Mar del Plata Film Festival 2009

Argentina’s Mar del Plata Film Festival, the only FIAPF Category A festival in Latin America, will open its 24th edition on Nov. 7 with Joel and Ethan Coen’s “A Serious Man,” playing out of competition.

The U.S. has one contender among the 14 pics in the official international competition — Todd Solondz’s family drama “Life During Wartime.”

Argentina is repped by Israel Adrian Caetano’s marital problem tale “Francia” and Jose Campusano’s “Vikingo.”

Other pics in contention include two Oscar foreign language hopefuls — Alvaro Brechner’s comedy “Mal dia para pescar” (Bad Day to Go Fishing), repping Uruguay, and Bong Joon-ho’s “Mother,” repping South Korea.

Eight features will compete in the Latin American section and nine in the Argentina section. There also will be a retrospective on Jim Henson, creator of “The Muppet Show” and “Sesame Street.” Fest closes Nov. 15.

International Competition List for the Mar Del Plata Film Festival:

“Francia,” Israel Adrian Caetano, Argentina
“Vikingo,” Jose Campusano, Argentina
“Mother,” Bong Joon-ho, South Korea
“Horn of Plenty,” Juan Carlos Tabio, Cuba
“V.O.S,” Cesc Gay, Spain
“A Serious Man,” Todd Solondz, U.S.
“Letters to Father Jakkob,” Klaus Haro, Finland
“The Time that Remains,” Elia Suleiman, Israel
“Dogtooth,” Giorgos Lanthimos, Greece
“Nothing Personal,” Urszula Antoniak, Holland
“A Man Who Ate His Cherries,” Payman Haghani, Iran
“Five Days without Nora,” Mariana Chenillo, Mexico
“Room and a Half,” Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, Russia
“Bad Day to Go Fishing,” Alvaro Brechner, Uruguay

About Mar del Plata:

Mar del Plata is an Argentine city located on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean in the Buenos Aires Province, 400 km (249 mi) south of Buenos Aires. Mar del Plata is one of the major fishing ports and the biggest seaside beach resort in Argentina. With a population of 541,733 as per the 2001 census [INDEC], it is the 7th largest city in Argentina.

As part of the Argentine recreational coast, tourism is Mar del Plata’s main economic activity with seven million tourists visiting the city in 2006. Mar del Plata has a sophisticated tourist infrastructure with countless hotels, restaurants, casinos, theatres and other tourist attractions. Mar del Plata is also an important sports centre with a multi-purpose Olympic style stadium (first used for the 1978 World Cup and later upgraded for the 1995 Pan American Games), 5 golf courses and many other facilities. These chalets are comprised of stone façades, gables roofs covered with Spanish or French tiles, prominent eaves and front porches. This gives the town some distinctive urban character compared with other Argentine cities, despite the fact that the growing mass of tourists in the ’60s necessitated the construction of large apartment buildings and skyscrapers as the predominant architectural style downtown.

The development of the city as a seasonal resort in the early 20th century led upper class tourists from Buenos Aires to build a European-inspired architecture, based mainly on the picturesque and later on the art deco styles. This gave Mar del Plata the nickname of the Argentine Biarritz.

During the ’30s,’40s, and beyond, local architects and builders, like Auro Tiribelli, Arturo Lemmi, Alberto Córsico-Picollini and Raúl Camusso recreated and transformed the picturesque values into a middle-class scale, marking the beginning of the so called Mar del Plata Style, consisting in small samples of the luxury-laden summer residences of high society, built for the summer visitor as well as for the local resident.
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SOURCES:

“Mar del Plata fest gets ‘Serious’”
Wed., Oct. 14, 2009
By CHARLES NEWBERY
Variety

http://www.variety.com

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118009936.html

“Mar del Plata”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://www.wikipedia.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar_del_Plata