By Matteo Pazzi
The Guanajuato International Film Festival (GIFF) expanded its horizons and gained strength by bringing to its stage globally renowned filmmakers whose works raised the passions of aficionados and all lovers of the seventh art. Thus, GIFF was pleased to dedicate an International Tribute for the first time and award the Silver Cross to the veteran filmmaker Oliver Stone. After his visit, and with the idea of stimulating the summer plans of Guanajuato residents and visitors from all over the world, GIFF set the tone with a complete program that features short and feature films and a cycle of master conferences of the highest quality, with the added anticipation of wondering to whom the next International Tribute will be dedicated.
Thus, edition after edition, the festival has honored a prodigious repertoire of the great names of the cinema world. Filmmakers like Tim Burton, Gaspar Noé, Spike Lee, Paul Schrader, Peter Greenaway, Darren Aronofsky, Danny Boyle, Spike Jonze, Roger Corman, and Anton Corbijn have come this way to various GIFF host cities. In turn, Gus Van Sant, Peter Weir, Terry Gilliam, Michel Gondry, and, from the GIFF Virtual Campus platform, David Lynch, are all indisputable pillars of contemporary cinema, sharing with our audiences the trajectories of their great careers.
After the Guanajuato International Film Festival invited an entire foreign delegation to pay tribute to the cinema of the Guest of Honor country, recognition was extended to personalities who put their homeland in the spotlight. This is how filmmakers came from all corners of the world, such as Shyam Benegal and Deepa Mehta from India; Eliseo Subiela and Lucrecia Martel from Argentina; South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-Wook also came from far away Asia, as well as laureates Bong Joon Ho, Masato Harada, Naomi Kawase, and Kaori Momoi. In other years, Turkey, Lebanon, and the Philippines were honorable guests, with Fatih Akin, Nadine Labaki, Ghassan Salhab, and Kidlat Tahimik as their representatives.
Persistence and Memory
There are too many names to mention them all, but their presence in Guanajuato confirms the relevance of GIFF with its incomparable melting pot of personalities who have assembled every summer when the screens are displayed and the projectors turned on. Names like Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Lars Von Trier, Rupert Friend, Elliot Goldenthal, Stephen Goldblatt, Ryan Coogler, Sarah Gadon, Spencer Tunick, and Udo Kier have participated in the festival, as well as Alejandro González Iñarritu, Irvin Kershner, Guillermo Arriaga, Carlos Cuarón, Kenneth Anger, Alfredo Joskovich, Diego Luna, Vanessa Bauche, Yalitza Aparicio, Bárbara Mori, Juan Carlos Rulfo, Roberto Fiesco, Carlos Hagerman, Fernando Sariñana, and Bruno Bichir. We’ve enjoyed impressive concerts ranging from Café Tacuba to X Japan and constituted such a rosary of juries, film critics, and editorial experts that it would be impossible to mention them all in such a short article.
We pay respect and gratitude to all the people who’ve made up this admirable cinematographic experience, who make the term “special guest” a mere formality since their visits were so manifestly important. It has been 25 years of building a film festival day by day that, with its international name, bears the seal of inclusion and equity, the virtuous cycle from formation to recognition, and the integrity of those who know that a story has been well told. Some say that cinema is born thanks to retinal persistence; we say it’s the pleasant memories that will dictate the course of the next 25 years.
