For Immediate Release:
September 21, 2011
EGEDA, the Miami International Film Festival of Miami Dade College, and the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts present “Recent Cinema from Spain”, Celebrating 25 Years of the Goya Awards
Festival to Include the Florida Premiere of
Multiple-Goya Award winning Black Bread (Pa negre)
Miami, FL –- In honor of this year’s 25th anniversary of Spain’s Goya Awards, EGEDA, the Miami International Film Festival (MIFF), produced and presented by Miami Dade College, and the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts will premiere six of Spain’s most important films of the year, from October 20-23rd, in an inaugural Recent Cinema from Spain festival.
Held at the Olympia Theater at the Gusman Center, ticket holders will enjoy nightly red carpet premieres and participate in Q&A sessions with filmmakers and talent following each film.
The Recent Cinema from Spain series will include Black Bread (Pa negre). Winner of nine 2011 Goya Awards, the film chronicles 11-year-old Andreu (Francesc Colomer) and the events that follow after he witnesses two brutal murders. Andreu is sent to live with extended family in the countryside where he befriends his jaded cousin Nuria (Marina Comas), who has lost her fingers due to a grenade explosion, and a imaginative boy who thinks he has angel wings. Loosely based on Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations with the bleak fantastical soul of Pan’s Labyrinth, subversive filmmaker Agustí Villaronga’s harrowing and richly textured depiction of Spanish rural life during wartime is both challenging and rewarding.
Black Bread (Pa negre) was recently short-listed by Spain as one of the three finalists to be the county’s official submission to the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Spain will announce the final selection on September 28th.
“We are excited to showcase the best of contemporary Spanish cinema from a prolific film country that has produced such master artists as Pedro Almodovar, Fernando Trueba and Antonio Banderas, among many others,” said Jaie Laplante, executive director of the Miami International Film Festival. “To be partnering with the Gusman Center, that has hosted these great artists at their Miami International Film Festival debuts, is a special treat, and we look forward to working with EGEDA (Spain’s Audiovisual Producers’ Rights Management Association) to introduce many more great talents to Miami at this inaugural Recent Cinema From Spain festival.”
A Recent Cinema From Spain poster was created in honor of the 25th Anniversary of the Goya Awards, which acknowledges quality in Spanish cinema by rewarding the finest professionals in each technical and creative category of the seventh art. Created in 1987 and organized by the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, the ceremony has unquestionably become the greatest cinema event par excellence of Spain. The pictorial conception of art that Goya had made him the ideal choice to commemorate the greatest stars of Spanish cinema year after year. An infinity of famous names have several of the statuettes adorning their shelves: such a as Pedro Almodóvar, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Alejandro Amenábar, Javier Aguirresarobe and Alberto Iglesias.
A special series pass for all six films (including Opening Night) is now available for purchase at gusmancenter.orgfor $65 (plus processing fees).
Note: Information regarding the announcement of the remaining film titles, events and availability of talent for press interviews will be released in the coming weeks. miami.recentcinemafromspain.com
EGEDA (Spanish acronym for the “Audiovisual Producers’ Rights Management Association”) is a non-profit association and collecting society which manages the rights of the producers, collecting on their behalf the royalties than cannot be collected on an individual basis. In addition, EGEDA provides services to producers and the audiovisual industry as a whole. The Association represents and defends the interests of Spanish and Latin American audiovisual producers and is very active in the field of intellectual property rights management. EGEDA serve as a major link between the Spanish film industry and the American and Latino film industries.
Recent Cinema from Spain is the result of an initiative by EGEDA, with the purpose of promoting Spanish films in the United States and encouraging their circulation to the public at-large and the audiovisual industry.
The Miami International Film Festival (MIFF), celebrating its 29th edition on March 2-11, 2012, is considered the preeminent Ibero-American film festival in the U.S. The annual Festival, produced and presented by Miami Dade College, attracts more than 70,000 audience members and more than 400 filmmakers, producers, talent and industry professionals. It is the only major festival housed within a college or university. In the last five years, the Festival has screened films from more than 60 countries, including 300 East Coast, U.S. and World Premieres. MIFF programs such as Miami Encuentros, and a special focus on Ibero-American cinema have made the Miami International Film Festival a natural gateway for the discovery of Ibero-American talent. Additionally, the Festival offers unparalleled educational opportunities to filmmakers and the community at large. For more, visit miff2020.wpengine.com or call 305-237-MIFF (3456).
Miami Dade College has a long and rich history of involvement in the cultural arts, providing South Florida with a vast array of artistic and literary offerings including The Miami Book Fair International, the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, the MDC Live performance series, The MDC Tower Theater Cinema Series, nine visual arts galleries including The Freedom Tower at Miami Dade College and the School of Entertainment and Design Technology, in addition to the renowned Miami International Film Festival. MDC is the largest institution of higher education in the country and is nationally recognized for many of its academic and cultural programs. With an enrollment of more than 174,000 students, MDC is the nation’s top producer of degrees. The college’s eight campuses and outreach centers offer nearly 300 distinct degree programs including several baccalaureate degrees. It has admitted nearly 2 million students since it opened its doors in 1960. More at mdc.edu.
Gusman Center for the Performing Arts
The Olympia Theater opened in 1926 in downtown Miami as a silent movie palace and amazed the public with its stunning Moorish architecture, perfect acoustics and simulated night sky, complete with wafting clouds and twinkling stars. The two-story, 1,567-seat theater also achieved fame as the first air- conditioned building in the South. Thanks to extensive restorations in the 1970s, overseen in part by famed architect Morris Lapidus, the theater was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Throughout its history, the Olympia—now better known as the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts—has been host to the world’s most exciting performers in the arts and entertainment community. Since 1983, the theater has been the premier theatrical venue for the Miami International Film Festival. gusmancenter.org.
MIFF Media Contact: Danny Diaz, 305-389-8986, danny@miamifilmfestival.com
MDC Media Contacts: Juan Mendieta – MDC’s director of communications – 305-237-7611, jmendiet@mdc.edu; Tere Estorino, MDC director of media relations, 305-237-3949, testorin@mdc.edu; Sue Arrowsmith, 305-237-3710, sue.arrowsmith@mdc.edu; Tarnell Carroll at tcarroll@mdc.edu; or Alejandro Rios, 305-237-7482, arios1@mdc.edu.
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