called Emak Bakia.

Among the 59 feature-length Argentine films at this year’s BAFICI, three will compete in the prestigious International Competition.

La Araña Vampiro (The Vampire Spider) is a comedy by Gabriel Medina that follows a 20 year-old protagonist who suffers from panic attacks and travels to Cordoba with his father to seek tranquility.

Germania, the debut film by Maximiliano Schonfeld is about the difficulties a German family faces as they abandon their farm in the Argentine province of Entre Ríos.

Los salvajes (The Wild Ones) by young director, Alejandro Fadel tracks the survival of five young people who escape from a juvenile facility in rural Argentina.

Other films in the international competition include Snowtown, Justin Kurzel’s film based on the real-life story of the Australian murders. Released in the U.S. as ‘The Snowtown Murders,’ it won a special mention at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

’The Woman in the Septic Tank,’ a satire by Marlon N. Rivera, was the Philippine’s official 2012 entry to the Best Foreign Language category at the Academy awards.

Celine Sciamma’s ‘Tomboy,’ is an intimate French film about a girl who refuses to conform to gender roles.

BAFICI 2012 Themes — Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll

New this year are the edition of Buenos Aires’ San Martín Cultural Center and the Galileo Planetarium as screening venues. The planetarium will screen films spanning its 360º dome, creating a concert-like venue. Pink Floyd-The Wall and U2, a film about the band’s ‘360 tour,’ will both be shown under the theme ‘Adolescence,’ one of nine thematic categories highlighted at this year’s festival.

Along with the rock and roll, other themes this year are ‘The Law of Desire,’ –code for sex — and ‘Trance,’ which looks at the use of drugs in film.

Another focus this year is the work of directors who are not well known in Argentina, such as Taiwanese director, Te-Sheng Wei and British filmmaker, Grant Gee, mostly known for his music videos of groups such as Radiohead and Joy Division.

Almost the entire body of ‘anti-avant-guard’ work of the elusive Brazilian director, Carlos Prates’s will screen at this year’s BAFICI as well.

Free films will be shown this year in Parque Centenario’s Amphitheater including Let the Right One In, by Swede, Tomas Alfredson; Papá, soy una zombie (Dad, I’m a Zombie) an animated film from Spain; and ‘There are No Innocent Bystanders,’ a music documentary about the popular UK band, The Libertines.

As part of a tribute to classic independent filmmakers, Armando Bo III’s grandfather’s sought-after 1960 film, India will also be shown. This copy of the collector’s film was literally dug up from a museum closet and revamped by the Buenos Aires Culture Department.

Georges Méliès, Viaje a la luna (Trip to the Moon) is also now digitally remastered and in full color. It includes a soundtrack by the French duo, Air.

Among hundreds of lesser-known films debuting is El Gran Río, which documents the life of David Dodas Boungora, an African refugee who landed in Argentina from a cargo boat eight years ago.

The festival’s comes to a close with Ursula Meier’s L’enfant d’en haut, a sibling drama set in a Swiss ski resort. Known elsewhere by its English title, ‘Sister,’ the film won the Silver Bear at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

Tickets, Times and Trailers

This year ticket prices rose three pesos, to $AR15 for the general public and AR$13 for students and seniors.

To purchase advance tickets and see a list of all the films and their plot summaries, see the Festivales de Buenos Aires website. It is recommended to purchase tickets as soon as possible, as popular films tend to sell out quickly.

Trailer for Masterplan by filmmaking brothers, Diego and Pablo Levy. To see this and other trailers visit the Festival of Buenos Aires youtube page.

13th Buenos Aires International Indie Film Festival

The 2011 Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival will screen 426 films from April 6 through April 17 in eleven locations through the city.

The festival’s 13th edition includes 42 full-length Argentine films and 48 shorts. Two nights will be dedicated to Argentine film with a premiere of Los Marzianos, a new comedy by popular director Ana Katz. Also to be screened is the well-received 2005 film about internet dating, Medianeras by Gustavo Taretto.

Eleven films are competing in the Argentine Feature Film competition including Hermes Paralluelo’s debut film, Yatatso, about a family of cartoneros (garbage recyclers) in Cordoba.

Another highly anticipated film is the Danish documentary ‘Football is God,’ which follows three fanatics of Argentina’s beloved soccer team, the Boca Juniors.

The Black Power Mixed Tapes is a montage of Swedish archival TV footage documenting the U.S. civil rights struggle, featuring Martin Luther King Jr., Eldridge Cleaver and Angela Davis. The film is set to a score by Questlove from the hip hop band, The Roots.

Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, the 1948 film depicting the famous courtroom drama will show at Fundación Proa, a new venue added to festival this year.

There are three offerings by Jacques Doillon; Ponette, Le Petit Criminal and 2010’s Le marriage a trois. Swiss director, Daniel Schmid also has a heavy presence with a total of seven films in the festival. Canadian director and juror at this year’s festival, Gary Burns, known for his comedic musings on contemporary life in Calgary, has a total of six films in the festival.

Big names this year include Martin Scorsese with his documentary, A Letter to Elia, about director, Elia Kazan, maker of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Separado! is billed as a ‘psychedelic western musical’ that follows Super Furry Animal’s singer, Gruff Rhys’s as he travels from Wales to the Patagonia pampa in search of long-lost family members. From Ireland comes some existentialist animation by 2009 Golden Bear winner, David O´Reilly.

New this year are a few 3D projections including Werner Herzog’s, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. The Modern Classics segment will include 1963’s Il gattopardo (The Leopard) and a restored version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, accompanied with live music by a Marcelo Katz jazz trio.

Among the special events are talks with Chilean documentarist Patricio Guzmán, prolific French director Jacques Doillon and Canadian director Gary Burns. A selection of free outdoor films will be shown in two locations, 3100 Pasaje Carlos Gardel, next to Abasto shopping and in Plaza San Martín de Tours, at Eduardo Schiaffino and Posada Streets in Recoleta.

This year’s closing film is Nader and Simin, a Separation (2011), by Irani director, Asghar Farhadi. The film is this year’s winner of the Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear award.

See the Festivals of Buenos Aires youtube page to see more trailers.

BAFICI: Buenos Aires’ Indie Film Festival

April in Buenos Aires means one thing for film lovers — it’s film festival time. The Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Film is a 12-day movie extravaganza showing some of the world’s best independent cinema in theaters across the city.

Known by its Spanish acronym, BAFICI, the festival is now its 21st year.

In 1998 the Buenos Aires Culture Department began hosting this yearly festival to showcase the planet’s most provocative, bizarre and touching independent films of every genre. Today, BAFICI is one of the world’s largest independent film festivals with hundreds of film screenings seen by nearly 300,000 filmgoers.

The festival always has a heavy representation of local productions and has served as an excellent promotion vehicle for independent Argentine films. Argentina is a leader in South American cinema alongside Mexico, Brazil and Cuba. Since the emergence of the 1990’s ‘new cinema’ movement, the national film industry has been on an upswing.

The 2009’s Academy Award winner, ‘The Secret in their Eyes’ was Argentina’s greatest breakout on the world stage in this generation, increasing an interest in Argentine cinema abroad. The 20th (2018) edition of the festival also featured the debut hit, ‘El Silencio es un Cuerpo Que Cae‘ (Silence is a Falling Body), which won the Netflix Award for Best First Work.

Changes to 2019’s BAFICI

This year’s BAFICI has seen many adjustments, as the previous principal festival location has been moved from the more central Village Recoleta out to the Multiplex in Belgrano. Village Caballito, El Centro Cultural San Martín and El Museo de Bellas Artes, are not participating in BAFICI this year, although there will be one film shown at the Museum of Modern Art in San Telmo.

While the festival was extended one day, from eleven days to twelve days, and promotes 37 participating locations around the city, including underprivileged neighborhoods such as the Villa 31 slum, local film critics such as Diego Batlle are pointing out that there is actually a reduction in the number of actual theaters — from 20 in 2018, to 12 this year.

The city is highlighting the move from traditional theaters into the street as a good thing, saying in their press release, “With less enclosed theaters and more contact with the street, the neighborhood and the neighbors, BAFICI offers the experience of watching a variety of films with each other and in the community, presenting a diverse national and international program.”

Festival organizer Javier Porta Fouz, is also being criticized because it is possible there will be no big-name guests this year. In previous editions, there have been appearances and participation by famous directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Morrisey, and John Waters.

American filmmaker, Brian de Palma was suppose to be the featured guest this year, but this still hasn’t been confirmed within in one week of the beginning of the festival.

This year’s BAFICI will open with the magical surrealist film ‘Claudia,’ by Sebastián de Caro at the outdoor Centenario Park Amphitheater. The film, shot almost entirely in a mansion in the northern suburb of Vincente Lopez, is about a workaholic wedding planner who runs into a comedy of errors on the job.

Among the international films that will be featured this year are: ‘God of the Piano,’ by Itay Tal (Israel);
‘Noemi Gold,’ by Dan Rubinstein (Argentina – USA – Mexico); ‘L’homme fidèle,’ by Louis Garrel (France); ‘Music and Apocalypse,’ by Max Linz (Germany); ‘We Are Little Zombies,’ by Makoto Nagahisa (Japan); and ‘The Unicorn,’ by Isabelle Dupuis and Tim Geraghty (USA). This year’s program also includes films by Werner Herzog, Lars Van Trier, and Paolo Sorrentino.

BAFICI’s 2019 closing film is, ‘Santiago, Italia,’ a documentary by Nanni Moretti about the role the Italian embassy in Chile played to help extradite citizens who opposed the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

BAFICI Categories and Awards

WA-BAFICI-cover2011 — Still from the film, Hoy no tuve Miedo (Today I Didn’t Fear)

For those who don’t speak Spanish, the film festival offers an opportunity to see independent Latin American films in the theater with English subtitles. Non-English films are subtitled in Spanish, and in recent years all but the most obscure films in languages other than Spanish also feature English subtitles.

The festival provides the chance to talk with producers, directors and actors about their films, especially in questions and answer sessions that take place after selected screenings.

Awards are handed out in the following categories: Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor and Best Script. The Argentine feature film competition and short film competition have separate awards for the first two categories. Filmgoers are invited to vote on films they see for the People Choice Award. Other awards include I.Sat’s ‘Film of The Future’ award, Best Children’s Film and a UNICEF human rights award.

Thematic categories include Panorama, Trajectories, The Land Trembles, Places, People and Personalities, Music, Nocturnal, Modern Classics and Dialogues. Films are for those 18 and over, but kids aren’t excluded — since 2009 the BAFICITI category of the festival offers film for children.

Many of the city’s film students and other cinephiles dedicate their lives to seeing as many films as possible during BAFICI. You’ll see them hanging around the theater all day with short breaks to visit local eateries and cafés, to hobnob with festival participants and other film-goers.

No matter how dedicated, movie-goers can’t see it all, so it pays to plan well. If seeing multiple films in one day, check the length of the films and make sure the theaters are close enough to one another to arrive in time.

Selecting Films at the Festival

In the last five years BAFICI has seen a huge increase in participation. Tickets for the official selections sell out quick. Your best bet is to buy tickets in advance online.

Serious filmgoers can purchase the official catalog for in-depth descriptions of the films and other relevant information. You can check the schedule of films online or pick up a free basic program at the Multiplex of Belgrano.

Other events include free educational workshops by Buenos Aires Lab (BAL) and INCAA (National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts), concerts, book presentations and talks with film directors.

Purchasing Tickets to the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival

Check the day by day list of films on BAFICI’s official webpage. To buy tickets online, open an account with Tu Entrada and have a major credit card on hand for purchase. They charge a small fee to buy online.

A handful of tickets are reserved for the day of the show, to be purchased at the theater. Your best bet if buying in person is to get to the theater box office bright and early. Tickets can also be purchased at the Belgrano Multiplex, everyday from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m.

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Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente 2019

Apr 3 – Apr 14 2019
• Cost: AR$70/ AR$50 (students and seniors with I.D.) per film

Principal theaters

Multiplex Belgrano
Vuelta de Obligado 2199
Belgrano

Alianza Francesa
Av. Córdoba 946

Anfiteatro del Parque Centenario (outdoor)
Av. Ángel Gallardo y Leopoldo Marecha

Espacio INCAA Gaumont
Rividavia 1635

Usina del Arte
A. Caffarena 1 & Don Pedro de Mendoza

~~Teatro Colón~~
~~Cerrito 628~~

~~Malba Cine~~
~~Av. Figueroa Alcorta 3415~~

~~Fundación Proa~~
~~Av. Pedro de Mendoza 1929~~

BAFICI Tips:

• Plan well and buy online to get tickets to the films you want to see
• If you buy online, don’t forget your I.D. when you go to pick up your tickets
• Don’t show up late for screenings: despite the fact that this is Argentina, where lateness is not too taboo, latecomers are turned away
• Snacks, sodas and beer are sold at most of the theaters. Costs and calories can add up, so consider packing snacks for all-day movie going

→ Read an interview with the director of BAFICI

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