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Travel close to home but also to the most distant corners of the five continents, tourist destinations in natural areas or stories about the historical heritage. These are just some of the proposals that spectators will find at the sixth edition of the Terres Travel Festival that will be held in Tortosa from September 2 to 10. The contest specialized in travel cinema and audiovisual tourism will bring together 114 films, including documentaries, short films and advertising spots that will be screened in various spaces of the Museum of Tortosa, in the modernist grounds of the old slaughterhouse. The contest will also be attended by directors, producers, film and tourism professionals from around the world.
The festival will open with the documentary Mamody, the last baobab digger, a production about how the inhabitants of the Ampotaka region of Madagascar use baobabs to store water. The film wants to raise awareness about the scarcity of water and about the links between man and nature. The program also highlights Un viaje extraordinari, a work that travels through fifteen recognized Spanish cities with vestiges listed as UNESCO World Heritage. The festival will also emphasize the impact of human activity on the natural environment, with the film Dear Plastic – A Toxic Love Story, which reviews how since the 1950s, plastic has revolutionized our lifestyles It is now part of our daily lives for better or for worse, like ocean pollution and its impact on our health. Filmed as an intimate letter of love and hate to plastic, this film questions our ambiguous relationship with this material and gets to the fundamental question: are we ready to do without it? Up to a dozen short films and feature-length documentaries will be subtitled in Catalan.
This year, the festival will recognize the career of journalist, producer and film director Jordi Llompart, with the Terres Pioneers award. Llompart has produced and directed films and documentary series for film and television and other innovative IMAX and 3D cinema projects. Among his latest works, The Last Wild stands out, a feature-length documentary in which he claims the recovery of the links between human beings and nature. He has also directed The World of the Fatimids, based on the Fatimid dynasty that controlled North Africa now a thousand years ago.
The awards ceremony of the Terres Travel Festival returns to attendance after two years of the pandemic and will be held on Friday 9am in September at the Racó de Mig Camí restaurant. The event will bring together professionals from the sector and will be presented by the actress Ivana Miño. The festival will end on Saturday 10 September with the public screening of the award-winning films in the Educational Hall of the Museum of Tortosa and the performance of Claudia Xiva and Josep Lanau in Teodor González Park.
This year’s graphic image was created by the multidisciplinary artist Anna Rever and the graphic designer Joan Navarro, former student of the Institut de l’Ebre de Tortosa (CFGS of Design and Publishing of Printed and Multimedia Publications). The entire program is available on the terresfestival.com website.
Terres LAB, a professional exchange
As part of the Terres Travel Festival, Tortosa will also host the TerresLAB congress that will be held on Thursday, September 8 at the SB Corona hotel. The conference aims to explore the new trends in the use of audiovisuals to communicate and explain tourist experiences and aims to be a multidisciplinary space where academics and professionals meet to exchange theory, best practices and case studies on audiovisual, cinematographic tourism and all related sectors.
The day will start at 9 am with a conference on film tourism by Dra. Esther Velasco Ferreiro from CETT-UB, the university center for Tourism, Hospitality and Gastronomy attached to the University of Barcelona. The program will last until the evening and will also include a round table on Film Commissions, the offices – public or private – that facilitate the obtaining of filming permits, and coordination with the different services involved in a cinematographic production. Piluca Querol (Director Andalucía Film Commission), Pedro Barbadillo (Director Mallorca Film Commission) and Víctor Aertsen (Madrid Film Office) will participate. Two presentations have also been scheduled: one on literary tourism by Rosária Pereira and Rita Baleiro from the University of the Algarve; and the other on the contribution of creative industries to the tourist experience, which will be taught by Dr. Jordi Arcos-Pumarola from CETT-UB.
In addition, examples of experiences and good practices in Catalonia will be analysed, such as the case of Ebre Lumen, a video mapping and nature festival on the Ribera d’Ebre. The complete program of the Congress can be consulted at www.terreslab.com.
Coordinated by the CETT-Barcelona School of Tourism, Hospitality and Gastronomy, TerresLAB wants to offer a framework for debate to reflect on the interrelationships between the tourism industry and the audiovisual industry, with the aim of anticipating and analyzing communicative trends more successful, as well as exploring new synergies. Some studies show that one in five tourists travel motivated by the films or documentaries they have seen. Hence the need to analyze this interrelationship between both industries and that is why TerresLAB has the collaboration of the Audiovisual Cluster of Catalonia.
Exhibition ‘Habitats’ by Kris Ubach.
From the 2nd to the 10th of September, the exhibition hall of the Palau Oliver de Boteller in Tortosa (in the Territorial Services of Culture of the Generalitat in the Terres de l’Ebre), will host the exhibition ‘Habitats’ by the photographer Kris Ubach. This is an exhibition of portraits parallel to the celebration of the festival which is the result of more than ten years of traveling around the world. The protagonists of the images were found in their habitats of life and work: a Buddhist monk in Shanghai, an Argentine dancer, the justice of the peace in a cold Finnish town, a Jamaican bartender, a seller of rich silks in Singapore or the security guard of a casino in Las Vegas. As the opening act of the exhibition, a conversation between photographer Kris Ubach and journalist Oriol Gracià has been scheduled in the Teaching Room of the Museum of Tortosa, on Friday 2 September at 7pm.