FICARQ 2017 starts, fusion of cinema and architecture in a unique festival

The leitmotif of this festival that takes place in Santander from July 4 to 8 is to investigate the relationships between cinema, architecture and new technologies.

This Tuesday at the headquarters of the Official College of Architects of Cantabria (COACAN), the inauguration of the Film and Architecture Festival, FICARQ 2017, took place. At the event, the signing of the Twinning of FICARQ and the Rotterdam International Film and Architecture Festival (AFFR) was carried out by Ana Muriel, director of FICARQ and Jacob van Rijs, director of AFFR, with the presence of the Mayor of Santander, Gema Igual Ortiz; as well as Miriam Díaz Herrera, city councilor for Culture; José Ignacio Villamor, Dean of the Official College of Architects of Cantabria, COACAN and Miguel Ángel Menéndez del Fueyo, founder of FICARQ.

In her speech, Gema Igual highlighted “the return of the Festival to the Cantabrian capital, to reinforce the already intense programming of the Santander summers and to expand on the project in which Santander is immersed, around architectural milestones such as the Botín Center.”

The mayor placed special emphasis on that “the amphitheater located next to this emblematic building (the only one designed by Renzo Piano in Spain), will host one of the sections of the event: the science fiction cycle Virtual Worlds as well as outdoor screenings at night, of titles such as Blade Runner, Tron, Matrix Reloaded or Interstellar, in an unparalleled environment. The festival is completed by conferences, an art direction forum and several workshops led by architectural experts.

Likewise, he also highlighted that "the city of Santander, together with FICARQ, were protagonists of the project that represented Spain at the London Design Biennale in 2016, while the Venice Architecture Biennale promoted Santander as a global model of port-city integration."

Cinema, architecture and new technologies

For her part, Ana Muriel, director of FICARQ, stressed that “the leitmotiv of this festival is to investigate the relationships between cinema, architecture and new technologies.” He also stated that "many young architects have been forced to look for new professional opportunities and have found a good ally in cinema, scenography, artistic direction and VFX special effects. Likewise, the audiovisual sector is entering a profound process of change with technologies such as virtual reality or augmented reality, which are changing the way of narrating and telling stories. Architects very accustomed to virtual construction and 3D find synergies and common interests with the sector audiovisual. At FICARQ it is about providing them with a field of experimentation, dialogue, debate and learning in the face of this creative panorama, which is emerging in many countries around the world at the same time."

This was followed by the opening conference by the director of the Rotterdam Festival Jacob van Rijs, who showed different architectural proposals through small videos. From cities of the future with flying cars and everything that entails, new ways of accessing housing, communications between neighborhoods... passing through new uses of abandoned highways, now conquered by pedestrians, becoming a green walk to the intervention of historic centers, proposing a traditional typology but built with another material, glass, which gives the building a completely different image.

Access to the full program.