On the occasion of the 68th edition of the Seminci of Valladolid (October 21 to 28) and within the framework of the Spanish presidency of the European Union, coinciding with World Audiovisual Heritage Day, the cycle “Memory and Utopia”, which has the support of Acción Cultural Española, reflects on the preservation and visualization of cinema in the digital age.
Audiovisual archives tell us stories about the lives of people and cultures around the world. They represent an invaluable heritage and an affirmation of our collective memory, as well as a valuable source of knowledge, since they reflect the cultural, social and linguistic diversity of our communities. Preserving this heritage and ensuring that it remains accessible to the public and future generations is a vital objective for all institutions dedicated to memory, as well as for the general public.
With this cycle, SEMINCI proposes a week of screenings, round tables and vindication of cinematographic heritage with the participation of film libraries from both Europe and around the world and programmers from international film festivals that still give retrospectives a privileged place in their programming.
“Memory and Utopia” proposes a reevaluation of the dominant canon from our current perspective. The selection is made up of visionary films, representing a twist to the aesthetic postulates that marked the history of cinema with risky themes for the time such as the revision of memory, feminism, class consciousness, freedom of thought or new cinemas that shook the audiovisual panorama in the 60s and 70s.
