London Spanish Film Festival programme showcases cult director Vicente Aranda

The London Spanish Film Festival (2014) has reached its 10th birthday. Founder Joana Granero talks James Stanfield through the highlights of a programme which kicks off on Thursday 25th September and runs until Sunday 5th October

Ten years ago, Joana Granero set up the London Spanish Film Festival in the hopes that it would introduce British audiences to new filmmakers from her native country. Since then, the festival has gone from strength to strength, boasting impressively diverse programmes, as well as a host of special events and directors’ talks.

The festival enjoys its tenth anniversary this year, and will run from September 25 until October 5. To mark this occasion, Culture Whisper met up with Granero to talk about what we can look forward to this year.

At the centre of the 2014 programme is Vicente Aranda, one of Spain’s boldest and most prolific directors; he’s made nearly thirty films, and seven of the best will be screened at the festival. Granero tells us that Aranda has enjoyed an enormously varied career. He started out as member of the avant-garde ‘Barcelona School’, making daring and surreal films like Fata Morgana (Left-Handed Fate, airing October 3), before later turning to more realist cinema, and seeking inspiration in classic novels, as was the case with his acclaimed 1989 work Tiempo de Silencio (Time of Silence, airing September 30).

Internationally, Aranda is most famous for Amantes (Lovers), a beguiling film noir which will be shown on the festival’s penultimate night. Before the screening, audiences will also have the chance to hear the film’s star Victoria Abril in conversation with Professor Peter Evans of Queen Mary, University of London. Granero describes Abril as Aranda’s muse and the discussion is likely to provide a fascinating insight into both the actor and director’s work.

Beyond Aranda, the programme is remarkable for its scope, and broad enough to reflect Spain’s regional variety; there are choice selections from Catalonia, as well as from the Basque country. There are also more comedies on offer than in previous years which, Granero suggests, might well be a reaction to Spain’s economic climate, with many directors turning to humour as a means of temporary relief from harsher financial realities.

However, this is not to say that Spanish cinema is merely ignoring the crisis; in fact, many contemporary Spanish films, and indeed comedies, are finding daring and innovative ways to tackle economic issues. Indeed, when we asked Granero to pick out some particular highlights from the festival, she recommended two highly-acclaimed films, both of which take the economic downturn as their backdrop.

The first of these, Os Fenomenos (Aces, airing September 29) stars actor Lola Dueñas as a single mother working on all-male building site, and has been widely praised for its humanity, confidence and ambition. Granero describes the second, Quién mató a Bambi?  (Who killed Bambi?, airing October 5) as a black comedy, but a particularly accessible one; it is billed as a witty and off-kilter exploration of the financial crisis and its far-reaching effects. 

The London Spanish Film Festival is a unique event in the British cinematic calendar, and a chance to get away the usual suspects of Spanish cinema: Almodóvar, Amenábar, and Medem. Click here to have a look at one of the festival’s boldest and most exciting programmes to date.