Rocio Vázquez: Talking about the crisis in Chinese

This excess of Seville is rarely seen in mediocre productions. In her baroque and extreme impulses, she takes pride in the most trivial things – if they did not exist, they would have to be invented – she despises herself – even in the heartbreaking slogans that advocate her own death. Seville … Nor do we usually have the virtue of correcting, nor do we have the virtue of admitting it to those we correct. It’s not about duality, it’s about polarization. Anyway, I remember the summer two years ago. At that time, the Seville European Film Festival, already headed by José Luis Sanz in Plaza Nueva, experienced one of its biggest crises in its 22 editions. At the time, there was talk of canceling the contest because it coincided with Latin Grammy Week, another historic event scheduled to be hosted by the city. In reality, it was not an abolition, but a postponement until the following spring, which clearly undermined the proposal. In any case, this was not the only challenge endured by the successor of the Seville International Film Festival. In the 1980s, the protagonist of Emanuele was introduced to the world, and right before the first edition was celebrated, there was a strange precedent, to say the least, at the Seville International Film Festival. But we have a memory for important things.

Due to the consolidation of SEFF over the past two decades, which included names such as Agnes Varda, Roberto Saviano, Carlos Saura, Colin Farrell and Kenneth Branagh, and pressure from the cultural sector, the newly landed Sants team stopped its initial momentum and reduced the edition in a few days without Giraldillo, but by the end of the month, in November. Manuel Cristobal took the helm then and has since increased its cruising speed, regaining the act of reading nominations for the European Film Awards and EFA, adding to the list of numbers and ratings with such luminaries as David Putnam, Jeremy Irons, Costa-Gavras, Juliette Binoche and Alberto Rodriguez.

The same week, in an interview with the CEO of the Latin Recording Academy, which is leaving the United States for the first time in the history of the Latin Grammy Awards to hold the event in the capital, Seville, in November of that year, he agreed with, or at least provided an alibi for, Sanz’s attempt to postpone the Cinephile event citing inconsistencies. There was skepticism about the city’s ability to host a week-long event featuring Latin music stars and a gala that drew 12 million people in North America alone and had an undisputed impact on the economy and boosting tourism. It was a great test from which Sevilla recovered well, at least in the eyes of the academy. He says he will likely have to repeat almost everything if he returns. It was luck, good work, or a combination of both, but the challenge was successful, and the Chinese word for crisis turned out to be a good thing for the film festival. Out of the crisis came an opportunity for growth. And the two were taken advantage of.

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