Why is film that wins at festivals not seen in our theaters? Director of the Seventh Film Week of La Ulima responds

There are seven days to see two dozen international films and as many national ones competing, as equals, shorts and feature films. On the virtual platform of the Seventh Film Week of the University of Lima what is exhibited on the commercial billboard, unfortunately we will never be able to see. So put the field in the microwave, and between November 12-20, prepare your own continued show with a free offer of winning tapes in the most recent editions of the most prestigious festivals. Tapes as auspicious as “The wheel of fortune and fantasy”, delicate, poetic, subtle and magical film by the Japanese Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, winner of the last Berlinale.

“It is about making a sample of the best current cinema, making it reach all of Peru for free, thanks to the conditions allowed by virtuality,” says Ricardo Bedoya, director of the festival, who repeats its virtual condition as still dictated by pandemic protocols . We talked with the renowned critic about the content of the seventh edition of the Week, but we began the interview by reviewing the process in which Peruvians have returned to movie theaters, a return in which we have encountered unpleasant surprises.

Little by little, gradually, we reconnect with reality in person. And one of these connections is to regain the habit of watching movies. Unfortunately, on our return we found an abuse of films dubbed into Spanish, as well as a very limited offer on the billboard and the lack of information from the theaters themselves. How do you see this process back to the cinema?

I think this period is the dress rehearsal for something that was coming. In the first place, the rise of platforms that offer an undifferentiated offer, an ocean where you don’t know what you are going to find. Second, distribution companies have long since eliminated advertising in traditional media, since they consider that the networks fulfill that function, something functional to what they are looking for: world premieres of films that already come with a marketing machinery created . And we also have the issue of dubbed films, an imposition of the distribution companies that has fallen suddenly. More and more movie theaters are offering dubbed movies, which is mutilation. Dubbing not only involves changing the voice of the actors to make them speak a different language, but it also alters passages of the entire soundtrack. That is very important in the expressiveness of a movie! An actor works with his voice and his body. In addition, there is a class criterion in the distribution of the dubbing. You can watch subtitled films only in certain cinemas in Lima, in Miraflores, San Isidro or San Borja. But in the rest of Peru, everything is doubled. It is class discrimination.

Why do you think it is a dress rehearsal?

Because what is coming is a world of increasingly more and more specialized platforms. Where the mid-profile films are going to go, about the conflicts of ordinary people. The rooms are going to be reserved for the big shows. Only eventually a movie with many awards will be able to enter the chain commercial circuit. I just read, for example, that Netflix has bought Almodóvar’s latest movie, “Parallel Mothers” for Latin America. That gives you an idea of ​​how the thing is coming.

Is it a global phenomenon or is it especially worse in Peru?

It is global, but each country has different characteristics. In those that have art and rehearsal rooms, redoubts of alternative rooms, you can show films that do not arrive here. Here, if you want to go to the movies, you can only go to one chain. And chains are built to offer more of the same. I think that, now, moviegoers have to go looking, like hunters, on platforms that have a profile made by curators.

Is it a reality that must be assumed with resignation?

With resignation no, but let’s say you have to be realistic. Many formulas have been discussed, but many of them collide with liberal dogma.

The bet on superheroes to attract viewers to theaters is obvious. But how do you explain the multiplication of the supply of horror films? Don’t we already have enough scares with the pandemic?

Horror is a very popular genre almost everywhere in the world. Finally, they are mostly low-budget films, which are produced a lot. Increasingly there is a terror linked to traditions, national or regional legends. In Peru we have our regional cinema, but you also see what is produced in Asian countries, such as Thailand or Korea, which acclimate the classic characters of terror to their reality. Then, according to the sociologists of cinema, horror finds its peaks in precisely moments of crisis. The monsters of the Universal were born in the middle of the Great Depression; in the 1970s all the catastrophe movies appeared after the oil crisis. They are films that, to a large extent, have a reactive function, “reactionary” if you want. After all the hippie vibes, these movies appear that “punish” teenagers for going to the country to smoke weed, a kind of moral revenge after Viet-Nam. Moments of crisis are always conducive to terror, because in them you confront your own fears, but knowing that later you will find the exit door.

It is also a bet basically aimed at young audiences …

There is a trend of corporal terror, Cronenberg’s cinema for example, which is born out of lack of control, out of the dysfunction of your own organism. There is also a whole wave of fantastic horror films in which your body is the victim of your own fears, in which you begin to devour or mutate, for example, like the latest film by Julia Ducournau, the winner of the Cannes festival, “Titanium”, which talks about the body and its relationship with machines. There are many varieties but, indeed, it is a genre that young people are very excited about

THE SEVENTH WEEK WILL BE VIRTUAL

A festival like the Universidad de Lima Film Week is precisely a way of facing the crisis in local exhibition without resignation. There are no superheroes or special effects shows at this festival. And while Bedoya clarifies that he has absolutely no prejudice against any type of cinema, the one offered in this seventh edition has to do with people and their daily dramas in recognizable settings. “It depends on the harvest of the year,” says the festival director. “The most jubilant or affirmative films are not intended to participate in festivals, but to be screened in theaters,” he explains.

Two years away, can you see how the pandemic has influenced the most recent productions?

Maybe not very sharp, but there are already movies in which the pandemic is very present, even without saying it. It is enough to appreciate the images and the drama behind, how you work with the actors and with the spaces. They are rather confined films, where the conflict is based on the links between the characters. Yes, I think there is an influence from the pandemic. Then there will be films on the subject itself, as well as dystopian fantasies about the virus, as there are already about the climate and disasters due to global warming.

Finally, the festival also offers a good number of lectures and round tables. What is the urgent question to ask local filmmakers?

We have united the filmmakers according to the common issues that films can have: their treatment, the cinema they experience, the one that goes beyond the narrative standards, the cinema of memory, among others. The question in Peruvian cinema is, first of all, how do you make films, how do you get the resources, how do you conceive the project, what do you expect from your environment and the current situation. And how to reach people. Those are, now, the fundamental questions.

The festival in brief

A total of 39 films, 19 Peruvian and 20 international, are those offered this year by the Seventh Film Week of the University of Lima to its audience who, for the second consecutive year, will be able to enjoy good cinema from the comfort of their home or mobile devices.

Winning feature films at the Berlin, Toronto, Sundance, Reykjavik and Buenos Aires Film Festival are part of the festival’s international billboard, made up of 20 films. Among them are “The Roulette of Fortune and Fantasy”, winner of the Silver Bear-Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Festival 2021 or “Yuni”, winner of the Platform prize at the Toronto Festival 2021.

Other films that will also be liked by moviegoers are: Luzzu, special jury award at the Sundance Festival 2021, and the Greek proposal: Luna, award at the Reykjavik Festival. Likewise, film lovers will be able to appreciate the Argentine film Implosión, this year’s winner of the Argentine Competition Grand Prize at the 2021 Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival.

Works by filmmakers from Áncash, Arequipa, San Martín, Loreto, La Libertad, Junín and Lima were selected to participate in the Peruvian Film Contest, which this year gives the winner a prize of 9,000 soles and a special prize of 4,000 soles.

The inscription

The public will be able to access all these films for free, upon registration. It is enough to register on the page www.semanadelcine.com and reserve your virtual seat in the movie or films that are to your liking.