Málaga awards the Film Academy for 25 years of idyll with Spanish cinema

Jose Luis Picon Málaga, 20 Mar This Sunday Malaga has endorsed the twenty-five years it has reached its idyll with Spanish cinema with the presentation of the Biznaga of the Málaga Prize, the Festival's main honorary prize, to the Film Academy representing the entire national film industry. In order to give an exceptional award, because it was the first time that the Málaga Prize was awarded to an institution and not to a film professional, the person in charge was also exceptional, Antonio Banderas. On the stage of the Cervantes Theatre, which hosted the ceremony, Banderas highlighted that there are “many parameters to determine the solidity, rootedness and authenticity of things, and one of them is time”, adding that “twenty-five years of the Malaga Film Festival prove it”. “Today the Malaga Festival would like to thank the Academy for its continuous and generous contact with the Festival since its inception” and its “confidence” to celebrate the “two most significant galas” of the Goya Awards, those of the years 2020 and 2021. Banderas recalled that in the first one he won the second Goya of his career, “the first one voted for a specific work”, and the second, which he himself presented at the Teatro del Soho, was held “in the middle of the moment when the pandemic hit the whole of Spanish society the most.” “We lived those moments with intensity and emotion,” said the actor from Malaga, adding that thanks to “the city's commitment year after year to Spanish cinematography, ties and certainties were established”. Banderas presented the Biznaga of the Málaga Prize to the president of the Academy, Mariano Barroso, who at the beginning of his speech said that it is “a very big responsibility” to thank the award “in the name of Spanish cinema, those who are seen on screen and those who are not seen, people who work for months or years on a film to do what you see for an hour and a half.” After “twenty-five years walking together”, the Malaga Film Festival “is Spanish cinema and Spanish cinema is the Malaga Film Festival”, because “filmmakers of several generations” have already passed through this event, recalled the president of the Academy. “The Malaga Film Festival has been growing and has become an excellent platform for our films, but also a faithful reflection of the evolution of our cinema, because it has been able to see where our cinema is going, and sometimes it has marked our path,” he added. He mentioned the director of the Festival, Juan Antonio Vigar; the mayor of the city, Francisco de la Torre, and his “personal weakness”, Fernando Méndez-Leite (member of the festival's steering committee), who “could be receiving this award in the name of Spanish cinema with more legitimacy” than himself. The Malaga Festival highlighted its “concept of unity”, because “film people have an aspiration that seemed like an impossible dream, that our cinema should be recognized by the public as part of our heritage and should unite us, not separate”, according to Barroso. This competition “was born with the vocation of uniting cinema with the public, it has succeeded and its influence is felt every day”, according to the president of the Academy, who also pondered the “commitment to diversity” that has been made in Malaga. “The Festival has always been clear about its mission. Films help us organize the story of our lives, they help us understand life. Our mission as filmmakers is to tell stories, and we must do so by appealing to the noblest of our viewers and push them to the purest emotion,” said Barroso. jlp/pos (photo)