festival

The Canadians will play again on Saturday night after their unexpected performance on a small stage on the first day of the festival

The 15th edition of the Barcelona LOOP festival opens its doors from May 18–27, presenting a retro-perspective of international video art production. The festival will show the works of video artists from the 60s, 70s, and 80s in different formats at more than 80 venues around Barcelona. According to Carolina Ciuti, the LOOP festival coordinator, the aim of this year’s edition is to “build bridges between the past and the present” in order to understand modern audiovisual art. The festival’s program was elaborated under the supervision of the renowned Catalan historians of audiovisual art and new media in Spain, Eugeni Bonet and Antoni Mercader. An Andy-Warhol-exhibition as well as a six-hour video marathon of the works of Paul McCarthy are among the festival’s highlights.

Björk, the famous Icelandic singer, will perform an exclusive four-hour DJ session for Sónar festival’s opening night on June 14. The same day, an ‘immersive’ exhibition dedicated to the artist (‘Digital Björk’) will open its doors at Barcelona’s Center of Contemporary Culture (CCCB) and the artist will give a talk at Sónar+D. The 24th edition of the Sónar festival will open Wednesday, June 14 with Björk’s DJ performance and close on Sunday, June 18 in Barcelona’s Auditori with a Nico Muhly concert accompanied by the German orchestral group Stargaze. As for the festival’s musical program, this year’s edition comprises of outstanding names such as Justice, Nicolas Jaar, Moderat, Masters at Work, Arca & Jesse Kanda, Soulwax, Dj Shado or De la Soul among others.

DocsBarcelona International Festival celebrates its 20th Edition between May 18th and May 28th. The festival now lasts ten days instead of five, so that this year’s edition can include a record 90 documentaries. One of the most outstanding films is the Catalan-German production ‘Hacking Justice’ which tells the story of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who fought to prove the innocence of ‘Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange. DocsBarcelona received over 500 projects from 65 different countries worldwide, a figure which represents a 14% increase in the number of submissions in comparison to last year, consolidating the festival at an international scale.

Catalan director Carla Simón’s opera prima ‘Estiu 1993’ has won Best First Feature Award at the Berlinale Film Festival. Moreover, the International Jury awarded the film with the Grand Prix of the Generation Kplus, ‘ex aequo’ with Chinese film ‘Become who I was’, by Chang-Yong Moon. ‘Estiu 1993’ tells the story of Frida, a 6-year-old girl who faces the first summer with her new adoptive family, after her mum died from AIDS. The film, whose main character played by young actress Laia Artigas captivated the jury, is based on the director’s own childhood. Ildikó Enyedi’s Hungarian drama “On Body and Soul” won the Golden Bear for best film at the 67^th Berlinale. The international jury, headed by Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, handed out prizes far and wide, awarding a broad range of international works. 

Music and arts festivals fill Catalonia throughout the summer season. In recent years, the number and quality of them have grown exponentially, to include the participation of international artists who sometimes choose these festivals as their only Spanish tour date. So far, Jamiroquai and Pet Shop Boys are amongst the main names announced for Cruïlla Festival, to take place from the 7th to the 9th of July at Barcelona’s Parc del Fòrum. One of the most long-standing festivals, the International Festival of Porta Ferrada, which takes place in the coastal town of Sant Feliu de Guíxols, will have in their line-up Jamie Cullum and UB40, amongst many others. Beyond the festivals, no other than Sir Elton John has also confirmed that he will perform in Barcelona his only concert in Spain. This will be on the 3rd of December. 

Temporada Alta, the renowned performing arts festival that takes place in Girona, reached this year its 25th birthday. After a quarter of century, the director of the event, Salvador Sunyer, took stock of its history in an interview with the CNA. Girona’s festival is noted for acting as the gateway to Spain, and often to Europe, for many international productions. Polish theatre director Krystian Lupa and British director Peter Brook were some of the big international names that could be seen at the festival this time out. In this vein, Sunyer stated thatencouraging work between companies and directors from Catalonia and international teams is one of the festival’s aims and long-term ambitions. A clear example of this wish is ‘Davant la Jubilació’ (‘Eve of Retirement’), in which Polish theatre director Lupa directs Catalan actors. This spectacle, and ten more, will tour internationally and 2016 is, indeed, the year in which many shows are having a longer trajectory after being released at the event.

The film ‘Lluvia en los Zapatos’ (‘Rain in the shoes’) by the Catalan director Maria Ripoll, will officially inaugurate the REC International Film Festival in Tarragona (southern Catalonia) this Thursday. In its sixteenth and most international edition yet, the REC International Film Festival seeks not only to introduce “new voices and talents” to the Catalan audience, but also to project Tarragona outward “as a generator of content”, the director of the event, Xavier Garcia Puerto said. From this Thursday and until the 6^th of December the Festival will screen some twenty films from eleven different countries, five of which are premieres in Spain and eleven in Catalonia. 

From the 20th to the 27th of October Cambridge will host the 36th edition of its well-known film festival and Catalan cinema will again have its own place in the programme. For the fifth time the event features ‘Camera Catalonia’, the most important fair in the UK focused on Catalan film. This year’s edition includes two of the most successful box office comedies in recent years: ‘Barcelona Summer Night’ and the sequel ‘Barcelona Christmas Night’, by young director Dani de la Orden. There are two other premieres, the documentary about Xavier Cugat, a Catalan musician during the golden years of Hollywood who became one of the originators of the Latin sound, ‘Sex, Maracas & Chihuahuas’and ‘The Virus of Fear’ by renowned Catalan film director Ventura Pons.“Everybody appreciates that cinema is one of best presentation letters to the world and that it is a perfect way of making us known to the world”, ‘Camera Catalonia’s curator, Ramon Lamarca, told the CNA.

Temporada Alta, the renowned performing arts festival which takes place in Girona, reaches this year its 25th birthday. The benchmark festival at national and European level is offering a multidisciplinary programme designed for all audiences. Between this Friday and the 4^th of December, well-known international artists such as Polish theatre director Krystian Lupa, British director Peter Brook and the Belgian-born choreographer Alain Platel will present their creations at the festival. In its 25^th edition, it has programmed 26 international shows, from 17 different countries. However, there will also be room for Catalan productions and, indeed, Catalan director Lluís Pasqual has been given the responsibility of raising the curtain on the festival with ‘In memoriam - La quinta del biberón’, a work that has grown out of testaments from witnesses to the Battle of the Ebro. 

The Tàrrega Theatre Fair, in the county of Urgell, in Western Catalonia, lowered the curtain on this year’s festival this Sunday. Between the 8^th and the 11^thof September, the town welcomed a programme with 60 performances from 57 national and international companies and 263 sessions in 26 different exhibition spaces. More than 887 professionals, 547 of whom were Catalan, with 180 hailing from Spain and 190 from abroad, took part in this traditional event that every year fills with colour the streets of this city near Lleida. This 36^th edition closed with a positive balance: 14,450 tickets sold, in comparison to the 13,000 visitors of last year, and an occupancy rate above 87% at the theatre shows. A total of 3,315 people stayed at the camping area of the event. The artistic director of FiraTàrrega, Jordi Duran, is satisfied with the results: “It was a show rich in content and we enjoyed the good weather”, he stated. 

Isla Fantasia waterpark, located 30 kilometres north of Barcelona, hosted this Tuesday the 'Water Park Day', the main highlight of Circuit Festival 2016, the world’s largest LGBTI party. Around 8,000 people from all over the world, mainly gay males between 25 and 40 years old, enjoyed the sun, the water facilities and live sessions from nine different DJs, in what is considered to be the biggest open-air gay party in Europe. Circuit Festival kicked off in Barcelona on the 2^nd of August and will feature a wide range of parties, concerts, sports events and other leisure activities for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual people until the 14^th of August. Last year around 72,000 people attended the Circuit, 80% of them foreigners. 

Sónar 2016 closed its doors on its 23^rd edition with 115,500 visitors from a hundred countries. This figure is slightly lower than 2015, but maintains the last five-year average. This year, the voices of artists that had highly critical content had special relevance, noted the organisers of the festival. The co-director of the festival, Ricard Robles, said that foreign nationals who attended were mostly British, then French, German, and Italian, with an increased presence of Americans. Co-director Ventura Barba spoke positively about the sister event to the music festival that ran parallel to it, Sónar+D, which saw the participation of more than 4,500 music professionals. The novelties for Sónar 2017 have been announced, and they include two new cities added to the international route: Istanbul and Hong Kong.

Sónar Festival began its 23^rd edition on Thursday with its first daytime sessions, welcoming the acts The Black Madonna, Kenny Dope (formerly Masters at Work), Mad Professor, sharing the stage with The Spanish Dub Invasion, British MC Lady Leshurr, and a classical piano recital by James Rhodes to the Barcelona sun. This total of 130 eclectic acts are being hosted at the Montjuic fairgrounds, where thousands of participants attended, and will presumably attend again on Friday and Saturday, where the night-time performances will be held at the Gran Via Exhibition Centre. Additionally, Sónar+D also kicked off on Thursday, serving as the intellectual and collaborative sister event to Sónar, holding conferences and activities revolving around the “future of culture, arts and technology”, according to curator, José Luis de Vicente.

The economic contribution to Catalonia’s GDP from the 2015 Sonar music festival was 72 million euros. Along with Sonar+D, a series of conferences about the relationship between creativity and technology, the event brought in 111,000 visitors from 104 different countries. This data was presented at the pre-festival press conference on Thursday. Indeed, the festival has been interested in tracking its economic impact since it created a study group to do so in 2004. To be held on the 16th, 17th, and 18th of June, Sonar 2016 will include 130 concerts by artists from 28 different countries, and will be based on a “more social” rhetoric. Meanwhile, Sonar+D will include activities in about 180 different formats, with 400 registered participants, and more than 4,000 professionals from 57 countries. Some new additions to the festival will be the new SonarCar stage, and a one-hour delay of the Sonar by Day portion of the festival. In 2016, Sonar is also offering a map of Barcelona showing the creative training offerings one can find in the Catalan capital. The metro strike should not affect the festival.