The Film Academy today renews half of its Board of Directors and elects a new president, for the first time, from among four possible candidates: director of photography Teresa Medina, actress Luisa Gavasa, producer Valerie Delpierre and director Fernando Méndez-Leite in an assembly that begins at 9:30 a.m.
In-person voting will be held at the Madrid headquarters of the Academy between 10:00 and 11:30 in the morning and then the ballots will be counted. The reception of votes 'on line' and by mail closed at 10:00 on June 2.
This Saturday will also proceed to the renewal of half of the Board of Directors, which is made up of two members from each of the fifteen specialties. The mandate of the members of the Board of Directors is four years, renewing half of this body every two years.
Mariano Barroso, who held the acting presidency after the resignation of Yvonne Blake for health reasons before the end of his mandate -he died a few months later after suffering a stroke-, has directed the entity for the last four years, with the producer Rafael Portela and the actress Nora Navas in the vice presidencies.
It is the first time in the history of the Film Academy that four candidates are running for the presidency, three women and one man, who coincide in emphasizing their desire to continue with the work begun by Blake, which Barroso continued with great solvency, adapting to new realities such as the cinematographic work of the platforms, as well as in the non-incorporation of the series.
The candidates are presented, as usual, in three lists with the head of the list (president) and two vice-presidents.
They are the actress Luisa Gavasa, together with the director Juan Vicente Córdoba and the screenwriter Virginia Yagüe; the director of photography Teresa Medina, with the documentalist Pilar Pérez Solano and the costume designer Cristina Rodríguez; the director Fernando Méndez-Leite, with Portela (the only one who repeats in the candidacy) and the actress Susi Sánchez, and the producer Valérie Delpierre, with the actress Amparo Climent and the screenwriter Alicia Luna.
Recovering viewers, advancing equality for women, connecting with the new generations, influencing the audiovisual education of young people or bringing cinema to places that have been left without theaters, through cultural centers, for example, are some of the proposals that the candidacies carry in their programs.
