The abundance of world, international and Spanish premieres characterized a program that also highlighted the closest talent and that reached almost 12,000 viewers in its face-to-face and online formats.
The festival announces new dates and opens the call to participate in its XVIII edition, which will be held from May 4 to 8, 2022
Photo by Pablo Nunes
Tui, October 13, 2021.- The Tui International Film Festival, Play-Doc, lowers the curtain on its 17th edition, after ending its online programming through the FILMIN digital platform, and which included, among its content, the 2021 retrospectives dedicated to Manfred Kirchheimer and Bette Gordon, and the recovery of the titles by Filipino filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik that Play-Doc screened in 2019.
The festival management, made up of Sara García Villanueva and Ángel Sánchez, responsible for the artistic and executive direction respectively, values the quality of the programming for this 2021, which resumed its more exclusive and international character without ceasing to emphasize the cinema made in Galicia and which gave continuity to initiatives that emerged from the previous edition, such as the close collaboration with FILMIN Spain, or the successful Cinema-Percorridos, the routes through the historic center of Tui, in which a group of video artists take their Expanded cinema proposals outside the traditional screening rooms. “Play-Doc shows that it is possible to make an ambitious international film festival, with a programming of excellence and, at the same time, develop it on a human scale that connects directly with the local, with the space and with the inhabitants of the place in the that is being celebrated ”, says the management team, which is already working on the 2022 edition.
World, international and Spanish premieres
In a trajectory that will shortly span two decades, the Tudense festival has always presented the first retrospectives in Spain, dedicated both to true legends of documentary cinema, as well as to many other forgotten, censored, lost or unknown filmmakers. This work of recovery and discovery has been particularly notable in this recently closed edition, which has vindicated the work of the American filmmaker of German origin Manfred Kirchheimer, who at 91 years of age has not been able to go to Tui, due to the pandemic, to present it in person as was his wish. Among his extraordinary filmography, the Galician festival presented his last two films in world premiere and included the first screening of Short Circuit, which since its inception in 1973 has never been shown in public before.
Who did go to Play-Doc was the American director Bette Gordon, who presented her iconic masterpiece Variety (1984) and which captured the attention of the specialized press. The festival also presented in Spanish premiere the latest film recovered from the recently deceased German director Wolf-Eckart Bühler, to whom Play-Doc already dedicated a spotlight in 2019, entitled Amerasia (1985) and which was presented by his partner Hella Kothmann. Play-Doc also presented in Spanish premiere another lost jewel rescued from oblivion, SEPA: Nuestro Señor de los Milagros (1987) by the Swiss director Walter Saxer, best known for being the producer of Werner Herzog and responsible for some of the most filming. difficult in the history of cinema, such as Aguirre la cholera de Dios (1972) or Fitzcarraldo (1982). Saxer himself flew from the Peruvian Amazon, Iquitos, to present his film at the festival and offer an exclusive master class.
Walter Saxer with his daughter Micaela
Photo Tamara De la Fuente
The international feature film competition also includes the world premiere of the latest film by French-Canadian Dominic Gagnon, Big in China. Georges and the Vision Machines (2020) who were present at the festival, as well as the Italian Giovanni Cioni or the director Kumjana Novakova, from Macedonia and the Catalan Guillermo Carreras-Candi, who presented their films Dal pianeta degli umani and Disturbed Earth also at Spanish premiere.
In the international short film competition, the film Paraíso (2021), by Marina Lameiro and Maddi Barber, both present at the festival, was presented for a world premiere at festivals, and we have the international premiere of Fruto do vosso ventre (2021), from the Portuguese Fábio Silva, who also personally presented his film on Play-Doc. Vagalumes (2021), by the Brazilian Leo Bittencourt, was also an international premiere; and Baki Tadu É (2021), by Kate Saragaço and Calum MacBeath, and Zu Dritt (2020), by Agnèse Laposi and Benjamin Bucher, had their Spanish premiere at the Tudense festival.
Bette Gordon presenting her retrospective
Photo by Tamara de la Fuente
Galician cinema
Play-Doc has been from its origins a platform and incubator for the closest talent