‘PREMIERE: Hermosa juventud (Beautiful Youth) - Jaime Rosales’

Spanish Cinema - not just Pedro Almodovar!
Jaime Rosales, born in Barcelona in 1979, studied economy before he started studying film in Cuba and Sydney. He writes, produces and directs committed, innovative and subversive fiction films which are difficult to classify, except they are all deeply rooted in contemporary reality. With three short films and five feature-length films, Rosales has become a household name in the international festival circuit. He won prizes at major festivals, including Cannes and San Sebastian and was twice winner of a Goya (Spanish national film awards): for Las Horas del Dia and for Soledad. In April 2014, he was honoured at the Paris Centre Pompidou.
As a unique representative of the Spanish new wave Rosales depicts the everyday life of ordinary people who accidentally find themselves in situations of violence and jeopardy. Rosales keeps distance: his major concern is what is happening out of frame. Rosales claims a ‘cinema of conscience’ vs a ‘cinema of evasion’, i.e. his films intend to stir the viewer’s conscience rather than to help him escape from reality. They are completely devoid of useless artifice: direct and powerful. With each new film, Rosales experiments a new form which matches the subject matter and makes it pertinent. No wonder some people called him “the Spanish Michael Haneke”.

18:00 Correspondance Wang Bing/Jaime Rosales
(2009-2011, 49’, OV, st: EN)
Programme: T4-Barajas Puerta J50 - Jaime Rosales (2009); Happy Valley -  Wang Bing (2009); Red Land - Jaime Rosales (2011)
These filmed letters are special as they were ‘written’ by one filmmaker to another. Wang Bing and Jaime Rosales met in Paris in 2004, when they were in residence at the Cinéfondation. And even if they kept in touch on an irregular basis, their complicity became the basis of a filmed correspondence. This exchange of letters was initiated by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). Other letters include Victor Erice to Abbas Kiarostami, José Luis Guerin to Jonas Mekas, Albert Serra to Lisandro Alonso, Isaki Lacuesta to Naomi Kawase and Jaime Fernando Eimbcke to So Yong Kim.

20:00 PREMIERE Hermosa Juventud (La belle jeunesse ) - Jaime Rosales
(ES, 2014, 103’, OV, st : EN)
With: Ingrid Garcia Jonsson, Carlos Rodriguez
Rosales’s fifth film was premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film festival (Un Certain Regard). It depicts the economic horror Spanish youngsters are confronted with today. But no melodrama here, on the contrary. It is an intimate film about surviving and a young-couple-in-the-making’s instinct for survival. A plain, unadorned film in a realistic and direct, almost documentary style. The film was shot at a trot without public funding.

21:45 Q&A | Moderator: Juliette Goudot