Javier Porta Fouz

He was born in Marcos Paz, Buenos Aires province (Argentina), in 1973. He has a degree in Social Communication Sciences from the UBA and is a cinephile trained mainly in movie theaters. He has worked at BAFICI since 2001, as a programmer since 2005 and as its artistic director since 2016. He has also been in charge of scheduling the festival’s screenings in 17 editions and has been editor of the festival’s catalogue and daily magazine. He is content curator for the VOD platform Qubit.tv since its inception in 2011, and is also a columnist and film critic for the daily La Nación and Hipercrítico.

In 1998 he joined the magazine ‘El Amante-Cine’ as a writer and later became first the publication’s editor in 2003 and then its director. He has collaborated in media like ‘Clarín’, ‘Rolling Stone’ and ‘Le Monde diplomatique’, among others. The topics he writes about, in addition to films and directors, tend to deal with film economics and politics, and he is sometimes tempted to write and polemise over Argentine gastronomic and food traditions. In 2017 he made his acting debut by starringin a web series called ‘Cineterapia’.

He has been —and continues to be— a teacher: in primary, secondary and higher education. He currently lectures in criticism at the Universidad del Cine (FUC). He is the author of the book ‘Estudio crítico sobre el aura’ and the co-author of ‘El libro de oro del helado argentino’, while next year he will be publishing his new book‘Buenos Aires sin mapa’. He collaborated in several publications on the work of Tsai Ming-Liang, Julio Cortázar, the New Chilean Cinema, Fernando Solanas, Abbas Kiarostami, Leonardo Favio, Lucrecia Martel and the New Argentine Cinema which were published in Argentina, Chile, France, Spain and Poland. He has delievered courses and lectures in Spain, Chile and Mexico and has been guest programmer for various festivals.