The director will come to the festival and will offer a masterclass
The XI edition of DocumentaMadrid, which will take place in Cineteca from the 30th of April till the 11th of May, dedicates its Retrospective to the committed Swiss filmmaker Fernand Melgar, who will visit the festival to share his work with the audience.
Born into a family of Spanish unionists exiled in Tanger, Fernand Melgar (1961) was raised in Lausanne, Switzerland, where his parents emigrated when he was just a kid. Having Spain as a reference of his childhood (he spent his summers in Andalucia), this lover of the real thing celebrates life and cinema as a moment of encounter, exchange and reflection.
Cultural agitator and creator of spaces such as Cabaret Orwell (mecca of the Swiss underground culture), or the internationally known rock club of Lausanne La Dolce Vita, Melgar joins the filmmakers collective *Climage. Thus he turned sideways towards documentary filmmaking, directing more than a dozen titles considered milestones in the immigration and identity themes, which are now positioned under the spotlight of the maximum authority.
DocumentaMadrid offers a retrospective of his more distinguished works, composed by six full-length films and a programme of eight short films that reflect the profound respect of Fernand Melgar for “the other”. As the main character of one of his documentaries puts it: “we accept our differences, our life choices and the difficulties of the others”.
Involved in cinema and reality, with a strong feeling of rebellion against the injustice, Melgar compares the rigidity of the world against the simplicity and the humanity of each one of the character he portrays.
The retrospective will start with LA FORTERESSE, winner of the Golden Leopard of the Locarno International Film Festival in 2008, a documentary about the Rights of Asylum. La Forteresse (The Fortress) is a transit place in which asylum seekers wait until the Swiss State decides their fate. In the same vein, VOL SPÈCIAL talks about the relationships established amongst the rejected asylum seekers and the undocumented immigrants, during the waiting time in a reclusion centre in Geneva whilst they wait the “special flight” that will take them back to the reality they try to escape from. ALBUM DE FAMILLE is an imaginary letter directed to his parents. In this film, Melgar portrays a whole generation of emigrants and the Switzerland that embraced them. The starting point for his interest on migrations…
The look on others and the necessity of integration are the main topics of CLASSE D’ACCUEIL, that takes us into the reality of a universe of teenagers that, like him, are the children of immigrants, and are torn between the memory of their homeland and the wish to belong to an idyllic Switzerland; and REMUE-MENAGE, which portrays Pascal, a tender family father that does not hide his necessity to cross-dress. Once again, the quest for an identity. Lastly, EXIT-LE DROIT DE MOURIR, is a meticulous tour through the reasons and the ways by which the human beings decide to break the links that tie them to life and their right to die with dignity.
In PREMIER JOUR, Melgar presents a series of short films very brief that immortalize the “first day” and with them, in a few minutes, addresses the major existential problems.
The director Fernand Melgar will visit DocumentaMadrid to present his work, offering a discussion after each projection, as well as an interesting MasterClass that will take place on Saturday, May the 3rd.
The retrospective is backed by Swiss Films and supported by the Swiss Embassy in Spain.
FILMS
LA FORTERESSE (Opening of the selection) (The Fortresss) – Switzerland, 2008, 104’
VOL SPÉCIAL (Special Flight / Vuelo Especial) – Switzerland, 2011, 100’
EXIT – LE DROIT DE MOURIR (Exit – The Right To Die) – Switzerland, 2005, 76’
REMUE – MÉNAGE (Storm In a C-Cup / Trajín) – Switzerland, 2002, 52’
CLASSE D’ACCUEIL (Induction Class / Clase de Acogida) – Switzerland, 1998, 55’
ALBUM DE FAMILLE (Family Album / Album de Familia) – Switzerland, 1993, 54’
COLLECTION “PREMIER JOUR” – Short films (Switzerland, 2003)
* Created in 1985, Climage is an association of filmmakers that share a common idea about the compromised and independent cinema.
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Chatelin Bruno 
