March 15, 2023
The 18th edition of MICE – International Ethnographic Film Festival will open this Wednesday with a special screening that will bring to the audience Pepe Coira’s recreation of Canto de emigración, a lost film by Antonio Román. The event will be held at 8:00 pm at Teatro Principal, one of the three venues (along with Numax and the Museum of Galician People) hosting MICE’s activities this year.
A short film that at the time was seen as one of the rare examples of avant-garde cinema in Spain, Canto de emigración (Romance en imágenes sobre motivos gallegos) (1934) tells the story of a Galician peasant who leaves his small village to make money in America. However, he comes back a poor and sick man. Even though there are no known copies of Román’s film, there is material testimony from which to reimagine what it looked like – the script, several pictures of the filming, and the original musical score composed by Teódulo R. Páramos, which will be played live and in synchronization with the film by Vigo’s Classical Orchestra, the oldest classical orchestra in Galicia.
At 10:00 pm, after this opening session, the Teatro Principal will host the first screening of Trazas’ selection –one of MICE’s parallel sections, whose program is developed in collaboration with Cineclube de Compostela. The first piece that Trazas brings to us this year is As Cidades e as Trocas, a Portuguese film by Luísa Homem and Pedro Pinho that transversally explores rururbanity –the theme chosen to be the focus of this 18th edition. The film, which resorts to documentary filmmaking devices, portrays the tourism crisis in Cabo Verde and its effects since 2007, with particular attention to the social and geographical transformations it has caused.
For more practical information on MICE’s schedule, tickets, and venues, click on this link.