The Festival de Cine Fantástico de Canarias Isla Calavera, which will hold its third edition from November 23 to 30, will bring together in Tenerife the legendary master of special effects and makeup, winner of seven Oscars, Rick Baker, and David Naughton, star of 'An American Werewolf in London', 38 years after the premiere of the legendary film by John Landis. The details of this third edition were announced this Thursday, October 3, at the Cabildo Insular by the Minister of Culture, Concepción Rivero; the Deputy Minister of Culture of the Government of the Canary Islands, Juan Márquez; the Councilors of Culture of Santa Cruz and La Laguna, Matilde Zambudio and Yaiza López, respectively, and the directors of the festival, Ramón González Trujillo and Daniel Fumero.
Concepción Rivero congratulated the organizers for the initiative and pointed out that "for the Cabildo it is an honor to be able to collaborate in this third edition, which will bring together outstanding international figures on the island. For Matilde Zambudio, "this festival is a new opportunity to endorse that Santa Cruz is a first-rate cultural capital" and celebrated that initiatives of this type "help to boost the commercial dynamization of the city". Yaiza Lopez stressed that "the City Council of La Laguna wants to join as an active part of this festival" and also stressed that the municipality she represents is a benchmark in the cultural sector.
The Deputy Minister of Culture of the Government of the Canary Islands, Juan Márquez, highlighted the importance of the audiovisual sector in the Canary Islands and pointed out that "the Government currently supports 21 film festivals" and expressed his desire to "achieve coordination between the administrations to support the audiovisual sector as a tool to diversify the economy now that tourism, our main driving force, is generating uncertainty".
Daniel Fumero and Ramón González Trujillo thanked the collaboration they have from the administrations and their sponsors to make possible the third edition of the Skull Island Festival, which will pay tribute to the film 'An American Werewolf in London'. On Friday, November 29, a special screening of the genre classic will take place at Multicines Tenerife, the festival's headquarters, followed by a meeting with the guest artists, who will receive this year's honorary awards in recognition of their careers.
The two-minute sequence of the transformation of the title character (David Naughton) into a werewolf is considered one of the best physical special effects stagings in the history of cinema and earned Rick Baker his first Oscar for Best Makeup in 1982, the year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences inaugurated the category.
The public will have the opportunity to meet the artist, who also created the make-up for Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' music video and numerous film and television creatures for films such as 'Star Wars', 'Harry and the Hendersons', 'Men in Black' and 'Gremlins 2', over more than four decades of career.
Naughton's filmography includes other roles in feature films such as 'Midnight Madness' or 'Body Bag' and TV series such as 'Beyond the Limits of Reality', 'MacGyver' or 'American Horror Story'. Individually, the presence of David Naughton or Rick Baker at Isla Calavera would be a unique event for fans of the fantastic genre; however, the coincidence of both of them at the festival raises it to the category of international event.
The presence of the makeup genius in Tenerife will coincide with the worldwide launch of the book 'Rick Baker: Metamorphosis', a deluxe edition divided into two volumes that include more than 1,600 full-color images and the reproduction of original sketches of the creator, collected by J. W. Rinzler and published by Cameron + Company. Rick Baker will sign the book at the Isla Calavera Festival, already available for pre-sale through the website of the film event with the collaboration of the bookstore Agapea.
This proposal will close the circle around the treatment of lycanthropy in cinema that will be addressed in this third edition of the Festival through other activities, such as the tribute that will be paid to the prolific actor, director and screenwriter from Madrid specialized in horror films Paul Naschy on the tenth anniversary of his death, precisely on the closing day of the event. His son Sergio Molina, director of the Nocturna Madrid International Fantastic Film Festival, will also visit Isla Calavera to remember the artist and present to the public the screening of one of the key titles in the filmography of Jacinto Molina Álvarez, who since his participation in the film 'The Mark of the Werewolf' adopted the stage name of Paul Naschy.
Exhibitions
During the week of the Festival, Multicines Tenerife will host the unpublished exhibition 'Rick Baker: Creator of Monsters', a retrospective of the special effects wizard and his love for the profession, through photographs selected from his personal archives.
On the other hand, the Isla Calavera Festival will display at TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes the exhibition 'Signatures of the Fantastic', curated by collector and historian Luis Díaz, with more than forty original headings and photographs of artists, creators and technicians relevant to the history of cinema.
For the first time, a compilation of original documents will be presented with the signatures of such relevant names as the author of 'Dracula' Bram Stoker, the creator of the Frankenstein myth Mary Shelley, Lon Chaney Jr. (who on numerous occasions played the werewolf on film), Anthony Hopkins (co-star of 'The Wolf Man', a film with which Rick Baker won an Oscar in 2011), Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Elsa Lanchester, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, among many others.
