Mirror on the World
The World Press Photo exhibition comes to the CCCB. The Mostra de Cinema Italià de Barcelona will be celebrated at the Verdi Cinema and the Auditori de la Pedrera. Both are worth checking out!
An article in last month’s issue of Barcelona Metropolitan looked at the emergence of a then nascent area of journalistic reporting, through the eyes of the foreign journalists who covered the Spanish Civil War. Over the years, photojournalism has developed as a means of documentation and as a narrative tool responsible for raising social consciousness by holding a mirror to the world. The World Press Photo exhibition reflects what is outstanding in photojournalism today.
Barcelona based La Fundacíon Photographic Social Vision and the CCCB are presenting this year’s World Press Photo 2012. Under the heading of Sensitive Material, the exhibition brings world events and personal stories to centre stage with 156 photos outstanding for their aesthetic excellence as well as their capacity to trigger an emotional response in the viewer—photos that are often one of the few sources of truth in a world where images are too often manipulated or censored. Last year’s exhibition pulled in 35,159 viewers to this singular exhibition, considered to be the most important display of award-winning photography in the world, covering social, political, cultural and sporting events.
This year’s winner of the World Press Photo of the year is the Catalan photojournalist, Samuel Aranda, whose documentation of the violence in Yemen under the autocratic rule of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh is so poignantly illustrated in his portrait of Fatima al-Qaws embracing her son Zayed as he suffered the effects of tear gas while participating in anti-government protests last year (pictured above). The image, often compared to Michelangelo’s La Pietà, has since become a timeless message of solidarity in the face of overwhelming suffering.
World Press Photo 2012
November 29th, 2012 until January 6th, 2013
Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) Montalegre 5.
The Verdi Cinemas never fail to attract attention. What’s more, the ticket lines are still forming on Friday and Saturday night, despite higher ticket prices, higher unemployment figures and the closing of two important original version film houses—Casablanca and Renoir-Les Corts. Keeping its momentum flowing, this month Cines Verdi co-hosts the first edition of the ‘Mostra de Cinema Italià de Barcelona’—un Festival de Festivales—a new vehicle which will transport the Verdi and Barcelona to centre stage in the diffusion of Italian cinema in Spain.
Organised by the Instituto Luce Cinecittà, the programme includes eight full-length films and eight shorts, in addition to three special projections. Presenting the films will be the actors and directors involved in their production, who will bring to the festival their personal vision of current Italian cinema.
The films chosen for this first edition have been previously included in the Cannes, Locarno, Venecia, Toronto and London film festivals. Films by notable directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Ferzan Ozpetek (who will be present to inaugurate the festival with his film Magnifica Presenza), Marco Tullio Giordana, and Guiseppe Piccioni share the program with emerging talents such as Nina Fuksas, Leonardo Di Costanzo, Edoardo Gabbriellini and David Maria Putortí.
The public will have an opportunity to view Roberto Rossellini’s 1950 classic Stromboli, restored for the large screen, which stars Rossellini’s future wife, Ingrid Bergman. Along with Stromboli, the documentary, La guera de los volcanes by Francesco Patierno offers an interesting narrative to accompany Rosselini’s relationship with Bergman and his ex-lover, the equally magnificent, Anna Magnani, who was jilted in favour of Bergman. The explosive confrontation between Rosselini and Magnani, who were both simultaneously filming on the island of Stromboli—Rossellini was there directing Bergman who not only got Magnani’s lover but her part in the picture as well—proves that the line separating myth from ordinary existence is as thin as celluloid, particularly in Italian cinema.
Mostra de Cinema Italià de Barcelona - MCIB
December 14th-18th Cinemes Verdi and Auditori de La Pedrera.