Virginia García del Pino (Barcelona, 1966) is part of the "new Spanish author cinema" and combines her career as a director, editor, and screenwriter with teaching in the Master's in Creative Documentary at the UAB. After graduating in Fine Arts, her work as a video artist led her closer to the documentary genre. Her work has a wide international presence in festivals and contemporary art centers.
Virginia García del Pino explains that her video works are a way of paying attention to things she already knows until they seem completely unfamiliar. It is precisely from this gaze at the known – the nearby, the everyday – as if she did not know it, that the deep humanity of her videos and the dignity of the people portrayed seem to emerge: whether they are maids in Mexico (Hágase su voluntad, 2004) or Spanish workers whose professions are socially despised (Lo que tú dices que soy, 2007). Free from grandiosity, their striking simplicity and apparent triviality challenge, above all, the condition of the indifferent spectator. Her videos emerge from an attempt to understand the world from a less painful perspective, gravitating around social conventions of representation, and it is certainly in this attempt to understand where she usually opts for a striking formal simplicity.
Between 2001 and 2004, she lived and worked between Barcelona and Mexico, where she made her first short films, including Pare de sufrir and Hágase tu voluntad, which have been shown at art centers such as MNCARS, CCCB, Artium, and Matadero. In 2008, she received several awards for Lo que tú dices que soy, a documentary that opened doors to numerous international film festivals and was part of the experimental cinema program Del éxtasis al arrebato, 50 años del Otro cine español, which has toured major museums and film libraries in Europe, the U.S., and Latin America. In 2009, she made Mi hermana y yo, a melodramatic film that participated in Punt de Vista and FID Marseille, among other prominent festivals, and was shown at Anthology Film Archives in New York as part of the Spanish non fiction program. Espacio Simétrico arrived in 2010. It is one of her most bewildering works, which has continued to be shown at national and international festivals and is part of the exhibition Fábulas problemáticas.
Her first feature film, El jurado (2012), participated in the official section of FID Marseille. Her documentary, La décima carta (2015), premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival and was nominated for the Forqué Awards. In 2018, she won the best short film award at the Málaga Film Festival. Her third feature film, La estafa del amor (2023), premiered at the 68th edition of SEMINCI, receiving the Young Jury Award at the Los trabajos y las noches festival. Festivals such as Porto Post Doc, Cineuropa, La Alternativa, and Márgenes have spotlighted her work, and her video creations have been exhibited at MACBA, MNCARS, IVAM, CCCB, and Tate Gallery, among others.
In a time of fluctuating identities, hybrid and temporary, the work of Virginia Garcia del Pino asks for the social brands that we (d) limit beyond personal choices. Her films delve into the complex world of work, with its paradoxes, their interdependencies and specular effects. The work identity is presented as social brand that limits individual expression, but also strengthens it. Trapped and driven by their own frame of reference, the interviewed in the videos of Virginia Garcia del Pino find the ideal context to confess their true to the filmmaker. The (d) familiarity and accuracy of the frame generate an antirealistic and denaturated process which causes an alienating effect, placing the viewer with the challenge of understanding their own work identity.