Next December the First International Independent Cinema Festival of Mar del Plata will take place, from the 1st. to the 10th., organized Noticias & Protagonistas.
Nowadays, aside from any classification or denomination of its characteristics, more than 700 cinema festivals take place all around the world.
The evidence of this phenomenon, which is growing every day, shows the importance of its purpose and the essence of its mission. There are plenty of creators and art works, and avid spectators, in all latitudes, waiting to find them.
In this context, the Independent Film Festivals represent, as we believe, the most vital aspect of cinematographic expression.
If, as Kieslowski used to say, cinema is a hard and unstable balance between art and industry, our decision has privileged, without any kind of doubt, the acknowledgment and loyal following of the most genuine and deep fact of cinematography: its artistic condition.
Cinema is an intimate event that proves its own existence by means of a mass phenomenon. That's the first paradox, and together with the acceptance of the creative risk that we face in every country and circumstance, it takes us to an unavoidable question: What means, these days, independent cinema?
It can be said, with legitimacy, that it's about a low budget movie, or author-cinema, or giving the director the final cut, or not having access to the big commercial distribution companies. Or even better, a combination of the previous.
A great number of Festival, all around the world, try to answer this question, without falling in the attractive deceit of the so called "indie-films", which are nothing but elaborate efforts of the dominant sectors of the industry to colonize the authentic independent spirit.
Following that desire, in that universal net and facing this challenge, we have created our First International Independent Cinema Festival.
We have the strong belief that the cultural diversities have to be useful to bring us closer; that the differences in sensibilities, procedures and style, show us who we really are; that the esthetics, as it has been said before, are the man.
It is our intention to be clear about the profile and the objectives of this Festival: We intend to create a space for experimentation and freedom, a real encounter, not oriented to the media nor destined to be quickly forgotten, between the main makers of artistic cinema; producers, directors, writers, actors, distributors, critics, journalists, technicians, movie lovers, cinema students, and of course, the general public. So we all can lean from each other.
Our decision is clear and irrevocable: we will show the most young and innovative cinema produced in the world.
At the same time, we wish our initiative to work complementarily with the Class A International Cinema Festival that takes place in our city, the most important one in Latin America, so we can say proudly together that Mar del Plata means cinema.

Daniel Boggio
Artistic Director