Official Section
As usual, the Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote’s Official Section showcases a number of feature-length films—generally between six and eight—produced over the last two years which have not yet been premiered in commercial cinema theatres. They are also films that evince particularly interesting ways of conceiving cinema. The form and content of the films included in this section somehow mirror the specific problematics they engage with, in such a way that they end up removed from any conventional stereotyped or academic model.
It is a kind of film that always seeks to break new ground. In this sense, one can claim that each film in this section is in search of its own specificity, albeit without ignoring their influences, yet at the same time refusing to conform to the existing dominant cinematographic models of narration and expression. These are films that the Muestra chooses for their ability to twist and intensify the focus and perspective of an audience who must be willing to lay aside for one moment their usual viewing and audiovisual habits, especially those shaped by series or commercial Hollywood movies, in order to discover new ways of narrating and negotiating meaning. Or, put another way: to open up the real options of the possible (something which is increasingly more difficult and complex).
For this eleventh year, we have selected six especially interesting films from France, USA, India, Argentina, Italy and Georgia. Each one tackles individual personal issues, without any kind of overarching theme or common thread to link them. What one can discern however is that all of them are underpinned by a particular conception of filmmaking as a mechanism to expand the parameters of reality and to register or reveal something essential.
In some cases the films address the problem of power and political corruption as ruthless forms of control that subject people’s lives and existential possibilities (always fragile and defenceless, which is to say, mortal); others explore the social and human diversity of communities which some forces try to simplify as homogenous, ignoring their diversity and difference; others focus on the technical devices of viewing, making it clear that we are not just dealing with simple tools, but precise symptoms of power and social control; finally, some of the selected films uncover the way in which mafia structures are the absolute condensation of mad power able to overcome any obstacle in order to satisfy the desire of the capo, which has nothing to do with the organic structures of the mafia, but which are inscribed in numerous forms of capitalist desire.
