This year it will be the audience that will determine which will be the Puerto Rican award-winning documentary of the competition organized by the European Film Festival of the Alliance Française de Puerto Rico 2018, which will be held from Thursday, April 12, to Wednesday, April 18, in Fine Arts cinema in Miramar.
In this contest, there are three short films of this genre that participate and can be seen throughout the week in which the Festival takes place. Those attending the film will have three opportunities to decide which is their favorite: Thursday, April 12 at 9:30 pm; Sunday, April 15 at 5:00 pm; or Wednesday, April 18 at 9:30pm.
The Festival that is possible thanks to the support among others of Total Petroleum Puerto Rico, UBS Financial Services of Puerto Rico, of the Development Program of the Film Industry of DDEC, Liberty and WIPR presents the following films:
–“Corazón Loíza” by the directors Llaima Sanfiorenzo and Margaret Mair. It gives a voice to four young people from Loiza who, six months after Hurricane Maria, use self-portrait as a tool to capture their reality and their memories. Both directors are graduates of the Cinema and TV School of San Antonio de los Baños (Cuba) and are founders of the project La Fábrica de Autorretratos (The Factory of Self-Portraits), a workshop offered to various audiences: from refugees in the Sahara or African immigrants in Berlin, even women who are survivors of domestic violence and confined in Puerto Rico.
-“El hombre que nadie conoció“ (The man that nobody knew) by Oswaldo Colón, takes us to discover the story of Don Enrique, a man who, despite his 75 years, has a very particular way of life: he alternates his days in his house where he runs a flea market with which he earns his living and suddenly puts on the most bizarre outfit he finds and gets in his pick-up with disco music as high as possible and starts to dance in the streets of San Juan, for pleasure and for work. Colón graduated from the Higher School of Cinema and Audiovisual of Catalonia (ESCAC), Barcelona and works on independent projects.
-“Anthony Legrand” by director Gisela Rosario, shows us the unforgettable men Anthony Legrand better known as “Tony”, a 72-year-old dandy who always lived off his physical beauty and whose only commitment every day is to be at home at 8:30 pm to answer the call of who was his partner for more than 30 years. Rosario, who defines herself as an “indisciplinary” queer artist, also has an artistic alter ego: Macha Colón, the undisputed queen of queer performance in Puerto Rico.
The European Film Festival, which has been promoting for more than six years the development of the country’s cinema with calls for local talent in fiction projects, decided to bet this year on the documentary genre with these “character driven” stories. The winning film will win tickets and stay for two people at a European festival which has yet to be determined.
Premiere of three local films
Throughout the various editions, the Festival also included premieres of films shot in the country. In this edition, three will be screened. The short film “Ese olor a lechón” by actor Modesto Lacén, who directs for the first time and narrates the story of Omy, the main dancer of an experimental dance company, composed of obese dancers, who will face his problem of low self-esteem when he was chosen to do a nude scene in the play that they will perform.
“El Silencio del Viento” (The silence of the wind) by Álvaro Aponte Centeno, a co-production between Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and France, won several awards at the 2017 Mar del Plata International Film Festival (Argentina) and at the Toulouse Film Festival in France. It relates Rafito’s life, a man who tries to face his sister’s death, without much success because he has to continue working in the illegal business of transferring undocumented persons from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico.
Finally, “La Perla After María” is a documentary by Clari del Pilar Lewis, who worked for years as a videographer, screenwriter and producer. It reflects, poetically, how the inhabitants of La Perla remember three months after the passage of the strong hurricane and recognize how it served to create strong ties within the community. Del Pilar was born in Venezuela and lived 25 years in Miami, and currently she has been living in Puerto Rico for 3 years.
