SHORT FILMS BY GONZALO BALLESTER

The second instalment of the video series Miradas al extranjero: nuevos autores del documental español (Views abroad: new Spanish documentary filmmakers), organised by the DOCMA association at Intermediae, is dedicated to Gonzalo Ballester. The session includes the screening of three independent documentaries and a presentation and talk by Gonzalo and a DOCMA representative. Gonzalo Ballester (Murcia, 1982) makes short films and documentaries, mostly on social themes. His notable first short film, Mimoune, won 15 awards. In 2003 Gonzalo travelled to Siena on a study grant and filmed the material for La Serenissima (2006) in Venice, selected for the Malaga Film Festival and nominated for best documentary at the Goya Awards 2007. At the end of 2005, he took a film course at the European Film College in Denmark, and in 2006 he was selected to participate in the Cannes Film Festival’s Youth Award. In 2006 he shot his first feature-length documentary. On Friday 15 July, three of Gonzalo’s films will be shown, all with the connecting theme of return and reunion: >Mimoune, 2006 (Spain). Documentary. Directed by: Gonzalo Ballester. Length: 12´. Language: Arabic with Spanish subtitles. Short documentary dealing with illegal immigration in which social uprooting entails the hardest and most trying experience: a family’s separation. This film arose from a desire to reunite a family that had been waiting for this moment for a long time, even if only on camera. >The Molky Way, 2009 (Spain). Documentary. Directed by: Gonzalo Ballester. Length: 24´. Language: Persian with Spanish subtitles. Molky is a 73-year-old Iranian woman who has been widowed for 14 years and lives alone in a humble house in Baragun, Iran. Molky wants to travel to Isfahan to visit some family members that she has not seen for more than 20 years. >Al-Madina (La ciudad) (The city), 2010 (Spain). Documentary. Directed by: Gonzalo Ballester. Length: 14´. Language: Arabic and Spanish with Spanish subtitles. The immortal poem The City, by Constantine Cavafy, serves as a backdrop for a Moroccan immigrant’s return in defeat to the land of his birth after living in Spain from 2001 to 2010; a personal story that surely resembles many others these days.