AVAILABLE TO INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS IN A PRIVATE VIDEO LIBRARY ON FESTHOME TV

More than 15 short films nominated for the Ibershorts Awards will take part in the
Málaga Short Corner, the section dedicated to the international promotion and distribution of Spanish short films within MAFIZ, the industry area of the Festival de Málaga.

Through Málaga Procultura, MAFIZ is launching the fourth edition of this professional platform, which will take place from March 10 to 12, 2026. The Málaga Short Corner has established itself as a strategic space for the visibility and international circulation of short films within the framework of the festival.

---

IBERSHORTS: A STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

The Ibershorts Awards are organized by the Festival de Málaga in partnership with Festhome, with the aim of strengthening the international projection of Ibero-American short films and providing concrete tools to support their distribution.

The participation of more than 15 nominees in the Málaga Short Corner reinforces the program’s international scope and its direct connection to professional market spaces.

---

ONLINE MARKET AND PRIVATE SCREENINGS

In addition to their on-site participation from March 10 to 12, the 15 selected films will also be available in the Málaga Short Corner online market through Festhome TV, where accredited programmers, distributors, and industry professionals will have access to private screenings.

This digital access extends the program’s reach beyond the event dates and facilitates direct connections between filmmakers and international professionals interested in the circulation of these works.

With this dual presence, both physical and online, Ibershorts further consolidates its position within the Ibero-American professional ecosystem, connecting talent, industry, and market within a single strategic framework.

The screening of the finalist short films of the Ibershorts Award 2026 will take place on Thursday, March 12 at 10:00 PM, at Cine Albéniz in Málaga

The Festival de Málaga, in collaboration with Festhome, announces the five finalist short films of the
Ibershorts Award 2026, an initiative dedicated to promoting and giving visibility to Ibero-American short filmmaking
through a network of partner festivals.

Five films, five countries, and five authorial voices that reflect the diversity and vitality of contemporary Ibero-American short cinema.

---

Finalist short films

CARLOTA (Uruguay)

Director: Cecilia Moreira Pagés

Presented by: José Ignacio International Film Festival

Synopsis

Miguel, a young boy from a small town in Uruguay, travels to Montevideo for the first time on a school trip. There, he discovers a portrait
of Carlota, a 19th-century historical figure, which awakens a deep fascination in him. Back home, this image turns into an obsession that
drives him to undertake an unexpected journey accompanied by Leidi.

About the director

Cecilia Moreira Pagés is a Uruguayan director and screenwriter. Her cinema is characterized by a sensitive gaze on childhood, memory, and territory.

Official film page

View here

---

HOW BIRDS SING (Panama)

Director: Sara Martínez

Presented by: Hayah International Film Festival of Panama

Synopsis

During an intense summer, Rafael dreams of joining his cousins at the banana plantation. Despite his grandmother’s prohibition, curiosity
and the desire for adventure lead him to disobey.

About the director

Sara Martínez is a Panamanian filmmaker. Her work focuses on childhood observation and the relationship between characters and their natural environment.

Official film page

View here

---

FAMILY SUNDAY (Mexico)

Director: Gerardo Del Razo

Presented by: Huesca International Film Festival

Synopsis

In a peripheral neighborhood of Mexico City, a shopkeeper faces the consequences of failing to pay a fee imposed by a criminal group.
What appears to be an ordinary Sunday turns into a test of endurance.

About the director

Gerardo Del Razo is a Mexican director and screenwriter. His cinema addresses contemporary social issues from a realistic perspective.

Official film page

View here

---

THE ASSISTANT (Peru)

Director: Pierre Llanos

Presented by: Skyline Benidorm Film Festival

Synopsis

Clara helps her father in an improvised dental clinic. During the lunch break, the unexpected arrival of a patient disrupts the routine.

About the director

Pierre Llanos is a Peruvian filmmaker. His work is characterized by an intimate and naturalistic approach.

Official film page

View here

---

SOL MINOR (Portugal)

Director: André Silva Santos

Presented by: Curtas Vila do Conde – International Film Festival

Synopsis

Samuel, a flute teacher, goes through the mourning process after the death of his wife. Between letters, flowers, and melodies, he tries
to reconnect with music and with life.

About the director

André Silva Santos is a Portuguese director associated with auteur cinema, with a strong expressive use of sound and time.

Official film page

View here

---

An Ibero-American network of cinema and festivals

The Ibershorts Award strengthens collaboration between festivals, filmmakers, and platforms, positioning the short film as a cultural
driving force within the Ibero-American space.

The screening of the finalist short films of the Ibershorts Award 2026 will take place on
Thursday, March 12 at 10:00 PM at the Cine Albéniz in Málaga, in a public session open to audiences as part
of the official program of the Festival de Málaga.

Tickets will be available for online purchase through the festival’s official channels.

On March 14 at 12:45 a.m., in Screen 1 of the Albéniz Cinemas, the winning short film of the Ibershorts Award 2026 will be announced.

More information about the Ibershorts Award

View here

Festhome has awarded its Distribution Prize to the Argentine short film Queda en mí, directed by Rafael Nir, within the framework of Ventana Sur and its section dedicated to Latin American short films: VS Cortos.

The prize consists of direct support for the film’s international distribution, valued at USD 400 in submission fees, which may be used to submit the short film to festivals that are part of the Festhome platform, thereby facilitating its circulation and visibility within the international festival circuit.

The film is produced by Rafael Nir and Paloma Torras, with the participation of the production companies La Casa de al lado, Oruga Cine, and Harry. It has been recognized within a space that champions the short film as a top-tier creative, industrial, and cultural format.

VS Cortos: a key platform for Latin American short films

VS Cortos is the Ventana Sur section dedicated exclusively to short films, conceived to support new voices in Latin American cinema and filmmakers who embrace this format with creative freedom and a strong authorial vision.

In its 2025 edition, the call received more than 210 works with world premiere availability from across the region, confirming that the short film not only serves as a starting point for new careers, but is also a fully established space for aesthetic and narrative exploration within contemporary cinema.

Festhome’s commitment to short film distribution

With this award, Festhome reinforces its commitment to the short film as an essential format in today’s cinema and to the active support of films throughout their international journey.

The Festhome Distribution Prize, awarded to Queda en mí, aims to strengthen the film’s festival strategy, facilitating access to international calls for entries and supporting its positioning within the global short film ecosystem.

FESTHOME AWARDS EL CUENTO DE UNA NOCHE DE VERANO AT THE 26TH EDITION OF CORTOGENIA 2025

As part of the 26th edition of Cortogenia, a qualifying festival for the Goya Awards, Festhome presented the Festhome Distribution Award to El cuento de una noche de verano, directed by María Herrera. The award was presented by Elvira Landa, Festival Manager at Festhome, during the event.

---

A BOOST FOR SHORT FILM DISTRIBUTION

The Festhome Distribution Award was created to support the festival journey of new films, helping awarded short films expand their visibility and access new exhibition opportunities.

With this recognition, Festhome reinforces its commitment to filmmakers and to the promotion of short films, offering concrete tools to support the distribution of works with both national and international potential.

---

CORTOGENIA, A KEY PLATFORM FOR SPANISH SHORT FILMS

Over the years, Cortogenia has established itself as one of the most recognized platforms for the exhibition and promotion of short films in Spain. Its status as a qualifying festival for the Goya Awards strengthens its relevance within the circuit and makes each edition a valuable showcase for filmmakers, producers, and industry professionals.

For Festhome, being part of this edition through the Festhome Distribution Award means continuing to strengthen ties with festivals that are firmly committed to cinematic talent and to the growth of new voices within the audiovisual landscape.

---

CONGRATULATIONS TO MARÍA HERRERA AND THE ENTIRE TEAM

From Festhome, we would like to congratulate María Herrera and the entire team behind El cuento de una noche de verano on this recognition.

We will continue working to support filmmakers and to help more films find their path in festivals around the world.

FESTHOME BOOSTS THE DISTRIBUTION OF FOUR SHORT FILMS AWARDED AT NOTODOFILMFEST 2026

An alliance with short films and emerging talent

At Festhome, we remain committed to supporting the journey of short films beyond their premiere. That is why we are delighted to be part of Notodofilmfest once again, one of the leading spaces for short films on the internet since its creation in 2001 by La Fábrica, based on an original idea by Javier Fesser.

The 23rd edition of Notodofilmfest

In its 23rd edition, Notodofilmfest has once again demonstrated its ability to discover new voices and connect emerging talent with the industry. As part of this collaboration, Festhome takes part in the Distribution Award, a prize that this year has recognized four short films with one year of distribution through Festhome, as well as a digital copy provided by DCPCine and two years of technical support.

The winners of the 2025 Distribution Award

The short films that won the 2025 Distribution Award were Está detrás de mí, by Yago Casariego and Nacho Monter; HAIRLINE, by Bright Martins; 20:11, by Mario Capetillo Torres; and Antitermitas, by Alex Rey. Four very different works, united by one essential quality: their potential to keep growing within the international festival circuit.

A recognition that also reaches the Grand Prize

Our involvement in Notodofilmfest does not end there. The Grand Prize for Best Film, awarded this year to fit, by María de Miguel, also includes distribution through Festhome, in addition to a cash prize of 3,000 euros and a digital copy provided by DCPCine.

Distribution as a way to extend a film’s journey

For Festhome, collaborating with festivals such as Notodofilmfest means reinforcing something that is part of our DNA: helping short films find new opportunities, new audiences, and new festivals. Because an award does not only recognize a work, it can also open new paths for it.

Congratulations to the award winners

Congratulations to the awarded short films and to the entire Notodofilmfest team for another edition that continues to celebrate talent, creativity, and the strength of the short film format.

THE FESTIVAL DE MÁLAGA OPENS ITS PROGRAM TO IBERO-AMERICAN SHORT FILMS THROUGH THE NEW IBERSHORTS AWARD

Nearly 30 festivals from 20 countries will participate in the 29th edition of the festival through this initiative, in collaboration with Festhome.

The Festival de Málaga, organized by Málaga City Council through Málaga Procultura, has launched the new Ibershorts Award, whose first edition will take place during its 29th edition, to be held from March 6 to 15, 2026.

The complete rules and regulations are available on the festival’s official website, and submissions must be made through the Festhome platform until November 30.

Inscribe aquí

---

A BRIDGE FOR IBERO-AMERICAN SHORT FILMS

Ibershorts is an initiative by the Festival de Málaga, in partnership with Festhome, aimed at promoting and giving visibility to Ibero-American fiction and animation short films.

This new award, which will be integrated into the festival’s official program, seeks to recognize the quality and diversity of short films produced in Ibero-American countries, including Portugal and excluding Spain.

Through this initiative, the Festival de Málaga reinforces its Ibero-American vocation and builds a network of strategic alliances with leading festivals, creating new opportunities for filmmakers and consolidating an international visibility circuit for short films.

---

AN INTERNATIONAL NETWORK OF QUALIFYING FESTIVALS

A total of 29 festivals from 20 countries have joined the call. Each festival may submit up to two award-winning short films from its most recent edition, which will automatically become eligible alongside other winning titles.

A joint committee appointed by the Festival de Málaga and Festhome will select five finalists, which will be screened during the festival’s 29th edition.

---

AWARD AND INTERNATIONAL PROJECTION

The winner of the Ibershorts Award will receive the Silver Biznaga for Best Ibero-American Fiction Short Film 2025, presented at the official short film awards gala of the festival.

In addition, the five selected short films will take part in the Málaga Short Corner, an initiative integrated within MAFIZ / Spanish Screenings Content, where they will participate in industry screenings and professional activities.

---

PARTICIPATING FESTIVALS IN THE IBERSHORTS AWARD

• ASUFICC - Asunción International Contemporary Film Festival (Paraguay)


• Baixada Animada - Ibero-American Animation Film Festival (Brazil)


• BITBANG International Animation Festival (Argentina)


• Ibero-American Short Film Competition Versión Española / SGAE (Spain)


• Curtas Vila do Conde - International Film Festival (Portugal)


• Curta-Se 24 Ibero-American Film Festival of Sergipe (Brazil)


• FAM - Florianópolis Audiovisual Mercosur (Brazil)


• FANTLATAM (Latin American Network)


• FENAVID - Santa Cruz International Film Festival (Bolivia)


• Gramado Film Festival (Brazil)


• Santo Domingo Global Film Festival (Dominican Republic)


• Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival (Spain)


• Cinema al Este International Film Festival (Peru)


• Cuenca International Film Festival - FICC (Ecuador)


• Huesca International Film Festival (Spain)


• Lebu International Film Festival - CINELEBU (Chile)


• Mar del Plata International Film Festival (Argentina)


• Valdivia International Film Festival (Chile)


• Kinoarte Film Festival (Brazil)


• FIC UBA - University of Buenos Aires International Film Festival (Argentina)


• FICCI - Cartagena International Film Festival (Colombia)


• Hayah - Panama International Short Film Festival (Panama)


• Ícaro - Central American International Film Festival (Central America)


• José Ignacio International Film Festival (Uruguay)


• LESGAICINEMAD (Spain)


• Pávez Awards - Talavera de la Reina International Film Festival (Spain)


• Shorts Costa Rica (Costa Rica)


• Shorts México (Mexico)


• Skyline Benidorm Film Festival (Spain)

Could you tell me how I am sure that my film has reached where it needs to go?

It's an excellent question, one that allows us to explain an essential part of how Festhome works, something that is just as important on this blog as anything else we've discussed in recent years.

So how can a filmmaker at Festhome be sure that his film has got where it needs to go?

First of all, a correctly made submission that is in the inbox of the corresponding festival automatically appears on the film's Statistics page (specifically, in Statistics - Submission Status).

By default, until the festival sees the inscription, a red clock appears to the right of that inscription. When the festival has seen it, that icon changes automatically and becomes a blue eye. Once the festival notification date has passed (which also appears there next to the registration) that icon changes again, and there are 3 possible changes:

-If the festival has put the entry in the Selected state, that icon becomes a white thumbs up in white on a green background.
- If the festival has not put it in Selected status, the icon becomes a white x on a gray background.
- Finally, if the festival has not worked with the registration statuses so that we can tell you if you are selected or not, our system will show you the figure of a man with a watch in white on a gray background. We do this because we want to show clearly that we don't make up submission statuses or change them capriciously, so that filmmakers know that we don't have enough information to indicate a selection or non-selection and we indicate it directly, without filters, so filmmakers know what to expect.

In any case, all you have to do is place the cursor on that icon (in any of its different options) for a tooltip to appear that tells the filmmaker what it means at all times and, therefore, what the festival is doing with the submission at any time.

That is the information that filmmakers can see every moment about the status of their submissions.

As a final note, we want to emphasize that we insist that festivals see all their entries, and especially when it comes to festivals with their own entry fee, if we detect problems with viewings from a festival, our system automatically blocks payments until are solved. Although the platform seems to be a simple internally, there is a lot of work behind it, and we take it very seriously that all parties involved, filmmakers and festivals, are satisfied with our role as intermediaries. If we detect festivals that are not fulfilling their part of seeing and evaluating their entries, we do not hesitate to contact them and resolve it.

If that initially censored scene of Kubrick's Spartacus gives title to this blog entry, it is not because I want to discuss the benefits or supposed evils of homosexuality, but because it is common among the cinephile population to establish closed areas of enjoyment and interest. This one prefers the experimental cinema of Stan Brakhage, that one only sees Marvel movies, that one gets excited with the French melodramas of the 30s, the one beyond only sees film noir made in classic Hollywood. Yet, establishing these watertight compartments it is impossible to have a global, complete, broad vision of what cinema is.

Naturally you may like only oysters or only snails, but it is much more enriching to enjoy both knowing that they are different, and therefore being able to see with as much joy the science fiction made in Hollywood in the 50s and the essays of the Dziga Vertov Group in the 60s/70s, knowing that they are different things. And we should be thankful for that, because there is not one single type of cinema that has been possible in 120 years, and counting, of cinematographic history.

Last week, specifically on Friday 21st at night, we suffered a serious problem with the servers that made all Festhome services unavailable for several hours. Although we have already managed to have all the services up and running again, we want to explain what happened and the measures we are taking to avoid, as far as possible, another similar incident, the first one of this magnitude we have had in 13 years.

What happened?

Around 2 AM, all Festhome services became inaccessible. After a quick evaluation, we realised that the problem came from the main database server, on which the rest of the services rely to save and obtain the data pertaining to everything that is done in Festhome. Once the data center operators could physically access the server in question, they informed us that the hard drive was not working, so we started the process to recover the data from another hard drive and replace the failed one to put back the online service. This in itself is not a very big problem, and apart from the time lost without connection, which at this moment was a little over an hour, there would be no further incident. The serious problem arouse when accessing the second disk that contains the instant backups, as it did not respond either. From this moment on, we started working on trying to recover the data from the hard drives so that we could restore service with all the data, but hours go by without much progress and finding more and more problems with the hard drives. We believed that some kind of power outage or something similar had fried both hard drives at the same time, since it is extremely rare for two hard drives to die at the same time. In these 13 years we have never lost a single piece of information or registration and we are very ashamed of this episode.

What did we do?

Once the magnitude of the problem was known, we decided to work in parallel on using one of the backups external to the server to restore the service if we were not able to recover it with the data from the failed server. About 7 hours after the start of the incident, we had the service ready to be restored, but with the data from the last backup that was made external to the server, which is from Thursday morning, the 20th.

At this point, we had to make the decision to wait to recover the data from the corrupted hard drives so that there are no lost shipments or transactions, or to restore service without Thursday's data. After careful consideration, we decided that too many hours had passed without service, and it was important that users could continue to send and watch the movies, and whenever we had he data for Thursday, we would push it back to the new server manually.

This seemed to be the right decision, as several days later we are still trying to recover the other server, but we have less and less hope that we can indeed recover the data that was not saved on other servers.

What solutions have we found for now and the future?

Right now, our support colleagues have been manually rebuilding transactions that users have told us they lost, but it's an imperfect solution. We count on our users to notify us of problems they have had, to manually fix those problems and have all the data as it should appear in their accounts. It's a slow process, but right now it seems to be the only one possible.

As for the future, we're going to increase the redundancy of the databases in the live service with better point-of-failure protections, so that if a server suddenly fails, the service will continue to function. 13 years is a long time without losing data, but if we can be better, we must be, so we are also going to increase the frequency of external back-ups to the data servers, in case there is a similar problem in the future, we can recover data with less loss.

We want to apologise to all our users and thank you for your enormous patience in recent days. It has been many hours without sleep and with great nerves due to ignorance of what was happening. When you have a computer in front of you, it's already difficult at times but at least you can touch it. With servers hosted in bunkers thousands of kilometers away and with which you can only work with a Matrix-style command line, uncertainties and nerves increase exponentially.

June 10 will mark the 41st anniversary of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s death at 37 years of age, an essential filmmaker who is seldom named now, and even less known, in another act of cinephile forgetfulness that is actually an act of basic ignorance.

If Fassbinder is essential it is because no one (or almost) like him was able to x-ray and show how human relationships are based on possession and the natural cruelty that possession entails, and he did so by creating films that were sometimes cruel, sometimes failed, but always stark, honest and lucid, like that impossible proof of love in In a Year with 13 Moons, or that imaginary happiness in Fox and His Friends. Perhaps the forgetfulness I mentioned above is due to the fact that the bulk of his filmography (an astonishing number of 44 works between feature films for cinema and television, some short films, some miniseries, some macroseries, all made in a time frame of just 15 years) can be described as melodramas, a genre reviled in our days for reasons that elude me, and that Fassbinder learned to love and practice by watching the very remarkable work of another forgotten master, Douglas Sirk. Or perhaps the cause of it is the fact that Fassbinder's work lacks the handbrake, the self-censoring and the sugar coating of contemporary drama.

Be that as it may, it is never a bad time, with or without an anniversary, to remember and celebrate the work of the Bavarian genius, and to declare (contrary to what the title of his first feature film affirms) that the love for Fassbinder's work can never be colder than death.

There has been a recurring debate about short films for years at festivals, professional meetings, round tables, markets, etc. It would be summarized in this question: why does the short film not receive the same recognition as the feature film? The problem with this question (most commonly asked by distributors, but not exclusively by them at all) is that it does not clarify what recognition it is talking about or who would have to carry it out. That is, it does not clarify to whom the question is addressed, so it is impossible to answer.

If we talk about short films as cinematographic works, we must remember that some of the great masters in the history of cinema have delivered great works in short format (Godard, Malle, Varda, Marker, Garrel ...). As a work of art, short film is already recognized throughout the world. But is it as an industrial product?

Following the logic of capitalism, a short film can never produce the same profit as a feature film (in fact, it is unusual for a short film to generate a profit), whether its budget is very large or very small, so as an industrial product it will never have the same recognition as a feature film, naturally, and it would be rather healthy to understand that these two perspectives are complementary and do not exclude one another.

Of all the cinema made under Franco's fascist regime, there are many things to throw into the sea tied with chains so that it never returns to the surface, and some other things (just a few) we can celebrate on, such as Berlanga's cinema. But while Berlanga's cinema is still alive today, there is a moment that represents the cinema of Francoism like no other, and that decades later is still remembered because it also represents what it was like to be a man in Franco’s regime. I am referring to the celebrated moment (in an atrocious film such as Atraco a las 3, by José María Forqué) in which José Luis López Vázquez declares himself "an admirer, a slave, a friend, a servant" (it happens more than once in the film).

Without genuflection, but on his knees, López Vázquez’ character represents several generations of men at the mercy of power, fame, feminine beauty understood as a platonic ideal, and who have a very evident exponent in El Fary when he spoke of the "soft man" without realizing he was also subjugated. The violence defended by people like El Fary only showed their impotence and in 2022 we are grateful because they are disappearing, although gender violence has not, sadly, been extinguished yet.

It is usual among Martin Scorsese fans (I am not one of them) to celebrate the vigor of his shots, the genius of his mise-en-scène, the vital energy that his films give off. But it is much less common to mention his collaborators as essential pieces of that Scorsese touch: despite my love for Paul Schrader’s work as a screenwriter and as a director (he is the author of the scripts of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull), I think that the main responsible for the Scorsesian narration is Thelma Schoonmaker, almost exclusive editor of Scorsese since 1967 and responsible for both the bombastic rhythm of The Color of Money and creating some narrative sense in a film as poorly made as The Departed.


Schoonmaker has not worked alone for Scorsese, but almost, and it becomes so difficult to find in a film made by another director the continuation of the movement by cut (movement of the camera or the elements / people in the shot) that is so natural and frequent in the cinema of the filmmakers from New York, that one tends to think that Scorsese films for Schoonmaker, and that Schoonmaker determines the way he shoots.

It is well known that John Ford was an angry despot on his shooting sets, capable of savagely beating his main actors, of publicly humiliating his brother, of throwing his actresses into a swimming pool. An unrepentant alcoholic, he exercised tyrannical violence with the malice of one who knows that he has at his disposal the necessary power to exercise it.

I don't think we can and should not excuse John Ford for those behaviors, neither in the 30s/40/50s nor now in 2022. But neither can we ignore them, as if they were acceptable, nor cancel John Ford entirely, as if we hope that great creators should not have serious character flaws. What we can do is assume the natural imperfection of the human condition, accept John Ford as a great creator with terrible flaws that should never be silenced, and appreciate his films to a greater or lesser extent. It's easy to say, very hard to do.

Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest "What's past is prologue" implying that there is a natural continuity in history and that the present is a direct consequence of immediately preceding historical conditions.


What Shakespeare could not imagine is that in our time there would be a current within the film and TV narrative (especially in the fantastic variant) in which the past is prologue and the present... is also prologue, as if a production seeks to highlight what will happen in an indeterminate future instead of what it is trying to tell, as if what really matters is what it shows and not what it tells, as if the creators cared more about drawing a map than inhabiting it. Thus, we find (to use a very recent example) the 1st season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, in which everything is presentation, introduction, prologue, in which the narration doesn’t seem to have a central interest for its authors, so that everything refers us to a future that is actually in the past, in the film trilogy Peter Jackson made 20 years ago.

My favorite Jean-Luc Godard film is not any of his feature films, but a small 11-minute essay entitled Lettre à Freddy Buache (Letter to Freddy Buache, 1981). In that film, Godard wonders, quoting Wittgenstein, whether "we have made a mistake by calling blue green." And in the search for that conceptual error he will continue to make films all his life, just as Alain Tanner sought the error of time that passes in Dans la ville blanche, or Louis Malle sought the error of individuality in Le feu follet, or Eric Rohmer sought the error of geometric thinking in Ma nuit chez Maud.

Seeking imperfection and error, these masters, among others, have moved away from formal and discursive perfection to find a deeper understanding of the world, and that is a debt we can never pay them back. With the deaths of Godard and Tanner just 3 days ago I have been overwhelmed by a sense of orphanhood, perhaps because the history of cinema is a cemetery. But it is one inhabited by the most beautiful corpses that speak ghostly to us day after day. Thus, Godard and Tanner have found the error of death.

The certainty of the director about "their film", "their work" is an imperative necessity, because in a film crew someone has to be sure (or has to look like they are) of the direction in which the project has to go. But being the leader of the peloton doesn't mean the director can do the race alone. We find many examples in the history of cinema (from Josef von Sternberg to Michael Cimino, from John Ford to Stanley Kubrick) of self-appointed tyrants who enjoyed treating their team as slaves to be mistreated daily, constantly. Fortunately, there are many cases that show the opposite: filmmakers trying to create a pleasant work environment that one wants to go to, rather than one from which we want to escape.


Of course, there is also a minority of directors who film in man-orchestra mode. Directors capable of occupying all fields in a film crew. Literally, a one-person film crew. It does not seem that they create much industry (surely, they do not create any jobs), but their status as sniper-filmmakers is usually accompanied by a meager or directly non-existent budget to make their films, and that does not guarantee full creative freedom, but permanent restrictions that demand control and rigor.

Neither money (the budget) gives happiness, nor its absence implies being able to do whatever we want.

Not many years ago the great Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán gave a lecture in Madrid on documentary cinema. As I have been told (I was not present), an attendee told him that she really wanted to make documentaries but did not know what to make them about. Pato Guzmán (maybe somewhat jokingly) answered her with a question, whether she had a cat, and seeing that this was the case, he added "well, you already have what to do it about. Make a documentary about your cat." The next question, which I don't know whether it was asked by anybody, would be "I have a cat, but what do I say about my cat?"


The confusion between narration and discourse is as difficult to notice as it is old. The cat in this example would help us to build a narrative, but the "what do I say? issue would be the center of the film's discourse. And the what do I say? problem is a much more suffocating one than the what film? Problem is, because it requires a degree of self-critical awareness that is not easy to exercise, and that in most cases is a heavy burden that drowns the creative drive. However, it is necessary to find an answer to the what do I say? Question to understand the cinema that one makes, and to be able to find new forms to develop it.

Ultimately, it's not very difficult to find films the directors of which know what they're narrating, but it's much less easy to find films where the director knows what they're saying.

A few days ago I wondered, while watching a terrible film by Sidney Lumet, what is cinema useful for. While as an industrial product the function of a film is to increase the patrimony of the producers, as a work of art its function is the same as that of any other work of art: to exercise critical awareness and at the same time depicting the zeitgeist of the time in which it is created. And, having said that, we still do not know what cinema is useful for, because the functions enunciated cover only a part of the meanings that the cinematographic fact contains.

Thus, there is a much wider field to cover in order to know what cinema is useful for, but as filmmakers that is one of the least relevant parts of the creative process that culminates in a film. And it is probably an insufferable burden when we need instinct rather than rational intermediation to start that creative process. Do I need to know what cinema is for when I write a script, am in the middle of a shoot or am editing my film? No, I don't need it. I just need to know what I want my film to be useful for, what I hope it will be useful for, and accept with fortitude and honesty that, to quote the master Paul Schrader, "most times a film succeeds for the wrong reasons."

So, if only filmmakers need to know what our film is useful for in that process of 3 different kinds of writing (not at all related to Spielberg): script writing, shooting and editing, which is a process of creation but also one of analysis and self-criticism, we will have to accept that in such process, as in the process of living and dying, we are completely alone.

Víctor M. Muñóz

It is traditional, and to some extent reasonable, to hear the pseudo-cinephile comment “I can’t understand anything Marlon Brando says” Or Mario Casas, to use two names that come to mind when you think of actors "who can never be understood when they speak". it is true that neither of them is a vocalization specialist, but at least in their respective careers they always worked with professional sound teams.

I am surprised (and, in a sense, excited) to see how today's short film maker has at their disposal all kinds of advanced technologies to shoot without any budget (pocket cameras, or simply mobile phones, that shoot in 4K, editing applications that you can use on a laptop, etc.). But, when it comes to recording sound, we commission it to our neighbor’s cousin, or to the one with a hangover, or we choose to use the direct sound that we have not bothered to configure in the camera. If we have actors on set with the diction of Brando or Casas, it is a perfect storm that guarantees that our short film... will be understood by no one.

Of course, is not only the short film makers that can be blamed. While it is perfectly possible to find all kinds of express workshops that teach you the rudiments of shooting with a team, or how to start understanding the basis of film photography, or what are the basics of editing and how to start using the most professional editing applications in a few weeks or months, the equivalent sound courses are always long (1 school year at least) or outright non-existent.

When it comes to short film, sound matters to very few people. And we forget that even if we work with actors with John Gielgud’s impeccable diction, if the sound is secondary in the film crew, he will not be understood either.

Víctor M. Muñóz