February 24-26, 2017
Museum of the Moving Image
Cinema Tropical, in partnership with Museum of the Moving Image, present the 2017 edition of the Cinema Tropical Festival celebrating the year's best Latin American films. The festival will feature the winners of the 7th annual Cinema Tropical Awards, which represent the artistic excellence of contemporary Latin American cinema. The Festival offers a platform for local audiences to discover the exciting world of film coming from the region.
All screenings at Museum of the Moving Image
36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria, NY
(718) 777-6888 / www.movingimage.us
TEMPESTAD
(Tatiana Huezo, Mexico, 2016, 105 min. In Spanish and English with English subtitles)
Winner – Best Documentary
Tatiana Huezo’s second documentary feature (after her acclaimed debut The Tiniest Place) recounts the story of two women: Miriam, who was wrongly accused of human trafficking and imprisoned in a jail controlled by a drug cartel, and Adela, a circus performer who has been looking for her kidnapped daughter for over a decade. Through a subjective and emotional journey, and with striking cinematography by Ernesto Prado (who was nominated for an American Society of Cinematographers Award for his work in the film), Tempestad conveys the paralyzing power of fear and reflects the impact of the violence and impunity that afflict Mexico. Hailed as “a rich and original piece of work” (IndieWire), Tempestad was selected by Film Comment as one of the best undistributed films of 2016.
Friday, February 24, 7pm — Q&A with filmmaker
JACQUELINE (ARGENTINE)
(Bernardo Britto, U.S.A., 2016, 87 min. In English, Spanish, Arabic with English subtitles)
Winner – Best U.S. Latino Film
In Bernardo Britto’s “playful, lo-fi travelogue” (The New Yorker), a filmmaker receives a series of panicked emails and phone calls from a young French woman—Jacqueline Dumont. She implores him to travel to Argentina to document her self-imposed political exile after she supposedly leaks highly confidential government secrets detailing a planned assassination. Jacqueline expects severe fallout and wants the filmmaker recording everything in case anything happens to her. As soon as the filmmaker and his two interns arrive at Jacqueline’s Argentine remote holistic center/safe haven, they begin to think she might be more interested in singing Britney Spears songs and hanging out with her new friend than helping the filmmakers unearth a huge government conspiracy. Nevertheless, they soldier on, desperately hoping they will somehow end up with some semblance of a worthwhile film and maybe—just maybe—find a kernel of truth in Jacqueline’s paranoid ramblings.
Saturday, February 25, 2pm
PLAZA DE LA SOLEDAD
(Maya Goded, Mexico, 2016, 84 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Winner – Best Director, Documentary
Internationally acclaimed photographer Maya Goded makes a promising film debut with Plaza de la Soledad, a continuation of her photography work in La Merced neighborhood in Mexico City, where prostitution has been present since the days of the Aztecs. “Beautiful, respectful, and celebratory” (Film Comment), the film follows four strong women—middle-aged and older—who want to break a vicious circle that began with abuse and abandonment suffered from an early age. Carmen, Lety, Raquel, and Esther aspire for a better life, and Goded’s poignant lens follows their quest to find true love, their capacity to transform themselves, and above all, their resilience and solidarity.
Saturday, February 25, 4:30pm - Q&A with filmmaker
SANTA TERESA & OTHER STORIES / SANTA TERESA Y OTRAS HISTORIAS
(Nelson Carlo de los Santos, Dominican Republic/USA/Mexico, 2015, 65 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Winner – Best First Film
Winner, Best First Fiction Film. Dir. Nelson Carlo de los Santos. As stories of violence in Mexican border towns continue to make international headlines, alternative ways of making sense of this brutal reality are more vital than ever. In his auspicious debut fiction film, Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlo de los Santos cleverly extrapolates from Chilean author Roberto Bolaño’s unfinished, posthumously published novel 2666 to explore a multiplicity of perspectives and voices in a town riven by bloodshed. In the fictional town of Santa Teresa (a stand-in for Ciudad Juárez) on the border between Mexico and the United States, the researcher Juan de Dios Martínez straddles the line between journalism and detective work, investigating a handful of crimes and abuses perpetrated on women and workers of the zone. Mixing fiction, nonfiction, and essay, Santa Teresa & Other Stories is a lyrical, experimental take on the humanitarian crisis in Mexico brought on by the drug wars.
Saturday, February 25, 7pm - Q&A with filmmaker
BLEAK STREET / LA CALLE DE LA AMARGURA
(Arturo Ripstein, Mexico/Spain, 2015, 99 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Winner – Best Director, Fiction
Based on a true—yet bizarre—crime story, the latest film by veteran auteur Arturo Ripstein is a black-and-white lusciously shot noir melodrama that tells the story of two prostitutes (Patricia Reyes Spíndola and Nora Velásquez) who mistakenly kill two twin mini-luchadores in downtown Mexico City in a robbery attempt to make ends meet. "Ripstein plunges into a Mexico City demimonde of crime, prostitution, and wrestling… (and) imbues his Buñuelian tableaux with both empathy and dark humor." (Film Forum).
Sunday, February 26, 2:30pm
NEON BULL / BOI NEON
(Gabriel Mascaro, Brazil, 2016, 101 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles.)
Winner – Best Fiction Film
Aptly described as “wild, sensual, and utterly transporting” by the Toronto International Film Festival, where it had its world premiere, Neon Bull marks a great leap forward for Gabriel Mascaro, the Brazilian writer-director whose background as a documentary filmmaker is revealed in his deeply observational style. He is creating a form of poetic realism, and Neon Bull is a bold and transgressive look at sexual identity within the context of the vaquejada, an exhibition sport in which cowboys try to pull bulls to the ground by their tails. The freewheeling film revolves around a traveling group of performers, including a rugged cowhand who spends much of his time fashioning sexy outfits for a truck-driving female exotic dancer. .
Sunday, February 26, 5pm
