You have to step back to understand the main challenge: at the end of the 20th century, the Gijón Festival was an auteurs’ film festival, albeit without major flights, when a member of the press department, José Luis Cienfuegos (who died yesterday, Tuesday, aged 60), at the age of 31, took charge of directing it in 1995. And yes, Gijón was a city chaisson’s voice, There was a tremendous cultural effervescence, but no one could have imagined that Gijón would become the European “Sundance” within a few years. Nobody, except Jose Luis. Today in cinema, the Rotterdam and Locarno competitions are talked about as incubator events for authorial cinema. Between the late 1990s and 2010 there was only Gijon. It was exciting and lively, and impressive for those of us who went there. Journey to Shangri-La is one of the best movies.
In Gijón, with, among others, Fran Gaio as programmer, and Pepe Colopi, as press chief, one of them met Tom DiCillo, Lodge Kerrigan, Hal Hartley or Todd Solondz, with a young Santiago Miter; In the cinemas, Pawel Pawlikowski, still searching for his place in the world, appeared to talk about his films, newcomer Jonas Trueba, Lisandro Alonso, Kimberly Peirce, Darren Aronofsky, Virginie Dispentis, Chloë Sevigny, Fatih Akin, Harmony Korine, Kenneth Anger, Olivier Assayas, Mia Hansen-Love, Ulrich Seidel, Pedro Costa and Lucas Modison, or the actress who jumped into the trend – Valerie Donzelli – to tell the story of her son’s struggle against cancer that destroyed his marriage. Aki Kaurismäki can be seen loudly ordering another glass of (the only thing he knew how to say in Spanish at the time) Sovereign. As well as the destruction of two hotel rooms of the now-deceased French actor Guillaume Depardieu (who was fired when he tried to attack Cienfuegos; the bodyguard paid by his father, Gérard, intercepted the strike). Gijon demonstrated new trends in cinema and predicted, always correctly, which ones would succeed.
However, these festivals were not just for films. Cienfuegos embraced the idea of a cultural event in all its scope: every night it held concerts, opened a space for the feminist collective Les Comadres, and encouraged exhibitions. A problem facing cinema in 2025 has already emerged: either young people will be taught to love this art, or they will get lost on the way to the theatres. It even included a legendary and ambitious cycle, directed by his great friend, Vicente Domínguez, professor of philosophy at the University of Oviedo: The Universo Media, each edition dedicated to a theme (fear, hallucinations, pain, taboo) through conversations and analyzes by experts in very different fields and represented only in cinema.
That happiness ended when he was fired in January 2012 after Álvarez Cascos’ party, Foro Asturias, came to power in the city. After 17 years of Cienfuegos’ management, the Gijon event, which turned into the European Sundance, reached 80,000 spectators, on the 12th of the year. classification It was accepted by audiences at the time in Europe, although it was behind other Spanish events in terms of budget. Cienfuegos recalls how part of the city never understood the solidity and resonance of the bet: they insulted him on local television in a live panel because he would not have brought Sophia Loren to the red carpet. He loved the classics, but in the style of Richard Fleischer, Julian Temple or Karel Reisz. By the way, they set foot in the city of Gijon.
Four hundred filmmakers signed a statement of their support. Didn’t help at all. In return, it won the Seville European Film Festival, where Cienfuegos was hired months later to rewrite the competition, dreaming up something similar to what had happened with Gijón.
For the second time, the Asturian reinvented a film competition, expanded the event, and moved it to the Andalusian capital so that they would understand that he was not a paratrooper. He so engaged local filmmakers and the Seville cultural world in general that they assumed this festival was for them as well. He did it. The sessions were full again. The European Film Academy announced its nominations there, and the continent’s creatives set foot on Triana soil. The cultural director battled obstacles such as bureaucracy and the need to explain to international film creators and sellers in Cannes and Berlin (their programming hunting grounds) why they were interested in seeing their films at the end of the year at their festival. And with their films, countless different, brilliant and pioneering filmmakers ended up on the banks of the Guadalquivir River.
In Seville, aware of the limits of focusing on European cinema, Cienfuegos relied on the gems of the Berlinale and Cannes and on the explosion of what was then called “other Spanish cinema.” He created sections for new novels, continuing his obsession: that young people would walk into theaters and discover that there were movies for them.
In 2023, he reaches his final destination, Semensi in Valladolid, a festival that made its own revolution at the turn of the century with Fernando Lara as director between 1984 and 2004: Cienfuegos considered himself a disciple of Lara’s ways of doing things. Once again, reinvention; And again, understanding with politicians who, although the manager was not of their ideology, knew how to support Cienfuegos’ vision; And again, the obsession with showing how much young people enjoy places and connect with the local cultural fabric. Last year she programmed a wonderful series with new cinema Indie The American, who was invited to win an Oscar within a decade, visited Valladolid. Everything, Jose Luis’ sense of smell. The last 70th edition concluded on November 1st with more than 103,000 spectators in attendance.
Cienfuegos devised a way to program: Fran Gayo (who died last May), Alejandro Díaz Castaño and Tito Rodríguez (director and head of programming, respectively, of the revived Gijón Festival) and Javier Estrada (head of programming at Cienfuegos) all originated with him. As cultural director, he was extremely demanding, intuitive, overwhelming and obsessive-compulsive in his programmes, without filters or timetables at work, very driven to bring more and better films to his events, always attentive to formal roles and to ensuring that his festivals received the best possible consideration by the administrations… His team loved and hated him because he demanded of them what he had previously demanded of himself, the utmost excellence.
Now, when the result was good, it was a success for the team. This journalist shared three decades of friendship, discussions (the EL PAÍS Style Book drove him crazy), confidence in beer, crazy nights and days of passion for cinema, notorious schedules at big festivals, laughter, existential bitterness and walking on the run. No more calls that end with a quick “ha-ha, ha-ha, bye, bye.” With his death, Europe lost one of its great film directors. Spain, to a man who fought for people to enjoy his passion, cinema.