The city of Madrid will become capital of documentary cinema with the celebration of the 22nd edition of Documenta Madridthat will be developed from 6 al 11 May in six venues: Cineteca Madrid (main headquarters), Reina Sofía Museum, Spanish Filmoteca, La Casa Encandida, ECAM and Casa de México Foundation. The Festival, organized by the Area of Culture, Tourism and Sports of the City of Madrid, It reinforces its commitment to the file as a memory tool and with Documentary cinema as a language of social and political analysis.
The inaugural session will be starring an unprecedented finding: the projection for the first time of City image y Architectural hallucination, two films made in 1967 By architect Ricardo Bofill with Óscar Tusquets, Xavier Bagué and Peter Hodgkinson, set in a Barcelona in full urban transformation. Both works are part of the Ricardo Bofill Archive Architecture Workshop (RBTA).
Alejandra Garzón, director of the Bofill Archivehe explains to El Confindeial that “they are simple movies, but with a huge symbolic load. They reflect how a space can emotionally modify a person.” Adds that “they show a Modernist Barcelona in Transformationnot as a postcard, but as an urban and human trial field. Ricardo’s figure was key, but this is not only about him. It is a collective project, with very close friends like Tusquets, where it is already intuited how it is created memory from the file ”.
One of the works includes the appearance of the actress Serena Vergano, Figure near Bofill’s environment. The tapes show both buildings built and developing spaces, with a strong aesthetic and emotional dimension. “It’s not about restoring a relic,” Garzón clarifies, “but about activating a look, of Understand how the file can affect how we look And how we feel in the city. ”
Retrospect
Together with these works, it will also be released Damn childdirected by Violeta Pagán In collaboration with young people from school within Cine, a social insertion project promoted by Cineteca Madrid with adolescents in vulnerability. “The documentary is not a mirror. It is a way of thinking about the world. We do not seek to fill rooms, We seek to fill heads ”, state LUIS E. PARESdirector artistic of the festival, in statements to this medium. “We want to bring documentary cinema to the Madrid citizen from the real, from the file, from the possibility of looking at the past to rethink the present”.
Documenta Madrid 2025 will have 25 films In competition, five thematic cycles and four projects in development within the Final Court section. Workshops, special projections, professional meetings and activities aimed at specific audiences will also be organized.
-Among the invited international figures stand out Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafariprotagonist of a retrospective in the Spanish Filmoteca; The German Out aurandwith a sample at the Reina Sofía Museum; and the British Miranda Pennellto whom the ECAM dedicates a cycle commissioned by students.
Inclusion and file image
The festival maintains its commitment to inclusion, through collaborations with institutions such as the Casa de México Foundationwhich this year presents a sample of Mexican contemporary documentary and participates in training activities within the program. Among the outstanding proposals is the participation of authors such as Daniela Alatorre, Lucina Caplan y Gastón Andradewhose works reflect the diversity of current Mexican documentary.
Vania RojasDirector of Linking of Casa de México, also points to this media that “last year the focus was placed on the rescue and collection of documentary material within the cycle Mexico – Second Editionand this year we focus on recent production titles ”.
Rojas also underlines “the great interest of Mexico’s house in Understand and share The structure of Mexican documentary cinema with the Spanish public “and highlights that” the documentary has been consolidating within Mexico for some time, but now too wants to project out and connect with new audiences. ”
With these projections, the festival closes its edition by putting The focus on the value of the file as an essential part of documentary language. Alberto Portero’s secretof David Plaza Salgadoy The trail (1966), of Javier Aguirrewill be presented with live musical accompaniment by Abel Hernández Pozuelo. The official image of this edition, created by the photographer Ricardo Casesrefer to the Madrid district of Usera, thus closing a program that has sought to dialogue with the territory, cinema and its multiple forms of memory.
