AV News 175 - February 2009
INTERNATIONAL SUPER CIRCUIT AUTUMN 2008
Ron Davies FRPS and Julie England ARPS
Four years ago I (Ron) had the good fortune to be asked to judge the Argentinian
'leg' of the Super Circuit at Mar del Plata, about 400 km south of Buenos Aires.
This year, Ricardo Zarate, the overall organiser of the Super Circuit, learned that
Julie England had an AV-AFIAP and ARPS and spoke good Spanish, so he invited
her to be on the jury at Mar del Plata. I was to be on the jury at Valparaiso in
Chile. All the preparations went well until at the last moment the Chileans
apparently got cold feet and decided against hosting the festival. So, on arrival
at Mar del Plata, I was asked to assist in an 'advisory' capacity.
I was assigned an interpreter, a pretty, intelligent, 23 year old Ph.D. student
who spoke excellent English. Julie also needed her services at times because
Julie speaks Castillian Spanish and the Argentinians speak their own version it's almost like the Queen's English versus Geordie!
There was a marked difference in appreciation of sequences as seen through
the Argentinian as opposed to the British eyes. Sequences with frenetic music
and even more frenetic image changes were admired. We would have happily
de-selected these! The organisers had done some pre-selection but had
surprisingly 'junked' some very good French sequences on the basis of 'too
much text'. The French winner of the Garda (Italy) festival had suffered that fate.
I sat in on the jury's final deliberations but took no part in determining the
'palmares', or prize list, which I felt was beyond my remit