GIFF dedicates its 24th edition to Ernesto Herrera and bets more on on-site attendance

Published July 17th, 2021

The Guanajuato International Film Festival (GIFF) is back for its 24th edition to be held from September 17 to 26, now with a change in its usual venues, opening in León for the first time, returning to San Miguel de Allende, and repeating in Irapuato.

Sarah Hoch, director of the Festival, highlighted in an exclusive interview for SinEmbargo that this edition marks the return in the midst of the pandemic of spectators to movie theaters and theaters, the latter, venues in which GIFF has held openings, screenings, and meetings with major film figures.

“We intend to return to theaters and movie theaters, right now they are at 70 or 80 percent capacity. We are in a yellow traffic light, but with the issue of the Delta variant, we do not know how it will come. All the events we went to at the end of the year thinking that most of them would be vaccinated. We will follow the guidelines of the State Health Secretariat and we will see how far we can go with the theaters and open-air, and if we have to, we will go back to drive-in theaters,” Hoch emphasizes.

This year will be special for the Festival because this edition will be dedicated to the memory of Ernesto Herrera, co-founder of this film festival and Sarah’s husband.

Over the years, Ernesto Herrera has also served as GIFF’s artistic director and designer on several occasions. A native of León, this city will dedicate a tribute to him with an exhibition of 40 photographs of his professional career as a cultural promoter in the state. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) will stage the play Mensajes in remembrance of Ernesto, and the Bicentennial Theater will hold a gala in his name.

Herrera passed away last February 12 at the age of 56 after being infected with COVID-19.

“We are going to inaugurate with the tribute to Ernesto, also in San Miguel de Allende we have planned because he lived there for many years and participated in many activities, he was director of the image of the municipality for many years. There are many events that are being planned for him, theater, installation, of various kinds”.

The pandemic doesn’t go away, and the cinema stands

This is the second edition in which this appointment with the seventh art takes place in the context of the pandemic. GIFF was the first film festival in Mexico in 2020 to venture into a hybrid edition between in-person and online. Today it returns with the same strength and measures to avoid contagion to move forward with cinema.

“We come with all the desire, with all the energy, with all the good vibes, with all the love, to achieve the film festival,” stresses Sarah Hoch.

For this 2021, the image is called “24 frames per second, 24 editions of life”, which without giving makes a retrospective of the years of work and its commitment to cinema.

“It’s 24 years. Cinema is 24 frames per second. It is creation, it is movement per frame. The image says 24 with an exclamation point because we are going to do it. Ernesto died, I got very serious with 50 percent of my lung capacity, I’m still not well, there are very difficult economic conditions for all the events. We had to put the exclamatory point because it is (as we say internally): Eggs!”, Sarah jokes and laughs.

This year’s program will be revealed in August, but the GIFF team has already announced the huge call they had despite the closure due to the pandemic, as they received 30,000 films from 132 countries, 926 of which were Mexican.

This 2021 they will maintain the online formats such as the presence of online films, the virtual room, and live broadcasts since the good response have been highlighted by reaching the festival to 330 thousand 605 people and adding in the platform where films were exhibited free 52 thousand 044 users.

“It was quite a challenge because last year everything was new. We had never done a drive-in cinema, we had never done an aquacinema, nor a digital platform for the movies, nor had we had a virtual reality world. Everything was new, and what we learned is that it can be done. Where there is desire and intention, it can be done. Now we have the goal of returning to the theaters, to retake the cultural spaces, to reactivate the economy, to reactivate tourism if the traffic lights allow us to do so. A desire to live”.

There are still some important announcements to be made by GIFF about its program and guests. However, September is already shaping up to be a month with a lot of cinema.

“The event comes with many very cool projects, with a lot of love. We are in pain, it’s going to be very moving. There will be mixed moments. It is going to be an event with excellent attendance from the industry, from the actors who have written to us telling us that they want to be part of it. It will be a very warm, very moving year.”