CÁCERES, May 23. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The San Pancracio de Cine awards ceremony with which the Cáceres Spanish Film Festival closes, was lived last night between emotion and vindication.
To the words of thanks from the winners was added an almost general clamor for the necessary return of the public to the cinemas. “The public is essential, the cinema, my job, would not make sense if it were not seen, if it was not felt,” said actress Marisa Paredes, San Pancracio de Honor Prize.
The winners defended in their respective speeches the prominent role of both cinema and culture for society and more so in these times that we live in, they point out from the contest in a press release.
The president of the Rebross Foundation organizing the Festival, Paco Rebollo, who presented the award to Marisa Paredes, referred in his speech to the complications that the celebration of the 28th edition of the Festival this year had entailed and the lack of response from the public, but he hoped that the rooms could recover their viewers little by little.
He also highlighted the great female presence in the record of this year’s San Pancracio, something that he recognized filled him with pride. And he had a special memory for all the people who have stayed on the road in the last year, among them he mentioned in a special way the president of the Cáceres Provincial Council, Charo Cordero.
The former actress Carolina Yuste, winner of the San Pancracio Reyes Abades Award, was the first to collect her award. With him in hand, he thanked the people who continue to fight to make events such as the Cáceres Spanish Film Festival a reality.
She assured that she has been an exception to the topic that says that no one is a prophet in her land because she has felt “very driven” in Extremadura and demanded to continue supporting cinema, culture and education “to make a better world”.
After her, another actress, Loreto Mauleón, awarded the San Pancracio for Best Serial Actress for her character in Patria, expressed her enthusiasm for obtaining this award, thanked that this year the Festival had been able to take place and wished she could come back next year.
The only one of the winners who did not collect his award personally, the actor Darío Grandinetti, San Pancracio Best Actor in a Series for Hierro, who was filming in Argentina, sent from there a video of thanks in which he regretted not being able to be in Cáceres participating in this Festival that pays tribute to cinema, even more so when “cinema has been a necessary company in these times”, for this reason he described the work of the Festival from Cáceres as “praiseworthy”.
The director Pilar Palomero, San Pancracio to the Directorate Revelation for Girls, assured that the Festival had returned him to a certain “normality” by having been able to reconnect with his colleagues and was optimistic: “We will return to rescue our spaces.”
The San Pancracio for Best Actor for his role in The Curse of the Handsome, Gonzalo de Castro, expressed his excitement at returning to scenarios such as Cáceres after months of drought due to the pandemic. “Only cinema makes sense when we do it before the public in a theater and it is what I want to dedicate myself to in life,” he said.
Behind him, Nathalie Poza, awarded with the same San Pancracio in the female category for her performance in the film shot precisely in Cáceres Invisibles, by Gracia Querejeta, recalled having felt at home during the filming time and wanted to dedicate the recognition to the makeup artist from the deceased film, Milu Cabrera.
Isabel Coixet, the penultimate winner of the night, took the stage of the Gran Teatro de Cáceres to collect her San Pancracio for Best Direction for Nieva in Benidorm and recognize that she likes this award a lot because “it is always very good to have a San Pancracio in life”.
The Spanish director who has directed the most outside our borders, reaffirmed her international spirit because, she said, that it is very good to feel like a place, but that this place is not exclusive. “You can have roots in many places,” he said.
Finally, one of the great ladies of Spanish cinema, Marisa Paredes, transmitted energy and will to live by collecting her recognition for a lifetime dedicated to acting. His words of thanks became a hymn to life.
“Despite what we have experienced, I have felt the joy of being alive because life is something beautiful. Live life, cinema and joy,” she said. He recalled that culture “is what remains” when everything else disappears and that is why he concluded with a cry: “Long live culture and long live freedom.”
The charity gala, which began at 7:00 p.m. and lasted a little more than an hour and a half, was directed by Marcos Yepez and featured the comedy of the Cacerean actor Chemi Moreno to get laughter from the public, in addition to the musical performances of the Cacerean singer Olana Liss, accompanied on piano by Geni, and by María González and Mar Cabezas, accompanied by Paco Luis on piano.
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