Artigo convidado para o Split Screen nomeado para os TCN Blog Awards

 Escrevi em português sobre a minha experiência no 61º Festival Internacional de Cinema de San Sebastián, para o blog Split Screen, e ontem recebi a notícia de que eu e o Split Screen fomos nomeados para Melhor Reportagem nos Take/Cinema Notebook Blog Awards 2013 (o A Gente Não Vê esteve nas nomeações em 2010, como Melhor Novo Blog). O Split Screen é um sítio incrível, coordenado pelo Tiago Ramos, que coleccionou nomeações para Blogger do Ano, Melhor Artigo de Cinema (sobre as indústrias de cinema portuguesa e b
rasileira, a partir do filme O Som ao Redor), Melhor Crítica de TV (Rectify - Temporada 1), Melhor Blog Colectivo e Melhor Reportagem (Fantasporto 2013).



I wrote in Portuguese about my experience at the 61st San Sebastián International Film Festival, on the blog Split Screen, and yesterday received the news me and Split Screen were nominated for Best Coverage on the 2013 Take/Cinema Notebook Blog Awards (A Gente Não Vê was nominated in 2010, for Best New Blog). Split Screen is an amazing place, coordinated by Tiago Ramos, who collected nominations for Blogger of the Year, Best Film Article (writing about the Portuguese and Brazilian film industries, inspired by the movie Neighboring Sounds), Best TV Review (Rectify - Season 1), Best Collective Blog and also Best Coverage (Fantasporto 2013).

Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival is even stronger (yap) in 2013

If I could make it to all the sessions, I could cut my most-anticipated-2013-films list by a chunky half or something like that. Once again, the festival is amazingly eclectic, bringing acclaimed authors and creators from arts other than the seventh (literature, music, painting, dancing, even drifting into television). Please, check out the guests because I wouldn't have room to take them all into fair account.

 My personal highlights:

Everything by Wong Kar-Wai and James Gray, including their latests The Grandmaster and The Immigrant, respectively (the directors will be in Lisbon for masterclasses);

Inside Llewyn Davis, written and directed by the Coen brothers, my most awaited film of the year;

Gloria, written by Sebastián Lelio and Gonzalo Maza and directed by Lelio, starring Silver Bear winner Paulina Garcia, one of the beautiful films I saw in San Sebastián;

The Past, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, the author of one of the most surprising and brilliant films of 2011, A Separation (nominated for Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and winner of Best Foreign Film), starring The Artist star Bérénice Bejo, Iran's pick for the foreign Oscar race;

Blue is the Warmest Color, written and directed by Ghalia Lacroix and Abdellatif Kechiche (based on a comic by Julie Maroh), directed by Kechiche, the three-hour-long epic about teenage lesbian love who won the Golden Palm and has been causing much controversy in the media lately;

Fruitvale Station, written and directed by Ryan Coogler, the most adored Sundance-flick of the year (a little bit like Beasts of the Southern Wild last year);

A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, written and directed by frequent Wes Anderson collaborator and son of King Francis Ford, Roman Coppola;

Child's Pose, written by Razvan Radulescu and Calin Peter, directed by Peter, hopefully another Romenian pearl, who nabbed the Golden Bear this year;

Venus in Fur, written by David Ives (based on his play) and Roman Polanski, directed by Polanski, two years after LEFF brought Carnage, one of the best movies of 2011;

Like Father, Like son, written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, film sensation in Cannes and winner of the Audience Award in Sab Sebastián (unfortunately I couldn't see it);

Short Term 12, written and directed by Destin Creton, a drama about a foster home by a guy who worked in one for a couple of years, has been gathering big award buzz;

Only Lovers Left Alive, written and directed by Jim Jarmush, and who doesn't want to see a vampire movie that's not about teenagers and is directed by the owner of the arthouse club and the MoMA star Tilda Swinton?

A Gente Não Vê was at the 61st San Sebastián Film Festival

In August 2013, I was one of the twelve lucky European young cinephiles to be selected to attend a Film Journalism Workshop by Nisi Masa - European Network of Young Cinema, the first time they would do it in San Sebastián. Between Sep. 20th and Sep. 28th, we rushed between sessions through the lighthearted city, watching as many screenings as we could, reviewing them before daily editorial meetings in our bunker, and before some good fun in all sorts of festival parties.

Nisimazine, Nisi Masa's official online publication, focused on the section Kutxa - New Directors which, besides the prize money shared by the director and the Spanish distributor of the winner, may launch the selected filmmakers to the balcony of world cinema. It received the first or second feature of big names such as Pedro Almodóvar (Fuck Me...), Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave), Nicolas Winding Refn (Pusher), Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent), Sarah Polley (Take This Waltz), Nadine Labaki (Caramel), Joon-ho Bong (Memories of Murder), among many others. But then, we also wrote about the Official Selection, Latin Horizons, Pearls and some from the Made in Spain section.

I wrote for Nisimazine in English about Funeral at Noon (Kutxa - New Directors), So Much Water (Latin Horizons), Workers (Latin Horizons) and Gloria (Pearls) and interviewed Gloria's co-writer/director Sebastián Lelio and, with my colleague Amy Thompson, Luton's director Michalis Konstantatos. You might want to check all the great work done by this talented and cohesive team and can access the four newsletters here or the final San Sebastián edition here.

I was then invited by Tiago Ramos to write in Portuguese for Split Screen, where you can find my thoughts about Gravity, Prisoners, The Wind Rises, Dallas Buyers Club, The Zero Theorem, Los Ilusos and Family Tour here; Enemy, The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet, Living is Easy with Eyes Closed, Cannibal and Bad Hair here; and Luton, Paradise, The Gambler, The Green Jacket, Mother of George and Wolf here.

My global thoughts about being there made a guest post in fellow recent-film-grad and film critic Robyn Davis' blog Scripts and Screens, and I quote myself:

«My words were commanded the herculean task of recalling the San Sebastián experience, or shall I say experiment, that locked me up in a parallel reality for ten days, from Sep. 19th to Sep. 28th. I watched twenty-five films and liked (to different degrees) half of them, which crushes my previous ratio record. I met people and made friends all over Europe (though Chile is not Europe). I took the same photo day after day, by the bridge towards the Kursaal, trying to capture the culturally rich, easy-going, sea-bathed vibe of this peculiar city in Northern Spain.

You’ll get close to what I felt if you can say it out loud, in one single breath:

Giant posters, luxury rooms, red carpets, wet people on top of surfboards, wind-motioned people on top of bicycles, hundreds of journalists with accreditation green cards hanging by the neck, bars full of colored pintxos where is nearly impossible to choose what to eat, charming sand-colored buildings, beach surrounded by small mountains dressed in pine forest, the sea and the river so beautiful PTA could’ve shot The Master there, parties for all and for nothing, business card trading always around the corner (which turned networking from dreadful activity to routine), Annette Bening watching The Face of Love in a regular screening (as if she’d go unnoticed), Hugh Jackman being incredibly humble and funny, Denis Villeneuve revealing himself as one of the greatest filmmakers of a generation…

Easy? What’s easy is to watch the films again. The people are what I’m already missing the most.»