With the tenth edition of the MOT festival almost ready, the organization has launched the new website, with the program, yes, but to emphasize its history they have highlighted the interventions from all previous editions. All of them, the 375, since 2014 dedicated to fantastic literature – years before the current boom –, curated by David Roas and with names like Albert Sánchez Piñol, Marc Pastor, Cristina Fernández Cubas or Anna Starobínets, until last year, about fear, under the care of Àlex Martín and with names like Dominique Manotti, Massimo Carlotto, Núria Cadenes and, again, Marc Pastor.
This year’s festival will try to delve deeper into literature from the author’s point of view with the motto “From within”, a specialty of its curator, the literature professor at the University of Girona and critic Xavier Pla, author among others of The Baltimore soldat. Assaigs sobre literature i realitat en temps d’autoficció (Lleonard Muntaner). Glòria Granell, co-director with Judit Badia, explained that after ten years of delving into literature, it seemed to them that “it was time to speak from the perspective of the writer, including the game between reality and fiction,” an issue, like autofiction, “which today It is fashionable but Pla has been studying for many years.” The festival, with a budget of 82,000 euros, mostly borne by the two town councils, will take place over two consecutive weekends – the first, March 14, 15 and 16, in Olot; the second, March 21, 22 and 23, in Girona.
Pla explained this Monday that “in recent years many literary taboos have been broken” in literature based on mourning, historical trauma or abuse, which can take very varied forms based on biographical expression: novel, diary, chronicles or hybrid genres to delve into issues that “thirty or forty years ago were buried, while today we can talk about everything.” The festival curator wanted to highlight the presence of authors such as Sergi Pàmies – who will be in the opening conversation with Pla and Jordi Cornudella –, Enrique Vila-Matas, Julià de Jòdar, Monika Zgustova, Marta Marín-Dòmine and Éric Vuillard – who will close with Anna Guitart–, but also Anna Pazos or Júlia Bacardit–the two, who participate in different sessions, are responsible for Les Golfes, a podcast that Pla mentioned as one of the phenomena that today are another hybrid platform for narrative of autofiction–.
Granell explained that in addition to the announced programming and various reading clubs in libraries about participating authors, actions are carried out in schools and institutes, with 600 and 300 participants respectively, because the festival’s desire is “to reach the maximum of people, that they breathe MOT” and that they have a “increasing and slow evolution.” The mayor of Olot, Josep Berga Vayreda, has highlighted that the objective of the festival is as ambitious as it is simple: “To promote reading”, and that thanks to the videos of these 10 years “it is not ephemeral, it is a body of knowledge”, although “curiously, we talk about letters and what remains is audiovisual.” The audiovisual will remain, yes, but also the experience lived in each of the conversations and the conversations that in turn will invite you to develop.
Catalan version, here
