Breaking language and culture barriers at the Festival de Cine

This post is by Yvonne Marquez, a magazine journalism major from the University of Texas at Austin. During the fall 2011 semester she is participating in the Communication, New Media and Journalism program at the CIEE Study Center in Seville.

One of the perks of being part of the Communication, New Media and Journalism program is being immersed in the local contemporary arts culture. In other words, we get to do really cool things like get student passes to the Sevilla Festival de Cine Europeo, which showcased the best European films this year.

Moviegoers in line for tickets to Festival de Cine Europeo at Nervion Plaza. 

In Spain, most people watch American films dubbed in Spanish; the Spanish movie market is small. This was my chance to watch unique, mostly European, non-mainstream movies to my heart’s content.

The weeklong festival featured Russian films but it also included films from other countries, such as Spain, Greece, Morocco and Holland. The festival was also divided into different sections, which included documentaries, art films, shorts and films produced in Andalusia.

A poster from the Festival de Cine Europeo (Photo courtesy of the festival website)

We had tickets to watch up to 27 movies which is a pretty ridiculous number to watch in one week. It takes time and a plan to execute a successful screening. The girls in my program and I looked at the schedule and read up on some of the movies that looked interesting. Our Spanish friend and classmate, Pablo, helped us pick the best movies based on his knowledge of European directors and last year’s festival.

There were too many films that I wanted to see but too little time to watch them all. Throughout the whole week I watched seven films that reeked of drama, tragedy, sex and violence. Many of them were thought provoking, shocking and aesthetically wonderful, but some were just way over my head and I thought they were a waste of my time.

Surprisingly, the movie I liked the best was a Polish film called “Suicide Room.” It told the story of Dominik, a teenager and the only child of overworked and successful parents. The story develops when an event occurs that makes Dominik the center of cyber bulling from his peers. He finds an outlet for his misery through a virtual world led by an anonymous girl he meets online.

Actor Jakub Gierszal who plays Dominik in "Suicide Room" (Photo courtesy of the Chicago Reader)

The producer of the film, Jerzy Kapuscinski, attended the screening. He told the audience for the 20 minutes of animation they integrated into the film, it delayed the project 18 months. I was skeptical about the animation in the movie but it really helped in telling the story. The film was pretty harsh to watch because it centered on depression, pain, loneliness and suicide, but I appreciated the actors’ performances and the film’s artistic value.

I accompanied Pablo to many of the films, where he introduced me to his friends and pointed out many professors and people he knew from the communication college at his university. The best part of going to the festival was discussing the films afterwards with Spanish natives to get their perspective on what we had just seen. At times we had different opinions and agreed that we didn’t understand the more racy films, but I appreciated they were open minded about talking about subjects like sexuality, suicide, war and death.

The film festival not only tested my Spanish language skills but also exposed me to other cultures. Most of the films I watched had English subtitles but there were two Russian films with Spanish subtitles. You can just imagine the thought process I had to do for two hours at a time. I was listening to characters speaking a language I don’t understand and at the same time reading subtitles in Spanish, plus reading the faces and interactions on screen. It was a workout for my brain and by the end I had a headache. But I felt it was worth it. I felt I had conquered the language barriers because in the end, the films captured the essence of being human, which everyone can relate to.

Comments

[oscar ceballos]

Nice post Yvonne. I'm glad the passes were put to such a good use.
óscar

[esl las vegas]

That looks like fun! I wish I could've gone to that event!