By Marcela Goglio and Carlos A. Gutiérrez*
- The Best Latin American Film Festival in NYC. For thirteen years, Latinbeat has been a key player in presenting to New York audiences the best of recent Latin American cinema. The launching of Latinbeat coincided with the beginning of the new Latin American Wave, which it has showcased since then, reflecting its expansion and variety. For more reference read the cover article of September’s edition of Sight & Sound. http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/issue.php
- La Yuma. Nicaragua’s first feature film in over twenty years. The film had an impressive local response at the box office beating Iron Man 2 in the first place in its opening week. This film played a major role for Nicaragua to pass a progressive film law that supports local filmmakers. http://cinematropical.blogspot.com/2010/05/something-is-cooking-in-nicaragua.html
- Historias extraordinarias / Extraordinary Stories. Mariano Llinás’ four-hour-long epic film was recently named one of the Best Argentine Films of the Decade by a select group of film critics, and believe us, it was an incredibly tight competition! Llinás’ immodest tour-de-force involves 70 characters, 60 locations, all in 10 weeks of shooting and all made with a reported budget of not more than $50,000. To boot, Llinás himself and the film’s soundtrack composer, Gabriel Chowjik, will be present after the screening to reflect with the audience on his extraordinary feat. A must sí!
- Nicolás Pereda. Nicolás Pereda is rapidly on his way to becoming one of Latin America’s most promising filmmakers. Not even thirty years old yet, Pereda has already made five feature films –his most recent film to premiere at Venice this September— almost all of them starring Gabino Rodriguez. Film critic Robert Koehler just dedicated an article to him in the most recent issue of Cinema Scope.
- Three great Mexican Filmmakers: Hagerman, Meyer and Ímaz. Mexican cinema is going through an astonishing resurgence and Latinbeat presents the second feature films of Carlos Hagerman (Vuelve a la vida), Matías Meyer (El calambre) and Rubén Ímaz (Cefalópodo), three great filmmakers whose debut films (Los que se quedan; Wadley; Familia Tortuga) had quite an impact in the festival circuit and who have come to embody the new generation of directors south of the border.
- Cuchillo de palo / 108. A great example of the up-and-coming cinema from Paraguay. This intensely personal and poignant study of the director’s uncle is also an incisive depiction of the impact Stroessner’s dictatorship had on Paraguayan society today. The film is a gem, and Costa is definitely someone to watch. Read Eva Karene Romero's article on current Paraguayan cinema: http://cinematropical.blogspot.com/2010/04/wait-is-over-reflections-on-paraguayan.html
- El vuelco del cangrejo / Crab Trap (and the blurry line between fiction and non-fiction films) Acclaimed in the festival circuit in the past year (like another film in the program, The Cramp), this intriguing, carefully constructed and beautifully photographed Colombian film explores the fine and blurry line that can exist between documentary and fiction film, a kind of exploration we have seen in Latin America cinema for a while now, and that has been identified by Dennis Lim in The New York Times as a recent international trend. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/movies/22hybrid.html
- Renegotiating History – films about the past. Through fiction or documentary several films in this year’s program delve into their countries’ troubled pasts and pose challenging, provocative questions about the present. All of them deal in one way or another with human rights issues. Eva y Lola; The Rati Horror Show; Cuchillo de Palo/108; My Life with Carlos. Whether fiction or documentary, many of this year’s films deal with abrasive historical issues that are still having an impact on Latin American people today as democracies consolidate and societies try to come to terms with turbulent pasts.
- Road movies: The Cramp, Crab Trap, Cephalopod. The solitary exploration of stunningly beautiful landscapes in remote areas of the region is a major theme in the series, one that echoes the filmmakers’ own exciting explorations of new cinematic language. Discover for yourself what these three films have in common, and why. “I think this reflects the need of our generation to talk about the anguished contemporary man that is looking on going back to nature, in the face of God’s death and the triumph of the void, perhaps also on how small we feel in the presence of nature and its 'sneezes' such as the Icelandic volcano or the wildfires in Russia”, considers Matías Meyer, regarding the similarities between his film The Cramp and the two others films.
- Enrique Piñeyro’s activism. Once again the accomplished Enrique Piñeyro attempts to change history with his most recent film The Rati Horror Show. The commercial release of the film in Buenos Aires will coincide with his public judicial denouncement of corruption in the Buenos Aires police, a bold and dangerous move that will surely cause commotion in Argentina. The week after, he will be at Latinbeat to discuss his movie with the audience. “One of the few filmmakers who can claim to have effected social change with a movie (namely his brilliant narrative debut, Whisky Romeo Zulu, which reformed Argentine aeronautic law), Piñeyro uses cinematically charged evidence to press his argument that Carrera is a victim of gross judicial malfeasance. Whether it all will be enough to set Carrera free (he remains behind bars, though his case is on appeal) is anyone's guess. But if it works, Pineyro's efforts to change the world by making movies will be an amazing two-for-two..." –Variety.
* Marcela Goglio is the programmer of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual Latinbeat festival. Carlos A. Gutiérrez is the co-founding director of Cinema Tropical.
