ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL BARCELONA | AFFBCN2021
October, the 27th until November, the 7th
At Cinemes Girona, CaixaForum Barcelona, Instituto Francés,
Filmoteca de Catalunya and FILMIN (online)
If there is such a thing as an Asian cinema, it can only be understood as the demonstration of a mosaic of nationalities that identify with their local narratives, related or not, but still expressing the coexistence they maintain with each other in an information society dominated by the image. It is a plural cinema, representative of the geographical, political, economic and cultural diversity of an unequal continent. In this inclusive framework that the festival aims to be, all the productions presented at the Asian Film Festival Barcelona | AFFBCN, from its first edition in 2011 to the present, are brought together. Cinema, like literature, can make the private public and elevate the private to the public. So, the spectator is given the opportunity to explore and share both the domestic life and the public life of its protagonists. The physical place where the event takes place in turn becomes decisive in understanding what is happening. At the same time, the space-time of what is narrated and what has been narrated is decisive: the moving image speaks for itself, alternately crossed by the words and the silences that rule it.
The discovery of places, territories and identities that cinema brings us closer to cannot be compared to any other means of communication. When we speak of Asian cinema, we cannot fail to refer to the extent of its development over the last two decades. This has been spectacular in many cases, understanding the commitment of its authors to the creation and transmission of their own stories and the value of a radical imagination that has managed to overcome all obstacles to name worlds without a name if it were not for the visibility that cinema has given them, favouring access to privileged information for all its recipients without distinction. Cinema introduces us individually into the lives of individuals, communities or groups that make up the societies to which we belong. The great stories that this cinema tells, bringing together fragments cut from anonymous lives, inform us about their power of communication and at the same time instruct us about the imaginaries that shape their identities.
