The festival will be held from June 1 to 10 with a program that once again includes talks and a photographic exhibition in addition to the projections
The organization has taken a step forward in inclusion and this year will offer sessions with audio description for people with visual disabilities
The Malva-rosa and Orriols neighborhoods will host the “fresh cinema” initiative that allows you to enjoy the official section for free and in the open air
The Valencia International Film and Human Rights Festival, Humans Fest, organized by Fundación por la Justicia since 2009, has presented the official programming for its XIV edition. In total, in Valencia they will be screened between June 1 and 10 more than 40 fiction and documentary films that address the gender perspective in the defense of human rights, questioning discrimination and making visible actions in favor of equality.
“In 2023 we have chosen to talk about women's rights because they remain in dispute anywhere in the world. We have proven it with the electoral campaign: the parties continue to play politics with our reproductive and sexual freedom. We also experience it in the streets, where we suffer hate attacks for our sexual orientation. We are the ones who sustain life, but inequality passes through us,” he explained. Majo Siscar, director of Humans Fest, at the event that was held this morning at the Diputació de València.
In this presentation they have also participated Mentxu Balaguer, Deputy for International Cooperation of the Provincial Council of Valencia; Mª José Marco, from the Justice Foundation; and Vane Julián, designer and illustrator in charge of this year's poster; who have agreed by highlighting the need for initiatives such as Humans Fest so that culture is an engine of social transformation. “We believe that this edition is more alive than ever, both because of the subject matter we address and the way we do it. We offer a broad, integrative and critical perspective,” recognized Mª José Marco.
“This is a festival that energizes public and private spaces, such as the Diputació de València itself, with parallel activities such as the photographic exhibition of Eva Máñez, which we can see right now here and which will remain for the next few days within the reach of all visitors who want to see it or the MuVIM with the Vermouths Humans that will be held in the cafeteria,” stated Mentxu Balaguer.
For his part, Vane Julián explained the creative process of the 2023 image, for which “a dialogue has been maintained from a feminist perspective, both from me and from the Humans Fest team.” Likewise, he has analyzed the elements that make up the poster, each one with its meaning. In his words: “I have used an eye as a central element, alluding to the audiovisual lens to represent the human gaze. On the other hand, the side vignettes reflect the transversality of feminism: the struggle, the tenderness, the empowerment, the cooperation...
ISABEL COIXET: HONORARY AWARD WITH OWN CYCLE
The 14th edition of Humans Fest will start on Thursday, June 1 at the La Beneficencia Cultural Center with a renowned guest: the director Isabel Coixet, who this year has been awarded the festival's honorary prize, Peace and Justice, for the marked gender perspective in her career, helping to deconstruct traditional female representation and masculinity in the audiovisual field.
Coixet will not only attend the inauguration, but on Friday, June 2, he will star in a colloquium that will begin his “author cycle” in the Valencia Film Archive, where the film that changed his career will be shown, My life without me, regarding its 20th anniversary and its latest documentary, El sostre groc. In addition, two feature films will be screened that have inspired her view of gender in cinema and that have been chosen by herself.
AN OFFICIAL SECTION MORE ACCESSIBLE THAN EVER
Humans Fest once again consists of six competitive sections, which include more than 40 productions from multiple origins, such as Spain, Colombia, Mexico, Slovenia, Georgia, Afghanistan or China, among other countries. Specifically, as best fiction feature film Five films compete, of which four are premieres in Spain: Opal, The man without guilt, The agitators y A room of my own. In addition, a fifth film will be screened that is also a premiere in the Valencian Country, the Franco-Moroccan Malikates.
For their part, there are six proposals that aspire to best documentary feature film and three are also firsts in our country: And still I sing; Old fashion, new life y Kenya. Added to this are 24 works that participate in the section Curt i Barrejat, in which they compete for the awards for best documentary short, best fiction short, best Valencian short film and best Valencian short film script, awarded by EDAV.
Likewise, it is worth noting that Humans Fest has once again opted for animation (Opal), as well as for the Valencian audiovisual, since seven short films have been produced in the Valencian Country and this year's Official Section includes both feature films and short films in our language. Finally, another novelty related to the Official Section is that a selection of 13 films (nine shorts and 4 feature films) will be available on the platform Filmin from June 5 to 11.
Regardless of the category, this year Humans Fest presents an important novelty thanks to a collaboration agreement between Fundación por la Justicia and the ELEVEN: more than half of the festival days, screenings will be offered with a audio description, so that these sessions will be accessible to people with visual disabilities through the Audesc mobile application. This system allows people with some type of visual disability to attend a conventional film screening and listen to the audio description through headphones connected to their mobile phone.
On the other hand, as was done in the 2022 edition, the Humans Fest organization has decided to maintain its commitment to taking cinema to the streets, so that Valencian citizens will be able to enjoy free of a selection of works from the Official Outdoor Section. Specifically, these “fresh” sessions will take place in the courtyard of the CEIP Ballester Fandós neighborhood Mauve-pink and in the Plaza Jardín de la Ermita in Orriols.
THE PARTICIPATORY DOCUMENTARY IS THE PROTAGONIST
One of the main activities of Humans Fest are its audiovisual workshops on human rights: a creation space for activists that, with the help of the producer Harvest, they learn to convey their messages with cameras. Under this year's motto, the gender perspective, three works have been born from here that will premiere on Monday, June 5 in the first session of the Sample of Participatory Shorts which will house the Rector Peset Residence Hall.
The second session, for its part, will take place on Wednesday, June 7 in that same space, where the short documentary films made by a group of male inmates at the Penitentiary Center Antoni Asunción Hernández de Picassent, who have also worked with the La Cosecha team thanks to a collaboration with Fundación por la Justicia.
VERMOUTH WITH HUMAN RIGHTS FOR SATURDAY MORNINGS
Another novelty that Humans Fest has presented for its 14th edition are the so-called Vermouth Humans: a meeting with activists at MuVIMENT (the MuVIM cafeteria) to talk in a more relaxed atmosphere about the situation of women's human rights in the world. Specifically, they will be on Saturdays, June 3 and 10, at 12 noon, under the titles Women in struggle e Intersections, respectively.
Humans Fest is part of the international Human Rights Film Network. Its 14th edition is celebrated thanks to the collaboration of the Conselleria de Cooperació, Diputació de València, Ajuntament de València, Institut Valencià de Cultura, Caixa Popular and Teika. For its part, the Valencian regional radio and television station À Punt is the official media of the festival.