November 26–December 8, 2020
Dart, the pioneering festival in Spain and Chile in programming documentary cinema focused exclusively on contemporary art, celebrates its 4th edition in Spain from November 26 to December 8.
Different types of Festival pass are available at dart-festival.com.The call for submissions to participate in the 2021 edition is now open at filmfreeway.com.
For the first time, the Dart Festival programme will be available online on filmin.es, accessible from everywhere in Spain. The Festival, which offers the public an invaluable opportunity to approach the languages of contemporary art through cinema via the best documentary films of the last three years, presents 20 documentaries of which 15 are feature films and five are short films.
The 2020 edition of the festival features four sections: Sample Section Dart, with documentaries inspired by the work of key Spanish and international figures of contemporary art history; International Competition, with biopics, essays and stories that explain the fascination of art with varied approaches and aesthetics; National Competition, which gives visibility to some of the best documentaries on art made in Spain, and, as a novelty, the Short Competition section presents films of original approach and open to experimentation. The jury of the competitive sections is comprised of visual artist Jordi Colomer, film critic Quim Casas and art curators Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa, who will announce the winning documentaries on Thursday December 3.
In the Sample Section, Dart 2020 features documentaries about Marina Abramović, Sigalit Landau, Katharina Sieverding and Shirin Neshat, who use their own bodies as a primary tool for their artistic process; László Moholy-Nagy and the creation of the New Bauhaus school in Chicago; Ai Weiwei’s exhibition at Alcatraz in which he claimed for political dissidents imprisoned in different parts of the world; Keith Haring; Spanish artist Nestor Basterretxea; as well as the landscapes that inspired Spanish artist César Manrique.
The International Competitive Section includes features films on the photojournalist Martha Cooper, who documented the beginnings of hip-hop and street art in New York in the 1970s; on Burning Man Festival as the world’s largest outdoor art gallery in the Nevada desert; on Sven Marquardt, the well-known bouncer of the Berghain club who started photographing the Berlin underground scene before the fall of the wall; and a documentary on the adventures of French artist and activist JR.
The National Competitive Section features the story of the dancer, scriptwriter and costume designer Natacha Rambova, who lived on the island of Mallorca; the painter Félix Cuadrado, the only living representative of the Simancas Group; and the life of the Canary Islands artist, Alberto Manrique, told by his granddaughter.
As a novelty, Dart 2020 has launched a Competitive Short Films Section, which includes experimental stories such as Recoding Art, which critically questions the interaction between artificial intelligence and contemporary art; Still Untitled, about a woman who experiments with picturing herself as Cindy Sherman; Game and Error, about the Spanish artist Març Rabal; Flower Punk, about the Japanese artist Azuma Makoto; Tabaski a film that mixes fiction, art and politics inspired by the work of the Senegalese painter Iba N’diaye.
Dart Festival programme:
Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly (2019—USA), 76 minutes, Cheryl Haines. Spanish premiere
Beauty and Decay (2019—Germany), 79 minutes, Annekatrin Hendel, Spanish premiere
Body of Truth (2019—Germany), 92 minutes, Evelyn Schels. Spanish premiere
Burning Man: Art on Fire (2020—USA), 60 minutes, Gerald Fox. Spanish premiere
En el Volcán. Manrique: Jameos del Agua / Casa Tahíche (2020—Spain), 30 minutes, Orencio Boix
Flower Punk (2019—US), 28 minutes, Alison Klayman. Spanish premiere
Joc i Error (2020—Spain), 10 minutes, Guillermo Bermúdez. Spanish premiere
Keith Haring: Street Art Boy (2020—UK), 89 minutes, Ben Anthony. Spanish premiere
Martha: A Picture Story (2019 Australia, USA), 81 minutes, Selina Miles
Recoding Art (2019—Brasil), 15 minutes, Bruno Moreschi and Gabriel Pereira. Spanish premiere
Shooting the Mafia (2019 Ireland), 97 minutes, Kim Longinotto
Still Untitled / Encore sans titre (2019—Canada), 15 minutes, Geneviève Sauvé. Spanish premiere
Tabaski (2019—Senegal, France), 26 minutes, Laurence Attali. Spanish premiere
The Last Archer (2020—Spain), 75 minutes, Dácil Manrique de Lara
The New Bauhaus – The Life and Legacy of Moholy-Nagy (2019 - USA), 89 minutes, Alysa Nahmias. Spanish premiere
The Proposal (2018—USA), 82 minutes, Jill Magid. Spanish premiere
Tierras Construidas (2020—Spain), 81 minutes, Arturo Dueñas
Tras la sombra de Natacha Rambova (2019—Spain), 54 minutes, Georgina Sas
Un retrato de N. B. (2020—Spain), 24 minutes. Peio Aguirre
