The Pepe Sales Independent Art Festival has been giving a voice to minorities for seventeen years. This year, it will honor the North American poet and novelist Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972), host of the literary meetings at the Barney Salon in Paris and a precursor of the defense of LGTBIQ groups.
He will do so, as usual, with a multitude of activities focused on his figure and work such as exhibitions, concerts, poetry recitals, conferences, round tables or the now traditional festival of unpublished short films in which around twenty filmmakers will participate, including Albert Serra, a regular collaborator of the festival, promoted by the Associació La Penyora Cultura.
The co-director of the contest, Consol Ribas, has claimed this morning the importance of a character “forgotten by history.” “It is worse to be forgotten than to be censored, because the forgotten do not appear anywhere,” said Ribas, who highlighted the role that Barney had in “empowering women sexually and culturally.”
Ribas explained that Barney was openly lesbian at a time when there was “not a drop of tolerance” and highlighted one of her mottos, which the festival has adopted as its own. “Don’t be afraid to be different. Originality is a gift.”
The novelist and poet, known by the name Amazona, began publishing love poems dedicated to women under her own signature in 1900 and in her work, she supported feminism and pacifism.
The poet and novelist, who came from a bourgeois family, lived as an expatriate in Paris where she founded the Barney salon, active for more than sixty years, and where writers and artists from all over the world such as Marcel Proust, Truman Capote and the poet Renée Vivien, who was Barney’s partner, among others. She also created l’Academie des Femmes as a response to the all-male French Academy.
Lluís Llamas, co-director of the festival, explained that the Pompidou Museum in Paris has recently dedicated an exhibition to him and that his proclamations from a century ago continue to have “absolute validity” today.
This new edition of the festival, which will be held from January 20 to February 7 in Girona, will start with an exhibition of plastic arts and another of photos dedicated to Barney and his fight for the rights of LGTBIQ groups, in which they will participate about sixty artists.
That same day, a Cabaret performance will take place, presented by Aleix Cabarrocas, with the rhapsode Ani Petre with a Drag Queen show, electronic and percussion music or the participation, among others, of the Mallorcan singer Elena Escorcia, one of the participants of the latest edition of the television program Eufòria.
‘Carol’ (2015), a reference in lesbian cinema, can also be seen at the Cinema Truffaut. The screening will be followed by a discussion, presented by the journalist and film critic, Imma Merino. The writer and poet Sarta Torres will focus her conference on the figure of this North American poet and novelist and on the Barney salon, which she created in Paris.
One of the central events will be the grand gala that will be held on January 23 at the La Mercè Cultural Center and will combine music, theater, dance, poetry or humor with the help of forty artists. Among the notable names, that of the dancer Sol Picó; that of the musician Alfonso Vilallonga or that of the actor Martí Peraferrer.
Another of the contest’s regular activities will be the festival of unpublished short films, focused, on this occasion, on the figure and work of Barney. More than twenty filmmakers will participate, including the award-winning filmmaker Albert Serra. An event that will be directed by the journalist Ester Bertran.
The councilor for Equality of the Girona City Council, Amy Sabali, showed the City Council’s support for a festival that “gives visibility to leading figures in the defense of rights and freedoms.”
