UC3M launches the film project ‘¿A quién le importa?’ (‘Who cares?’)
4/23/24
The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), in collaboration with Filmoteca Española (The Spanish Film Archive), the (Spanish) Film Academy and the city councils of Getafe and Leganés, is launching the film project A quién le importa (Who cares)? (AQLI, in its Spanish acronym). This initiative aims to connect today's audiences with the cinema of past decades, both recognised classics and works that did not have adequate visibility.
UC3M, as the driving force behind the project, is committed to an approach to film heritage from the perspective of the generation that is currently in university classrooms or has just left them. For this reason, this edition has been curated by the Mediadistancia group, which has been in charge of programming to show the cinema of the past from the present perspective.
The programme began on the 17th of April at the Doré cinema and will be spread over the next few months at different venues and in different formats. It will be carried out through a series of activities (restored film screenings, meetings and round tables) divided into six sections.
The first section is called Importando archivo (Importing archives) and will be held between the 22nd and the 29th of April at the Getafe and Madrid-Puerta de Toledo campuses. It consists of talks and round tables in which archive and restoration professionals will share their experiences. Among them is Nicole Fernández Ferrer, president of the historical feminist video archive Simone de Beauvoir Audiovisual Centre (Paris), who will show some materials to illustrate the centre's restoration work.
This section started yesterday, the 22nd of April, with a round table of young film restoration professionals, with the participation of Enrique Fibla-Gutiérrez (UAB), Patricia Uceda (The Spanish Film Archive) and Andrea Sánchez Lañez (EQZE).
On the 25th of April, members of the La Digitalizadora de la Memoria Colectiva (The Collective Memory Digitiser) platform, dedicated to the conservation and dissemination of the audiovisual memory of social movements, will give a talk on their processes and approach to the maintenance and conservation of the collective heritage of home cinema.
The second section is Cine (en) vivo (Live Cinema), which begins on Saturday the 27th of April in the Leganés campus Auditorium with a performance by the UC3M Orchestra. The orchestra will perform the adaptation of the lyrical farce La Revoltosa, which the film director Florián Rey made into a film with the same title in 1924. The film, although not preserved in its entirety, has recently been restored and digitised in 4K by The Spanish Film Archive.
On the 9th of May, the musician and producer Raül Refree will do a live performance of the soundtrack he composed for the Spanish film classic La aldea maldita (The Cursed Village) (Florián Rey, 1930). His performance will be accompanied by percussionist Nuria Andorrà.
The third section is called Siempre importaron (They Always Mattered) and will take place during the month of May at the UC3M Auditorium. It will screen a series of restorations of titles such as In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000) and Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997). They will be presented by leading figures in contemporary culture and social media.
AQLI? will feature an annual series of restored films selected by an important film personality. This section is called Las que importan a... (Those that matter to...) and, in this first edition, the director Fernando Trueba will be in charge of selecting a series of favourite titles that have been recently restored. They can be seen in the (Spanish) Film Academy room from the 23rd of May.
The fifth section, called Las afueras (The Outskirts), will be hosted in the Doré cinema, home of the The Spanish Film Archive. This space will show restored films that revolve around 'outside the norm' experiences, taking an X-ray of what have been considered (legal, ethical, sexual and racial) dissidences throughout history. The first of these screenings, Smithereens (Susan Seidelman, 1982), took place on the 17th of April on the occasion of the presentation of Cookie Muller's memoirs, with the participation of the screenwriter Valeria Vegas. The rest of the sessions in the series, including the premiere of the new director's cut of Blackhat (Michael Mann, 2015), the 4K restoration of Maldita Generación (The Doom Generation) (Gregg Araki, 1995) and the restoration of the Taiwanese classic Mahjong (Edward Yang, 1996), will be held starting from June in the Doré cinema's summer room.
The last section is called ¡Están vivas! (They are alive!) and will consist of a series of horror films from the eighties that will be hosted by the Getafe Market Area in July.
