WeBarcelona Newsletter

Festival Primera PersonaThe Primera Persona festival receives that name because it brings together creators from different artistic disciplines who base their work on their own life experience. There are two days of live autobiography: tragicomic monologues, pop music, theater and narrative. In a normal situation, the CCCB would be holding the ninth edition of the Primera Persona festival, but this year we will have to wait. While we are in standby mode, they have prepared an appetizer of their life stories, which they will broadcast online: a First Person Indoors. In this special edition they will have two exceptional guests: the New Yorker journalist Jia Tolentino and the writer and novelist Rachel Cusk.

DocsBarcelona FestivalThe Barcelona International Documentary Film Festival, known as DocsBarcelona, ​​is a film festival dedicated to the documentary genre. It is made up of competitive international sections and non-competitive sections. This festival brings together professionals from all over the world every year and offers conferences of interest to the documentary sector. DocsBarcelona maintains its sections and activities in an online edition that reaches all of Spain through FILMIN. The programming of this 23rd edition in the midst of the state of alarm, is made up of 35 documentaries from 22 countries, and includes the latest works of Ai Weiwei (Alive), Helena Třeštíková (Forman vs. Forman) and Anders Østergaard (Winter Journey).

Primavera Sound was postponed to August this year and Sónar Barcelona and Sónar + D had kept the dates ... until a few days ago, when the organization announced the cancellation of the festival and the congress in 2020. Also recently the Primavera Sound has decided to cancel. Thus, the two great music festivals in Barcelona will not be held this year.

The Gran Teatre del Liceu sings the "Nessun Dorma" to open the way to hopeThe creative director Igor Cortadellas has created a spectacular and sensitive multi-screen video that includes the participation of the Symphony Orchestra and the Choir of the Gran Teatro del Liceu, the choir director Conxita Garcia, the tenor from the Canary Islands Jorge de León and the musical direction of the maestro Josep Pons. For the creation of this work, many hours of videoconference with the 142 participating artists were necessary. The result: a beautiful and communal experiment that also becomes a tribute to the bright Barcelona.

Sant Jordi postponed, strange. The busy streets a year ago, empty yesterday. July 23 is the date chosen for them to be filled with books and roses. It is unknown how we will be moving among them. Soon, very soon a timid de-escalation of confinement begins in Spain, so we release the newsletter (timidly too) and return to the traditional format but with online events, or with events that will be held on dates that represent the end to the pandemic or its control by new security measures or by the appearance of the long-awaited medicine or vaccine. We hope that you and yours are well, and our sincere condolences to those who have lost a loved one.

We get used, first, to telematic relations with "10,000 km". Then we went straight to terror with "REC: Película". From there we started the de-escalation with a thriller, "The Machinist", and now we continue to de-escalate to land in the comedy with "Vicky Cristina Barcelona", a Spanish-American co-production directed by Woody Allen in 2008.

Brad Anderson's 2004 film set in California, but shot entirely in Barcelona and other towns in the province such as Badalona, Sant Adrià del Besòs, El Prat and Sabadell. From Barcelona you will recognize the famous Ferris wheel of the El Tibidabo amusement park. Other attractions also appear but with more appropriate names for the Californian setting, such as a terror train called Route 666. The film, produced in Spain and written by Scott Kosar, stars Christian Bale (who won the Best Actor award at the Festival de Sitges), Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Sharian, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón and Michael Ironside.

A horror film. Although it may not seem the most appropriate for these moments, movies in this genre can bring benefits to viewers. According to a study at the University of Westminster in the United Kingdom in which they monitored various levels of 10 people before and after watching horror movies, it was observed, for example, that The Radiance consumes 184 calories, Shark 161 and The Exorcist 158. How many will burn with REC? In the same study, it was also concluded that movies like REC increase adrenaline production, causing a chain reaction that improves the immune system. Don't jump into watching horror movies and think you're immune to COVID-19!

It surely happened to you. We live with a sense of unreality, fiction or directly science fiction. Some expert says that the important thing is to perceive this situation of confinement as something temporary and that if our mind, dejected or surrendered, happens to feel it as normal, the return to daily life will be harder. So we propose an immersion in real fiction, that of cinema and literature, and as Fernando Savater says, we turn day to day into a game: suppose that confinement or dodging others in the supermarket is a game, just like the Syrian father who made the bombings a game for his son. And so that the desire for Barcelona does not pass you, it is better that fiction has a relationship with our city. While the confinement lasts, while events cannot be organized, we will propose you a film and a book that take place in Barcelona or that are, in some way, related to our city. We will also propose you an event (online, of course) and as a bonus a musical theme.

The International Vintage Car Rally Barcelona-SitgesThe 62ndt edition of the Barcelona-Sitges International Car Rally arrives. A rally where aesthetics is more important than speed. Old cars of emblematic brands such as Rolls Royce, Hispano-Suiza, Citroën, Ford, Fiat, Renault, Peugeot, Buick, Chevrolet or Alcyon, will circulate in the streets of Barcelona in the direction of Sitges. The rally starts at the Plaza de Sant Jaume in Barcelona and continues through the streets of Barcelona, Hospitalet de Llobregat, Cornellà de Llobregat, C-245 road, C-246 road (Costas del Garraf) and ends with a parade through the streets of Sitges and a contest of elegance. The total journey is 40 kilometers and participants come from all over Spain and other countries.