FESTIVAL HISTORY
Red Blood Buenos Aires is the only festival specialized in fantastic, horror and bizarre films in Argentina. It is an exhibition basically for independent productions and for low budget ones. Its concretion surged naturally, from the increasing realization in Argentina of films of these genres. Generally done in video and in ultra independent way, these movies did not manage to make a name for themselves in the most important local film festivals. Because of that, the producers of very interesting full length, half and short films had to be happy with a few of auto-managed showings. That is because of fantastic is yet considerated as a “minor genre”.
So it was very necessary to gather on a same sphere films with the same distribution problems, for they could approach to the same pubic.
The first edition of B.A.R.S. occurred in December 2000 in the University of Buenos Aires’ Faculty of social sciences. Although the room was limited, it meant the start point and each year it increased. There were shown films like Plaga Zombie (Hernán Sáez and Pablo Parés) or El Planeta de los Hippies (Ernesto Aguilar) and many full-length films. In 2001 the stage changed. The San Martin Cultural Center was an important framework to the festival growth. With little promotion it managed to join more than 600 people, the most prominents were films like Fanáticos (Mariano Cattaneo and Ygnacio Cervio) y Nunca Asistas a este tipo de Fiestas (Hernán Sáez and Pablo Parés). In 2002 occurs the big jump of the festival, extending thematically the programming and having a great repercussion in media and public, even in the same place of the previous edition of the festival, it was able to triple the number of audience, exceeding 1800 people. Among the films showed were Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutante (Hernán Sáez and Pablo Parés) and Attack of the Killer Hog (Agustín Cavalieri and Marcos Meroni).
In 2003 comes the definitive consolidation of the festival, there was the premier of seven full-length local films –Run Run Bunny! (Mad Crampi), Tico tico (Marcelo Domizi), Baño de Sangre (Paula Pollacchi), Mala Carne (Fabián Forte), Ruta hacia la muerte (Francisco de Lezica) and Vacaciones en la tierra (Sebastián de Caro) – and the pre-premier of another full-length films from countries like EE.UU., Japan, Spain, France and Italy. It was showed more than 80 short-length films and retrospective sections were full of classics in 35mm. It was especially prominent the recovery of the argentine film El Hombre Bestia (Camilo Zaccaría Soprani, 1934), the first fantastic local film, which never had a premier in Buenos Aires. Almost 5000 people proved the undeniable festival growth.
For the 5th edition it will be added competitive sections for both: short-length and full-length films and it’ll be used three rooms of the complex Tita Merello simultaneously, tripling the number of hours of showing.
The new edition of BARS will be between November 2007.
The B.A.R.S. was named of interest by the Instituto Nacional de Cinematografía y Artes Audiovisuales, sponsored by the Museo del Cine of Buenos Aires and was named of Cultural Interest too by the Legislatura de la Ciudad Autónoma of Buenos Aires. These institutions have understood that the festival is the only one space for this kina of films which traditionally had been forgotten. No doubt, the Red Blood Buenos Aires is a specialist festival which has became in a referent for the national production of science fiction, horror and fantasy.