The eighteenth edition of Punto de Vista, the International Documentary Film Festival of Navarra (Pamplona, March 11 to 16), which will bring together 23 films from 15 countries in its official section, will feature several programs dedicated to the work of Su Friedrich and Jerome Hiler.
One of the main artist-in-focus of the festival will be a comprehensive retrospective of Friedrich's work. This will span the filmmaker's 40-year career, from her more formal and abstract works like "Gently Down the Stream" (1981), intimate and familial visions like "Sink or Swim" (1990) or "The Ties that Bind" (1985), to her most recent work "Today" (2022). Friedrich's films, written, filmed, edited, and soundtracked by herself, reflect a great formal freedom and address themes such as love, sexuality, illness, family relationships, and lesbian activism, among others. Friedrich employs a variety of formats, from Super 8 to digital video, and is characterized by the juxtaposition of texts, sounds, and images from diverse sources. The retrospective, curated by Gloria Vilches and the first of its kind in Spain, will then travel to Barcelona (Filmoteca de Catalunya), Madrid (Cineteca), A Coruña (Filmoteca de Galicia - CGAI), and Valencia (IVAC - La Filmoteca).
Additionally, this year the festival's publication will be a book of conversations with the filmmaker co-edited with Caniche. The book brings together an interview with Scott MacDonald already included in his book "A Critical Cinema 2" (1992), along with a lengthy, previously unpublished interview about her recent work. MacDonald is an important American scholar whose main research areas are avant-garde cinema and documentary.
The "Contacts" section, which hosts works combining documentary film with other disciplines, will feature the work of Jerome Hiler, through his film-lecture "Cinema before 1300" (2022), where he analyzes the relationship between Gothic stained glass art and cinema. This film will be complemented by an additional program of his works, including titles like "Words of Mercury" (2010-2011), "Marginalia" (2016), "Bagatelle I" (2016-2018), or "Ruling Star" (2019). Both sessions are curated by Francisco Algarín Navarro, co-author with Carlos Saldaña of the book "Illuminated Hours: The Early Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler" (Lumière, 2022).
