Cuenca International Film Festival

Diane: There have been posters up all over town advertising the 3rd International Film Festival. The poster shows a woman with long black hair and lots of makeup in front of a brick building. I don't know about you, but that really makes me want to attend the festival ;-). Or perhaps such a scene really is representative of the types of films to be shown. No matter. I want to improve my Spanish, and a festival that surely will include Latin American films seems like just the ticket.

Although there are lots of posters up, evidently there are no schedules or programs available. The tourist office didn't have any. The Festival box office did not open until the first event. The municipal office didn't have any. So what's a movie lover to do? Go to the inaugural event, of course.

After talking with numerous people, it would seem that most Cuencans don't like the movies. But, I think they do like inaugurations, because the inauguration filled the large theatre. The mayor spoke. The head of the University spoke. The ambassador from Israel came down from Quito to speak. This last item was a good thing, because the opening film, Kadosh, was an Israeli film about a dysfunctional part of Judaism. I'm sure a lot of Cuencans came away with some very warped views of what Israeli life is like. If you didn't know better, Kadosh would lead you to believe that most daily life in Israel revolves around prayer; in a big Israeli city, there might be a secular fringe out there. To add to this bizarre viewpoint, the rabbi in this dysfunctional community insisted on an interpretation of Judaism with an extreme anti-woman bias. The movie itself was very slow-paced, but I didn't notice anybody walk out in the middle. Perhaps the audience was too polite.

Even at the inaugural event, there were no movie schedules. They did have a beautiful program guide. But, nobody could tell us what would be playing tomorrow. There are many things that you can get away with when organizing a festival, but not providing a schedule is not one of them. We heard the Festival may be in big-time debt. My theory is that they ran out of money and are waiting for some box-office revenue to pay the printer. The program guide describes films from Argentinia, Chile, Mexico, and even one from Ecuador, so I am looking forward to a smorgasborg of Spanish dialects over the course of the next week.