Buenos Aires 2008

FIPRESCI Prize: "Ballast" (Lance Hammer, USA)

BAFICI 2008: Ten Years On. The Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente (Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema) celebrated its tenth anniversary with full honors and a huge program (which seems to be one of BAFICI's principal distinctions) with lots of films from countries and directors from all around the world. Every new independent film, one might think, was present here; if one was missing, it probably didn't exist.
    The recent installation of artistic director Sergio Wolf demonstrates that BAFICI is not subject to any one personality; the festival has seen four different directors in its ten years, but it has always followed the same line, being true to its core values. And those values are an expansive program, a mission to define contemporary Argentinean values, and to take care of those filmmakers whose careers were launched in the festival — Lisandro Alonso or Mariano Llinás, for instance — and an official section concerned with discovering the "new".
    There are also an impressive amount of programs that focus primarily on the figure of the director. The thorough retrospectives on Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi demonstrate how radical the festival might be, while the huge amount of "focus" sections, featuring salutes to Kôji Wakamatsu, Nicholas Klotz, Harry Smith, among others, demonstrates its commitment to exploring alternative cinema in detail.
    Just ten years old, BAFICI already has one of the largest and most interesting programs of our crowded film-festival universe. (Violeta Kovacsics)

10. Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, April 8-20, 2008, www.bafici.gov.ar
FIPRESCI Prize: Ballast (United States, 2008) by Lance Hammer. Details

Reports:

A Side / B Side. Violeta Kovacsics listens to Buenos Aires' musical offerings.
The Weight. Adam Nayman reviews Lance Hammer's Ballast.
The River of Images, the Ocean of Stories. Eduardo A. Russo reviews The (River) Bank that Becomes Abysmal and Extraordinary Stories.
The New Latin American Documentary. Isaac Léon Frias places Intimates of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo in its proper cinematic context.

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