For the Festival, the mountain is not only a stage where mountaineering and adventure milestones take place, it is also a place of nature and ecology, of people and rural environments, of culture and knowledge. The signing of the agreement between the Torelló Mountain Film Festival Foundation and the Chair of the Rural World of the University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) will allow the promotion of the Chair of the Rural World Award of the UVic-UCC, a new award that will be launched in the 44th edition of the competition, from November 13 to 22 this year. This award strengthens the collaboration between the Festival and UVic-UCC and reinforces a shared vision. On the one hand, the Torelló Mountain Film Festival has been making this art a tool for exploring the world for 43 years and, on the other, the UVic-UCC Rural World Chair has been working for five years to generate knowledge and provide answers to the problems of rural areas in Catalonia.
JOAN SALARICH, Festival director: “The values shared with UVic-UCC of respect for the natural environment and the people who live there motivate us to join efforts to recognize projects that emphasize it.”
LAURA DOMINGO, director of the Chair of the Rural World at UVic-UCC: “We want to be present in strategic places related to the field of sustainability to raise awareness in society, without focusing only on academic conferences and dialogue with other languages.”
The new award, the result of the collaboration between the Festival and the Chair of the Rural World at UVic-UCC, will recognize films that deal with the rural world, depopulation and territorial sustainability, highlighting life in the mountains and its challenges: depopulation and territorial imbalance, sustainability and development of territories, rural identity and culture or people who choose to stay or return to build a life outside the big cities. Along these lines, it will enhance the visibility of more aspects related to the global object of our transversal view towards the mountain, nature and the people who travel and inhabit it..
