A program of short films will be screened on Barcelona’s metro system during the Subtravelling Film Festival, which opened October 15, 2010.
For a week, commuters will be able to view movies on subway platforms, on overhead screens on trains and in the plaza of Universitat Metro Station. The idea behind the festival, now in its second year, is to bring films to audiences rather than the other way around. The short format allows travellers to watch a movie from start to finish between stops, or while transferring lines.
The festival is divided into three sections.‘Microcurts’ comprises 15 fiction and 15 animated shorts made by amateur and professional filmmakers from around the world. Movies in this section range from the funny to the whimsical, but all aim to tell a 'great story in three minutes'.
Subtravelling Film Festival Showcases Promising Spanish Filmmakers
The finalists in ‘Campus’, a section devoted to cinematic talent from Spanish film schools, have running lengths up to 24 minutes. Synopses for all 12 movies can be found online (in Spanish only).
Movies that impressed at international film festivals get another chance to shine in the ‘Palmarès’ section of the Subtravelling Film Festival. One of these is Instead of Abracadabra (2009), a 20-minute lovable loser comedy about a would-be magician. Directed by the Swedish Patrik Eklund, the movie was nominated for a Best Short Film Oscar in 2010.
Oscar-Winning Short Logorama Screened in Subway Plaza
Also in the ‘Palmarès’ section is Logorama (2009), an amalgamation of some 2,500 global brand icons and mascots woven into a 16-minute high-speed chase-cum-disaster movie. The film is the creation of the French animation collective H5, François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain. It premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Prix Kodak, before going on to win Best Animated Short at the 82nd Academy Awards.
The longer movies in ‘Campus’ and ‘Palmarès’ will be screened in the plaza of the Universitat subway station (lines L1 and L2).
Voting for Short Films Open Online
All the ‘Microcurts’ shorts can be viewed online, where voting has been open since October 8. Eric Venti’s Solved (2’ 51”), in which Rubik’s Cubes take over the Earth, is currently leading the animated films; while Simon Atkinson and Adam Townley’s three-minute office romance Post-It Love is raising pulses in the fiction section.
A jury will announce the winners of the other two sections on October 23.
Subtravelling Film Festival, which is organised by TMB, Barcelona’s public transport operator, runs until October 23, 2010.
Cecily Layzell - Cecily Layzell is a food and travel writer and founder of restaurant review site www.eat-amsterdam.com.
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