Skyline Benidorm Film Festival begins its 5th edition with the opening of the exhibition ‘Illustrated cinema’

The fifth edition of Skyline Benidorm Film Festival has started shooting today. Ahead, ten days of short film screenings and parallel activities that have their common thread in cinematography. Among those activities, the exhibition ‘Illustrated cinema’, signed by the artists Cristina Polop and David Despau, which is being exhibited from today at the Espai d’Art of the City Council and which has been visited by the mayor, Toni Pérez; the Councilor for Culture, Jaime Jesús Pérez; the director of Skyline Benidorm Film Festival, Beatriz Hernández; and members of the Corporation and organization.

To this exhibition, a personal reading about cinema icons turned into illustrations, is added the exhibition 'Film Posters' with the covers of all the short films in competition and which can be seen at the Espais d'Art Urbà Carrascos, Poniente, Els Tolls and Plaza de la Hispanidad.

During the opening of the first exhibition, the mayor stressed that "this fifth edition of the festival has broken all records of participation and selection", thus showing that "it is a very attractive project and product" with "already international projection" and that "it has been consolidated." A "great proposal", he stressed, that was born in 2017 and that already from its first edition came to "fill an important and fundamental gap in the dissemination of audiovisuals" and to complement "the important audiovisual activity of Benidorm, consolidated as a filming set attracting top-level productions through its Benidorm Film Office ”.

Toni Pérez has assured that "Skyline Benidorm Film Festival brand has a long history", and has stressed that this year the event adds a European Film Section with which "the festival is internationalized" and that "it is an incentive to continue growing ”.

A section that has also highlighted the director of the contest and that joins the other three to contest: Official Section, Sustainability and Students. Only in the Official Section 25 works compete; six in the European and Student sections, respectively; and five, reserved for short films on Sustainability. In total, 42 works for a record edition to which 445 "shorts" were submitted.

Hernández pointed out that in this fifth edition and, "after a very hard year", the festival "regains contact with the public" and one of its "great attractions": the talks with directors, producers and actors that will follow the screenings of the short films of the Official Section. In total, the presence of "about 40 or 50 people" from the teams that have illuminated the works to be measured in this section is expected. As in previous editions, the contest maintains one of its main hallmarks, payment per screening, so that the 25 works selected within the competitive national section will receive 200 euros.

For his part, the Councilor for Culture explained that, "in addition to recovering the face-to-face screenings in the City Hall Assembly Hall," the short films in competition can also be viewed online through the Filmin 'platform, which last year already accompanied to the Skyline Film Festival and that “it gave us very good viewing results”.

Pérez recalled that "many activities" are added to the screenings and has invited "residents and tourists" to participate in the festival, which will last until July 4.

Programming
After the opening of the exhibitions 'Illustrated cinema' and 'Film posters', the Skyline program will continue tomorrow Saturday with the screening of the festival's inaugural film 'Coses a fer abans de muerte', which will be presented by its directors Cristina Fernández and Miguel Llorens, and the producer Lorena Torres at the IMF Finestrat cinemas at 7.30 pm. This screening will be accessible by invitation.

The activity will resume on Monday and Tuesday with the Script and Film workshops and social networks aimed at young people. Also on the same Tuesday, June 29, the screenings begin in the City Hall Assembly Hall, first of the works produced by students of the Benidorm IES within the 'Documóvil' initiative and later of the short films in the Student Section competition. .

On Wednesday it will be the turn of the 'shorts' of the European Section and the first block of the Official Section. The rest of the batches of works of the Official Section will be exhibited on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday the 3rd, an activity will take place on the occasion of the 'Berlanga Year' in which two short films by the director - 'A tram is sold' and 'Death and the woodcutter' - will be screened, followed by a lecture by Luís E. Parés, also in the Assembly Hall. In the afternoon, the closing of the festival will be celebrated and the prizes of the different sections and competitions will be awarded.

The complete program of the Skyline Benidorm Film Festival can be consulted on the website www.skylinefest.es.

‘Short Pitch’ and Script Contest
In addition to the monetary prizes for the Official and European sections, Skyline Film Festival will award those for the Script Contest and the 'Short Pitch'. For the first, which is developed in the Fiction and Documentary category, 9 projects have been selected from the 189 proposals submitted. The winning script in each category will receive a prize of 450 euros.