More Impulse, More Collective
For quite a few years now, D’A has been grappling with what we’ve come to call A Collective Impulse (Un Impulso Colectivo). But we believe there’s no need to wait for another anniversary—2023 was the tenth—to take stock, weigh achievements, correct mistakes, and return to our doubts. Because that’s what it’s all about: continuing to question Spanish cinema. Even the cinema that we ourselves began to promote, along with other festivals, back in that somewhat distant year of 2013. Things were very different. Mariano Rajoy was in power in Spain, and Artur Mas had been president of the Generalitat in Catalonia for a year. In Galicia, by the way, where a novo cinema was already beginning to emerge, the president of the Xunta was a certain Alberto Núñez Feijóo. And yet, Spanish cinema as a whole was more alive than ever; new proposals were springing up everywhere; everything emerged from a truly Collective Impulse, a revolt, a struggle.
Right now, that whole rebellion has stabilized, and some of its members aspire to Gaudí, Goya, even Oscar awards. Where are the new enfants terribles who will unsettle us again? Because Un Impulso Colectivo wants to continue being just that: a space that unsettles. Therefore, the selection we’re proposing this year is disconcerting and hybrid. We don’t believe we’ve achieved our goal, because we still don’t know what it is. And for that, we’ve opted for a series of films that mix everything: feature films with short films—a novelty of 2026—conventional narrative with experimentation, analog and digital, the image and its disappearance, genres with sexes, if they still exist… An Impulse? Yes, it still is. Collective? Also, because there are many of them wanting to change everything together, even if they don’t always know it. A new era begins: Un Impulso Colectivo Redux (UICR)? Let’s go for it, then.
-Carlos Losilla
Autor
Carlos Losilla
Writer, translator, professor at Pompeu Fabra University and ESCAC, and member of the editorial board of the magazines Caimán CdC and La Furia Umana. Commissioner of the Un Impulso Colectivo of the D'A.
