The organization celebrates that the City of Valencia takes care of the reins of the cinema contest that the association has maintained for six years.
Saturday, 16th of June of 2018 / Sixto Ferrero / València
Mostra Viva del Mediterrani, the festival that was born from the impulse of civil society in 2013 to keep the flame of the Valencia Film Festival that was closed by the mayor, Rita Barberá, and then assumed budgetary constraints in the council, has begun to mutate in this sixth Edition towards a multidisciplinary event but with a clear vocation for music and dance on the banks of our mare nostrum.
This Friday, the poster of the sixth edition was presented, an image designed by the cartoonist Sento Llobell. The official image was unveiled at the Center del Carme, a venue that will host the festival that will take place from October 3rd to 21st.
The Centre de Cultura Contemporánea will host some of the activities that will make up the program, but it will be the setting for a new section of dance that will be added to this program in 2018 after the City Council announced last February that it was recovering management of the Mostra de Valencia.
The fact that the town hall, presented Rosa Roig and Eduardo Guillot as responsible for the cinema competition last April, took the reins of the cinematographic part that was the reason to be of Mostra Viva del Mediterrani did not mean that the association kept alive for six years must disappear. Quite the contrary, «we are very satisfied», Vicent Gregori, coordinator of Mostra Viva del Mediterráneo , regarding the initiative of the City Council. Now, however, the intention of the organizers is to continue growing beyond cinema and improve the musical and dance proposals to consolidate in view of 2019, a great festival of music and dances of the Mediterranean during October taking advantage of the similar initiatives that is promoting the Instituto Valenciano de Cultura with projects such as the new Polirítmia festival, which will take place at the beginning of June – some concerts of these will take place in the Serenates festival of the University of Valencia.
«In this edition, the collaboration work with Valencian cultural organizations and associations has been strengthened which, little by little, are making Mostra Viva their own», said Gregori on Friday. On the other hand, the president of the organization Giovanna Ribes acknowledged that the institutional collaboration «has allowed Valencia to become a benchmark for Mediterranean culture during October» with a contest that this year will have as motto ‘A Sea of Cultures’.
Maite Ibáñez, Vicent Garcés, Sento Llobell, Giovanna Ribes, Vicent Gregori this Friday at the Carmen Center during the presentation of the 6th edition Poster of Mostra Viva del Mediterrani.
Mostra Viva 2018 will offer exhibitions, oral narration, street art, school and family activities, circus and the encounter of writers, music and dance. «We have always wanted the dance to be part of the music as well», explained to this newspaper Vicent Gregori. For this reason, as of this edition the festival will include ethnic and root dances. In addition, with the resources that have ceased to be used in the cinema, the organizers want to improve the proposals that will act for four days at the Palau de la Música at the Mediterranean Music Meeting. Although the programming is not yet closed, the intention is to increase the presence of foreign groups and that in each concert they perform groups of countries on the shores of the Mediterranean that remain interesting along with local artists. There will not be more concerts than previous editions: there will be four in the Palace and one in the cloister of La Nau, with the participation of music bands thanks to the collaboration with the Federation of Bands but it does begin a turn towards a milestone with more entity
The honorary president of the organization, Vicent Garcés, stressed that with these six editions Valencia has managed to become a cultural reference in the Mediterranean. Proof of this is the commitment to the culture of the mediterranean countries and, now, also, as a city refuge with the arrival of the Aquarius boat in the port, which is expected this weekend. Garcés has devoted some emotional words to the refugees which have been followed by a stirring ovation.
Comic socarrat
The poster signed this year by Sento Llobell (Valencia, 1953) is made up of nine individual images as a comic page that reflects the different scenic, literary or musical areas that make up the program of the event. With an aesthetic that reminds the socarrats classics, the designer has pointed out that the conception of the work was conceived as an exercise «in favor of the reader so that it could be understood easily and quickly.»
Mostra Viva team and collaborators together with the poster created by Sento Llobell
The use of industrial colors, such as black and maroon, is a tribute to the tradition of traditional Valencian pottery. Llobell, the author of the iconic Gulliver Park of the Túria Garden, was one of the members of the so-called New Valencian comic school. During his long career, he has published 12 albums of comics, he has illustrated six books and his drawings and his comic strips have been published in the main magazines of the genre, as recalled Maite Ibáñez, one of the presidents of the Viva Show.