According to its etymological origin, short film comes from the French term court-métraje (short film).

For us, short film is culture, it is cinema. The length of a story told with moving images is not important, because what is important is what it tells and how it is told. We must not forget that the first cinematographic film in history, “The Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory” (1895) by Auguste Marie and Louis Jean Lumière, lasted only 46 seconds.

Short films have been a popular art form since the early days of cinema and are an important part of the current film industry because they have an incalculable value as a learning and initiation tool for all professionals in the sector and filmmakers of the future. Furthermore, they are a means of expression with their own identity where creative freedom allows their authors to move away from the conventional forms imposed by the industry and experiment with narrative, image aesthetics, cinematographic language, etc.

“Short films” are not a commercial product and film festivals are the best showcase, and sometimes the only one, to be able to show all this creative quality, and to see the public’s response to the different proposals that come to us from all parts of the world, without forgetting that we are cultural, social and festive events.

This year we have decided to take a step further in the renewal of the festival, in order to re-establish the spirit with which this project was born, and which has a lot to do with recovering the screenings of any short film regardless of its production format, category, genre or theme. To do this we have created new official competition sections and we have increased the economic value of the prizes, despite the budgetary problems that we always encounter, with the aim of increasing the presence of international films and their cinematographic quality.

It is not a total renovation, as we would have liked, because we have not managed to hold an awards ceremony as we had intended because the financial aid has been insufficient for this, and instead we have prepared a more traditional closingceremony, but no less important, since we are going to recover the act of homage to the person or entity that has stood out for its contribution to the diffusion of cinema and audiovisuals.

In this sense, this year we have decided to award a well-deserved Special Retina to Carlos de Cabo for his contribution to the realization of educational and pedagogical audiovisual projects in the 80s, through the program “Escuelas Viajeras. Cine en las escuelas” carried out in collaboration with a group of teachers and students from the San Andrés Public School -La Borreca.

It is also worth highlighting the collaboration of the Municipal Library “Valentín García Yebra”, directed by Jesús Álvarez Courel, as promoter of the project to recover the Audiovisual Heritage of Ponferrada, in the restoration of one of the most emblematic works of that time, such as the film “Un lugar para el tiempo” (1984) with script and direction by Carlos de Cabo, which will be screened at the same closing and tribute event. A wonderful coincidence in time, because in those years Jesús Álvarez Courel began to make his first films in super-8, and in some of them I had the opportunity to participate in different roles. They were my first shoots and the origin of my passion for cinema.

Thank you all for continuing to trust in “Mi Retina me Engaña”. Happy 22FICP (2024)

ANTONIO DONÍS
Director of the Ponferrada International Film Festival