Documentaries
L'amour fou
! Women Art Revolution
Dzi Croquettes
Prima Donna, the debut opera by: Rufus Wainwright
La Dany, la diva del Parque Bolívar
How are you
The Pink Wall
Antoine Leonetti
Coordinator of the FIRE!! Mostra
Create to live
Do you want to be yourself, although others don’t want you to be? Do you scream, but others pretend not to listen? Do you then decide to express yourself through music, songs, paintings, or a street performance? Dressed up with cheap sequined dress or designing one full of real emeralds? Your inner voice, your spirit, the violent rages that you feel to express your beauty, how great you can become, all these and more you will be able to find in the extraordinary documentaries of the selected artist for the Fire!! 2011. They all share something, how to channel their creativity to service the authenticity, and honesty to themselves and the world.
This is what connects the great creations of Yves Saint-Laurent and his moving life testimony besides Pierre Bergé at “L’amour fou”, with the heartbreaking creative challenges of La Dany in the poorest streets of Medellin. It is what unites those North American female invisible artists for decades in “!Women Art Revolution”, where you can measure the creative force that breaks down the creation patterns, give birth to new trends, and give foundation to new style movements. This is just what happens with Rufus Wainwright in “Primma Donna”, who created, without any hesitation and classical music background, a complete new opera. It also happens to visual artists such as Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset in “How are you”, who decided one day to set up a Prada store in the middle of the Texas desert, and another day at the Memorial for the Gay victims of Nazism at the Tiergarten Park in Berlin.
Ok, I know it sounds like a cheap stereotype: you are gay, and therefore, you will have vision that is more impetuous in your quest for justice and truth, forcing you to look for the sublime form of expression, etc. All right, but look a the overwhelming “Dzi Croquettes” and you will understand. You will see how a great group of Brazilian friends challenged the 70’s dictatorship with a revolutionary musical and body language, which sent them to stardom in Paris under the wings of Joséphine Baker and Lizza Minelli, giving birth to no less than the Bossa Nova. And also look at “Topp Twins”, and you will see how one can be a lesbian New Zealander, clown, farmer, country singer, sitcom actress and everything in double (they are twin sisters,), and be considered as a “national treasure” by they peers.
Do you need more proof?
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L'amour fou
France, 2010
Direction: Pierre Thoretton
Production: Les Films du Lendemain/Les Films de Pierre/France 3 Cinéma
Starring: Yves Saint-Laurent, Pierre Bergé, Betty Catroux
Genre: Biography
98’
Cinema première in Spain
Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Bergé met in 1958. After being the creative director of Dior at the early age of 21, Yves creates with Pierre his own haute couture firm in 1961. Afterwards, 41 years of work in common follow, Yves revolutionizing women fashion with the trouser suit, the saharian jacket, the smoking, the luxurious prêt-à-porter, and Pierre in the shadows, taking good care of the business part.
After Yves’s death in 2008, Pierre decides to sell the fabulous art collection and the mansions that both owned, and decides for the first time to speak to a camera about a relationship of 50 years, filled with passion and torment, extraordinary success, parties, and secret sufferings.
An extraordinary vision of Yves Saint-Laurent’s creative strength and his extreme fragility, from the gardens in the Majorelle house in Marrakech to the Grabriel castle in Normandy, with the unique testimonies of the genius creator muses: Loulou de la Falaise, Betty Catroux, Laeticia Casta or Catherine Deneuve, the “lucky charm” of YSL…
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! Women Art Revolution
United States, 2010
Direction: Lynn Hershman-Leeson
Production: Hotwire Productions
Starring: Eleanor Antin, Nancy Spero, Marcia Tucker, Guerrilla Girls…
Genre: Historic
83’
Co-presented by the Barcelona Women Festival
Systematically ostracized by the masculine museum elites, women find recently their deserved diffusion spaces, helped by curators such as Marcia Tucker, creator of the brilliant New Museum of New York, and showcase, among others, of the more avant-garde women art. She is one the several figures that Lynn Hershmann-Leeson has been interviewing for more than 40 years to tell us the story of this women art revolution in the United States: visionary artists, historians, curators and critics, that were the creators of the Feminist Art Movement, at the same period in time as war protests in the 60’s and 70’s and civil rights fights.
In this manner, they start to exist periodicals such as Chrysalis or Heresies, spaces such as A.I.R., first gallery administered by women in USA, organisms such as Franklin Furnace, or groups such as the famous Guerrilla Girls, promoting with impact actions the woman presence in arts.
! Women Art Revolution, an essential documentary to understand nowadays art.
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Dzi Croquettes
Brazil, 2009
Direction: Tatiana Issa and Raphael Alvarez
Production: Canal Brasil, Tria Productions
Starring: Norma Bengell, Maria Zilda Bethlem, César Camargo Mariano
Genre: Drama/Musical
110’
Best Documentari Award at the Torino Film Festival
Documentary Award Festival Mix Brasil
Documentary Award Festival do Rio
Première in Barcelona
During the oppressive military dictatorship of 70’s in Brazil, a group of friends founded an unorthodox theatre and dance company, inspired in the mythical Californian band “The Cockettes”, that was breaking all rules of the queer musical theatre in San Francisco. Under the American choreographer, Ron Lewis, they founded Dzi Croquettes, making fun of themselves and paying tribute to their northern counterparts. This way, the company challenged the strict social censorship, and became an international success with the help of Joséphine Baker and followed but great artist, such as Liza Minelli or Gilberto Gil.
Censorship defiance, great alternative based in cross-dressing, make up and glitter, Dzi Croquettes made their mark in the history of music, dance and the gay world. They were part of the movement, which gave birth to the Bossa Nova. 35 years later, this documentary revives amazing images of those days, and gives to the surviving members and the artists that followed their work a saying.
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Prima Donna, the debut opera by: Rufus Wainwright
U.K., 2009
Direction: George Scott
Production: Isis Productions
Starring: Rufus Wainwright, Bernadette Colomine, Renée Fleming, Janis Kelly
Genre: Biography/Musical
90’
Première in Spain
Rufus is fearless. The wonder kid of lyrical pop, who recreated Judy Garland’s Concert at Carnegie Hall, decided in 2077 to compose an opera. Without classic training but with a strong will and overwhelming talent, Wainwright premiered “Prima Donna” two years later at the Manchester International Festival with great success.
The documentary Prima Donna, the debut opera by: Rufus Wainwright portraits his noisy and sometimes tense creative process, but it also shows the singer most intimate side. His bohemian bourgeois family talks about him, from his parents to his sister, who gives us a glimpse to his funny and histrionic youth, driven by his desire of singing in public and already obsessed with opera. It also appears his charming boyfriend, the theatre producer Jörn Weisbrodt, or the crazy punk singer, Cherry Vanilla, great friend of Rufus. The soprano Jannis Kelly, who plays the mail role alternates with alternates Renée Fleming, the great diva, who looks impressed - or afraid? - of the talent from “the best composer in the world”, as Elton John said.
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La Dany, la diva del Parque Bolívar
Canada/Colombia, 2010
Direction: Julie Giles and Jimmy Giles
Production: Brother and Sister Productions
Starring: Dani Castaño Quintero
Genre: Biography
80’
Première in Spain
The directors and the actress will be present
There is no need for a big theatre to express a big talent, and the theatre of Dany Castaño Quintero, a.k.a. La Dany, are the poorest streets of Medellín.
This extraordinary transvestite artist – loud dresses, blonde wig on a braid made out of wool, black thick eye glasses – helps and entertains less favoured people in his area for more than 20 years, with amazing staging full of recycled objects and toys, speaking with a fierce sense of humour of inhabitants own life. His baroque shows, half-improvised and organized after Sunday mass in Bolívar’s park, speak about infidelities, rapes or kidnappings.
Very funny and shocking, they are a reference for the gay community and the more humble people. The rest of the time La Dany goes around Medellín in his bike, all dressed up with his cuddly giraffe, searching for objects for his shows.
La Dany, the Diva of Bolivar Park is the portrait of an immense and pleasant artist, committed with his people and incredibly coherent within his apparent fantasy.
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How are you
Denmark, 2011
Direction: Jannick Splidsboels
Production: Radiator Film
Starring: Michael Elmgreen, Ingar Dragset, Morten Olafsson
Genre: Biography/Contemporary Art
58’
Première in Spain
Danish Michael Elmgreen and Norwegian Ingar Dragset live and work together since 1995 in Berlin. They achieved media attention in the contemporary art magazines with iconoclastic works such as the life-sized replica of a Prada shop in the middle of the Texan desert, or the inauguration in the Berliner Tiergarten of the monument in memory of the Nazism gay victims, a concrete cube with a movie inside showing two men kissing, which has been object of many homophobic attacks.
Their installation of a mirror behind the Copenhagen mermaid wanted to reflect the egocentrism of Danish people. In 2009, they transformed the Nordic and Danish pavilion of the Venice Biennale into a design house where astonishment is present after a murder. This documentary is also focused in the relationship between these two nonconformist artists, bound to meet each other – they were lovers before realizing they were also neighbours – although very different. The sarcastic Michael and the sweet Ingar, with their pop culture distortion, their homoerotic hints, their political jokes or their absurd architectures, never leave an indifferent impression. A timely document about one of the nowadays artistic couples.
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The Pink Wall
