There was a time, back in the fifties, when the West discovered
cinema from the East. Such cinema, obviously, had been around for some
time, but it had rarely reached our screens and we knew almost nothing
about it. We then discovered the work of its great masters, the main
lines of strength of its production, its most frequent genres and
subgenres... With time, oriental film even became a favoured topic of
theoretical attention and academic work. The voyage is far from over,
although the geopolitical South soon began to take on clear protagonism
in specialized journals and festivals all over the world. In the age of
the new cinemas (with Latin America being at the head) and the
emergence of young filmmakers in the most remote corners of the planet
(mostly, but not exclusively, sub-Saharan Africa), this South was
demanding the attention it had never before received and the
international circuit of festivals finally seemed willing to comply.

The Granada Festival Cines del Sur now joins that circuit,
and it does so with the intention not of making untimely discoveries
but rather of contributing to the public's knowledge about a subject
the wealth and diversity of which have been amply demonstrated. Far
from falling into that monolithic stereotype which, from comfortable
ignorance, some people attribute to them, cinemas from the South offer
images as varied as they are vibrant, and which our Festival now
intends to make available to the public, for the enjoyment of viewers.
Fiction and documentary -as well as any middle ground or hybrid
formula-, commercial productions and films of the auteur tradition,
celluloid and digital... all quality films produced in the South will
find a place within the design of the Granada Festival. The idea is to
add, not take away. The idea behind the Festival is to provide a
ductile container which, through its various sections, including some
essential historical retrospectives, does justice to a flank of world
production whose value is not always acknowledged. "What is important
now," said the great Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray a quarter of a
century ago, "is not so much that in the West they understand our films
but simply that they see them."

We're working on it.

Alberto Elena
Programme Director - Cines del Sur