Spring / Summer 2015 Season
TWO SHOTS FIRED / DOS DISPAROS
(Martín Rejtman, Argentina/Chile/Germany/Netherlands, 2014, 93 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
A Cinema Tropical release
One Week Exclusive Engagement! May 13-19
Film Society of Lincoln Center
144 West 65th Street, New York City
www.filmlinc.com / (212) 875-5232
Rejtman’s first feature in a decade is an engrossing, digressive comedy with the weight of an existentialist novel. Sixteen-year-old Mariano (Rafael Federman), inexplicably and without warning, shoots himself twice—once in the stomach and once in the head—and improbably survives. As his family strains to protect Mariano from himself, his elder brother (Benjamín Coehlo) pursues a romance with a disaffected girl (Laura Paredes) who works the counter at a fast-food restaurant, his mother (Susana Pampín) impulsively takes off on a trip with a stranger, and Mariano recruits a young woman (Manuela Martelli) to join his medieval wind ensemble.
Rejtman tells this story with both compassion and formal daring, pursuing one thread only to abandon it for another. Two Shots Fired is a wry, moving, consistently surprising film about the irrationality of emotions and how they govern our actions at each stage of our lives.
“A rare and wonderful gem of world cinema"
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times
Summer / Fall 2014 Season
BAD HAIR / PELO MALO
(Mariana Rondón, Venezuela/Peru/Germany, 2013, 93 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
A Cinema Tropical/FiGa Films release.
Two Weeks Only! November 19-December 2
Film Forum
209 West Houston Street (west of Sixth Avenue), New York City
www.filmforum.org / (212) 727-8110
Daily screenings at 12:45pm, 3pm, 5:10pm, 7:20pm, and 9:30pm
"A touching and humorous coming-of-gender story, Bad Hair chronicles the life of nine-year-old Junior, living in a bustling Caracas tenement with his widowed mother. Junior fears he has pelo malo – bad hair. For his school photo, he wants to iron his stubbornly curly mane straight to resemble one of his pop star idols. His mother, unemployed and frazzled from the pressures of raising two children in an unforgiving city, has serious misgivings; she suspects her son is gay. Grandma is more accepting, teaching Junior to dance to one of her favorite ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll tunes.
Writer-director Mariana Rondón grounds her film in the cultural realities of working-class Venezuela – and, by dint of two remarkable performances, finds warmth and humor between mother and son, even as the uncertainties of pre-adolescence threaten to pull them apart. Winner, Best Film, San Sebastian Film Festival, and winner of directing, acting, and screenwriting awards at numerous festivals throughout the world." - Mike Maggiore, Programmer, Film Forum
“Tender insight into a complicated mother-son relationship… (a) deft balance of toughness and sensitivity.”
– David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
"Tragic and funny in equal measure (...) Highly recommended!"
- David Byrne
SOMOS MARI PEPA / WE ARE MARI PEPA
(Samuel Kishi Leopo, Mexico, 2013, 95 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
A Cinema Tropical/FiGa release.
August 15-21, Exclusive Engagement
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at Second Street), New York City
www.anthologyfilmarchives.com / (212) 505-5181
Nightly screenings at 7pm and 9pm; additional screenings at 5pm on 8/16 & 8/17
Samuel Kishi Leopo’s first feature, expanded from his earlier short film, is a finely observed, heartfelt chronicle of the lives and loves of a group of school-age punk rockers in Guadalajara as they approach the transition into adulthood. Beautifully unhurried and uneventful, We Are Mari Pepa focuses on its protagonists’ milieu and on the rhythm of their daily lives rather than on contrived plot mechanics, observing as they make music (their sole song features the refrain, “Natasha, I wanna cum in your face!”), barely tolerate their uncomprehending families, kill time, and look for love. Having just completed their school year, the boys find themselves facing the daunting realities of growing up, in a world where they have few options and where they’re destined to grow apart from each other.
We Are Mari Pepa is distinguished above all by the terrific performances from its four teenage leads, whose astonishingly natural rapport with each other seems too genuine to be faked – indeed, that they happen to be real-life childhood friends lends the film a strong dose of documentary authenticity. Showing a sure hand in his direction of these non-professional actors, as well as a keen compositional eye and an indelible sense of place, Leopo has created a film that is both funny and bittersweet.
"A sweaty, urgent, beautifully honest bliss-out." - Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice
"Samuel Kishi Leopo makes an appealing feature debut with this tender, pitch-perfect coming-of-ager." – Variety
I AM HAPPINESS ON EARTH / YO SOY LA FELICIDAD DE ESTE MUNDO
(Julián Hernández, Mexico, 2014, 124 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
A Breaking Glass Pictures release.
Opens Friday, August 15
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th Street, New York City
www.quadcinema.com / (212) 255-2243
Laemmle's Playhouse 7
673 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA
www.laemmle.com / (310) 478-3836
In I Am Happiness on Earth, Emiliano looks at his life with the eyes of a film director, mixing the objective reality with the processes of artistic creation. The story he is filming flounders with his daily life, until his world is trapped in the lens of his camera. Confused, always alone and in front of a screen, now a transfigured reality, but at the same time a measurable, controllable and manipulable one. He listens to a song on a loop: one of those songs you sing or repeat as a prayer and forcing you to remember, believe and convince yourself.
The film is directed by Mexico’s premier queer filmmaker Julián Hernández –the only filmmaker to have won the Berlinale’s Teddy Award for Best Feature Film twice, for A Thousand Clouds of Peace (2003) and Raging Sun, Raging Sky (2009). Starring Hugo Catalán, Alan Ramírez, Andrea Portal, and Gabino Rodríguez I Am Happiness on Earth recently had its world premiere at the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco, and played at Outfest in Los Angeles and at the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of NewFest’s lineup.
"I am Happiness on Earth boasts magnificent cinematography and highly sensual scenes.
(Hernández’s) films get under the viewer’s skin.” – Gary M. Kramer, bent/indieWIRE Network
THE NAKED ROOM / EL CUARTO DESNUDO
(Nuria Ibáñez, Mexico, 2013, 67 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
A Magic Lantern release, with the collaboration of Cinema Tropical
August 29-September 4, Exclusive Engagement
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at Second Street), New York City
www.anthologyfilmarchives.com / (212) 505-5181
Nightly screenings at 7pm and 8:45pm; additional screenings at 5:15pm on 8/29 & 8/30
Among the most immensely powerful, exquisitely sensitive, and formally inspired documentary films in recent memory, The Naked Room takes place entirely within the confines of a pediatric therapist’s office in a Mexico City hospital, observing the initial consultations of a succession of deeply troubled kids, and brilliantly transforming this constricted space into a microcosm vast in its metaphorical dimensions. Not content to limit the physical scope of the film to the four walls of the therapist’s office, director Nuria Ibáñez focuses entirely on the faces of the children themselves, as they struggle to express their feelings of severe depression and trauma, and describe the situations that have brought them to this pass. Constructing the film almost entirely out of close-ups on the children, and relegating everything else – the doctor, the parents and guardians of the kids, the décor of the consulting room – off-screen, Ibáñez has created a film that is visually minimalist but that contains multitudes.
The close-ups force us to share the kids’ perspective, and above all to truly see them with a clarity that movies rarely achieve when depicting children. Rather than representing the sentimental notion of the “innocence” of childhood, they come alive as individualized, troubled, yet ultimately vital human beings, fighting to survive emotionally and psychologically in the face of the abuse and dysfunction the world has bequeathed to them. Through the children’s expressions and gestures, The Naked Room paints a vivid picture of a society that inflicts its resentments and frustrations, its insecurities and sense of powerlessness, on those who are entirely unequipped to defend themselves, who have just begun the delicate process of understanding their world and forming their own identities. Shattering yet somehow resisting despair, thanks to the children’s reed-like resilience and astonishing honesty, The Naked Room is a landmark of contemporary documentary filmmaking.
"A haunting exploration of mental illness in children." —Variety
