Briefly. Issue 7

Gijon Celebrates Cinema And Mourns A Festival Director

One of Europe’s most dynamic film festivals, Gijon’s FICX International Film Festival, mourns the recent passing of a former director, José Luis Cienfuegos, during whose two decades of leadership the festival’s renown grew markedly. Cienfuegos contributed a great deal to the vitality of Spanish film festivals and, more widely, to cinema in Spain. FICX is reputed for its commitment to “authentically independent cinema”, and for promoting a humanist and engaged film culture. The festival is accredited internationally as a “specialized festival” highlighting innovative films and emerging filmmakers from around the world,  and its short film competition is an Oscar-qualifying event.

At IFE, FICX is valued as a faithful local partner hosting interns who learn hands-on the many aspects of staging a major film festival.

Language Learning Gets a Bump From NYC’s New Mayor

In greeting the massed public gathered to celebrate his swearing-in as New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani spoke a phrase in several languages then urged those who did not understand to “download Duolingo”. He went to say that the story New Yorkers will now write will be in “Pashto and Mandarin, Yiddish and Creole…”. All in all, a ringing endorsement of the great value of a language mosaic and of learning how another speaks. In a recent alumni spotlight in Speaking of Europe, IFE’s Elisielle Lopes explains that New York City requires service provision and access in a number of languages -- eleven in all. Mamdani’s speech reminds us that language multiplicity is an asset not a burden. Elisielle’s work in the Mayor’s office is to ensure that it is not an impediment.

What’s Up at Ife: External review and program tweaks

With no internship duties scheduled on Wednesday during the twelve-week internship period of the IFE semester, IFE continues to reflect on how best to use this time, already dedicated to class meetings of the internship-period seminar and to time for students to work on their research project. The result has been a recent move to reinforce and further structure tutoring in writing and methodology, in parallel with a greater formalization of the oral defense of the research.

These twin changes were motivated by IFE’s concern to provide a level of follow-up and structure commensurate with the challenges of the IFE semester, and at the same time to ensure the (crucial) integration of writing with experience in the field (i.e. the internship). The program improvements echo observations made by an external review committee last spring, who found IFE’s unique program structure to be highly rewarding but also reason for vigilance as to its feasibility for every student.