An attic in Barcelona. A group of friends. And a shared passion: music documentaries. This was the spark for the In-Edit Festival, a festival born from a passion for music, an admiration for cinema, and the pleasure of sharing time with friends. A spirit that, now, twenty-four editions later, continues to be maintained.
A curious, relatable and quintessentially Barcelona anecdote set the tone for a new edition of Moments Estel·lars, the series organised by The New Barcelona Post at CASA SEAT, with the collaboration of Barcelona Global and Must Media Group. This time, the initiative has also joined forces with In-Edit, extending the partnership beyond this event: The New Barcelona Post will be a media partner of the festival this year.
Uri Altell, owner and general director of the festival; Astrid Rousse, director of In-Edit; Toni Querol, artistic director of the festival; and Marc Gili, leader and singer of Dorian, in a conversation moderated by Toni Aira, welcomed the attending public on a rainy afternoon in our city. But the coldness of the atmosphere quickly warmed up with the smiles, confessions, and complicity seen (and heard) on stage.
A journey that began in the late 90s
Uri Altell explained how this adventure, known today as In-Edit, began. It all happened in that era when the Internet was still old, almost prehistoric: a slow Internet, still using a modem, and where movie download platforms abounded.
Uri, passionate about musical cinema, held meetings in his Barcelona attic with his group of friends once a week. The goal? To enjoy together the latest documentary downloaded to his computer. And this gathering, which started as a weekly meeting among friends, grew bigger and bigger until, one day, they decided to rent the City Hall of Barcelona to screen a documentary: Body & Soul, a story that analyzed the birth of house music in the United States. And, to round off the event, they also contacted one of the DJs mentioned in the documentary to provide the live soundtrack of that era being commemorated in the film.
This is how, unknowingly, In-Edit was born, a festival that champions musical documentaries, but also live music and, of course, joint, social, and community celebration.
Twenty-four years have passed since the first In-Edit and, today, it is one of the most consolidated festivals in the city; in fact, Astrid Rousse has stated that "it is the film festival with the most spectators in Barcelona."
The collective experience and the In-Edit spirit
In-Edit has shown that the music documentary is a living and constantly growing discipline. Astrid Rousse herself highlighted the uniqueness of the format: "What is 100% In-Edit is that there is music and cinema in a single experience. You can enjoy DJ sessions in the room before the screening or concerts afterwards; it's an activity to meet up with friends and recreate great stories on the big screen."
What is 100% In-Edit is that there is music and cinema in a single experience.
Experiencing the festival in the cinema, as Marc Gili pointed out, is not just watching the screen, but sharing the moment. A spirit of closeness that Uri Altell has defined very clearly: "In-Edit is not a 'glittery' film festival. People come in sneakers; there's no red carpet where you have to dress up. And this atmosphere of curiosity and good vibes is an environment that is produced exactly the same all over the world."
And it is that, despite being a project rooted in Barcelona, In-Edit has been crossing borders for years. As Astrid Rousse recalled, the festival began its international adventure more than two decades ago in Chile and has ended up bringing its proposal to more than twenty countries. An expansion that has been done without ever losing its essence: bringing this atmosphere of a music-loving community wherever it goes.
This close and relaxed atmosphere has made In-Edit an essential meeting point for local people, as Uri Altell explained: "We address the people of Barcelona. We don't have an audience from outside, we don't destroy the city.... This also helps: it's a meeting point for people from here who meet, who reconnect."
In-Edit is a meeting point for music lovers in the city.
Marc Gili wanted to emphasize precisely this role of the festival as a great social and community event for those who love music: “The importance of the festival within the city is also the fact that it has become a meeting point for many people, a meeting point for music lovers in the city, where we know we will meet loved ones from the past, from our youth, and whom we don't get to see so often. In-Edit has already become this cultural and social event, it has become a great family.”
In the same vein, Toni Querol underlined how this community life extends beyond the screen: “There's nothing cooler than people discussing cinema and music on street corners; it's the most beautiful thing about the festival.”
The “music-loving international”
The conversation at Moments Estel·lar drifted towards the connection that music generates between human beings. Marc Gili offered a reflection on this invisible complicity that unites genre enthusiasts: “People who have a passion for music are a very specific target. I've always said that I probably have more in common with a Japanese guy who is a fan of the same music I like than perhaps with my parents' neighbor. There's a kind of music-loving international: you understand each other, whether Russian, French, Colombian, or Mexican, because you've spent your whole life passionately enjoying music and you share the same background and the same way of seeing the world.”
And it is that approaching a music documentary allows one to delve into music like no other format does. The Dorian singer himself confessed that, for him, a good documentary is like “the third stop” on a journey that can teach you a lot about the industry and about life. “The documentary about the band Fugazi made us copy the idea that tickets for our concerts must always be at the lowest possible price within the market price so that any boy or girl from any neighborhood can come to see us. For us, this is an attitude towards life and our followers know it,” Gili explained.
The music of Barcelona: from "Catalan hooliganism" to classical music
For his part, Toni Querol explained the criterion that guides the festival edition after edition. "We prioritize stories over big names. What we like to foster is curiosity, putting social and musical phenomena into perspective," commented the artistic director, highlighting the work of building the city's sound map through the section Sons de Barcelona.
We prioritize stories over big names.
"I really like the contrasts that occur at In-Edit (...) This year, alongside Jordi Savall's baroque music, we will see Baya Baye, a rapper from Montgat, a standard-bearer of 'Catalan thuggery,' or Remei de Ca la Fresca, who use music to talk about their territory and denounce the overexploitation of the Montseny aquifers," explained Querol.
However, the vision of the city also had a touch of vindication in the face of the loss of musical spaces, such as the recent closure of the Meteoro venue or the disappearance of historic venues like Rock Sound or Garatge. "We would like not to have to program so much in memory of venues that have closed and celebrate more what is alive, but the documentary serves to explain the transformation of the city and to show cultural resistance," affirmed Querol.
Future projects
In the final stretch of the event, Toni Aira posed a last question to the guests: what music or what scene in Barcelona would deserve a documentary today and still doesn't have one?
Uri Altell explained that he himself is directing a documentary about Love of Lesbian that he expects to have ready for the next edition; Astrid Rousse pointed out an pending subject with the figure of Rosalía; Marc Gili proposed a good documentary about the history of Catalan jazz, the footprint of independent bands in Barcelona in recent decades or a deep documentary about Joan Manuel Serrat; while Toni Querol opted to document the struggle for the survival of small venues and creative spaces in the city.
As a preview of the 24th edition that is about to begin, the festival highlighted titles such as Broken English, the inaugural documentary about Marianne Faithfull supervised by Tilda Swinton; unreleased footage of The Cramps found just two years ago; or the curious documentary about the world professional whistlers' competition in Hollywood.
This meeting at Casa SEAT warms up for the next edition of In-Edit. The Barcelona music documentary film festival has everything ready to bring music lovers, cinephiles, and curious people back together in front of the big screen.