Icaro Film Festival coming soon

PAnama.The Central American Film and Video Icaro Festival is the main regional cinematographic competition. This year, it will be held from November 14 - 20 in Guatemala, where prizes include the “Hunger and Malnutrition in Central America” award.

Every year, the organizing committee welcomes producers, directors, and lovers of audiovisual art in Central America to participate and submit their works of art.

Given the growth and importance of the festival, the committee decided to convert it this year from a regional competition to an international event and are now accepting international productions.

Across Central America, National Icaro Festivals have been or are taking place this month, where ‘Diplomas of Recognition’ are awarded to the productions that have made the cut for Guatemala at each country’s closing event.

The National Icaro Movie Festival in Panama City will start on Thursday September 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the Anthropological Museum Reina Torres de Arauz.

A selection of both short and regular-length films winners of last year’s Icaro Festival will be screened, as well as showings of the Panamanian movies that have been chosen to compete in Guatemala this year.

The Panamanian festival will jumpstart with the screening of the fictional Guatemaltecan movie “VIP?LA OTRA COSA” (VIP? the other thing) by Elias Jimenez.

“VIP? LA OTRA CASA” deals with corruption in governmental spheres and follows the story of the General Comptroller of the Republic, who is jailed for corruption and taken to prison.

Once in prison, he confronts a dangerous and unknown reality, and needs to be cautious of his every move in order to survive.

The movie’s lead actor is Juan Pablo Olyslager, Latin Americanmovie and television actor, who will be present on opening night along with a delegation of Latin American filmmakers.

The Panamanian productions, “Chilin” and “3 Loops” will also be screened on opening night. “Chilin” is a short clip by Abner Benaim, starring the musical group Las Soprano, composed of prisoners of the Female Penitentiary Center. “3 Loops” is an experimental video by Victor Mares.

Both movies were winners of the main prize in their respective categories in the Guatemala Icaro Festival of 2007.

During opening night, an international delegation of two foreign filmmakers and one national willannounce their selection from the submitted videos and feature films of those that will compete in this year’s Regional Icaro Festival in November.

Those selected will be screened from September 5 to 11 in theater 5 of the Alhambra Movie Theater in Via España. The showings are free.

The festival has come a long way, gaining popularity with the passing years. The David, Chiriqui leg of the National Festival was held last week in the Ballesta Salon at the Technological University Oteima, where dozens of people of different ages came together to view the videos, short and long features that were screened.

Aby Martinez travelled to Chiriqui on behalf of the University Film Experimental Group to share with the audience details of the festival, how it was developed and its importance in a region like Central America--which for many years has been suffering from corruption and at the hands of guerrillas, military regimes.

Along with the feature film “VIP? la otra cosa”, the videos shown included the journalistic work by Cinthia Morales, who attended the event with her cameraman Erick Osorio. Together they submitted a piece for Best Journalistic work.

Morales and Osorio expressed their content with the Icaro Festival for taking into consideration videos of social character.

Information on the screenings is available at sertv’s website: http://www.sertv.gob.pa.