Chilean Film DE JUEVES A DOMINGO Wins Tiger Award Award at Rotterdam Film Fest

The Rotterdam International Film Festival, which started on January 25 is running through this Sunday, February 5, announced the winners of the Tiger Awards of its 41st edition, and one of the top prizes went to the Chilean film De jueves a domingo / Thursday till Sunday (pictured). The debut feature film by Dominga Sotomayor is a road movie set in the car of a middle class family en route to a holiday trip to the north, while the marriage is falling apart.

Even though Rotterdam has awarded numerous Latin American films in the past, Sotomayor's film becomes the first Chilean production to win the Tiger Award. Some past Latin American winners of the Tiger Award include Mexican film Alamar by Pedro González Rubio and Costa Rican film Agua fría de mar by Paz Fábrega in 2010; Brazilian film Baixio das bestas by Cláudio Assis in 2007; Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll's 25 Watts (Uruguay) in 2001; and Pablo Trapero's Mundo Grúa (Argentina) in 2000.

Additionally, it was announced that Brazilian film Neighboring Sounds / O son ao redor by Kleber Mendonça Filho received the FIPRESCI Award given by the International Federation of Film Critics. 

Brazilian Tiradentes Film Fest Announces 2012 Winners

 

 

Last Saturday, January 28, the Mostra de Cinema de Tiradentes, a Brazilian film festival that has been getting momentum in the past few years, announced the winner's of this year’s edition that ran January 20-28 at this colonial town in Minas Gerais. The main award as Best Film went to Adirley Queirós’s A cidade é uma só? / Is the City One Only? (pictured). The film explores the daily life of a socially excluded portion of the Brazilian population living in and around the capital city. In addition, the jury selected as Best Film Eduardo Morotó's Quando morremos a noite / When We Die at Night.

 

The Youth Jury’s pick for Best Film was HU from Pedro Urano and Joana Traub Cseko a documentary film that is a unique study of a building divided in two. On one side, it is a public hospital, and on the other, a ruin. Through the exploration of this building, the filmmakers examine the state of Brazil’s public health and education systems.  Lastly, the Audience Award went to Helvécio Ratton documentary film O mineiro e o queijo / Minas People and their Cheese. Ratton’s film delves into the world of the Minas’ artisanal cheese and the thousands of families whose livelihood depends on its production.

Latino Component in the Upcoming SXSW Festival

The South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival has announced its lineup for next edition to be held in Austin, Texas, March 9 through the 17. This year's selection features a strong representation of Latino talent in nearly every category. In the Narrative Feature Competition, the Mexican-German-American co-production film Los Chidos (pictured) from director/screenwriter, Omar Rodríguez López will have its world premiere. In this film, the Gonzales family tries hard to hold on to their beautiful Latino traditions of misogyny and homophobia when a tall, white, industrialist stranger appears, challenging their place in the exploitative food chain.

The Documentary Feature Competition will feature the world premiere of Annie Eastman's Bay of All Saints. This documentary film looks at the life of three single mothers facing homelessness when the last of the notorious water slums is demolished in Bahia, Brazil. Additionally, the Emerging Visions section featuring audacious, risk-taking artists in the new cinema landscape that demonstrate raw innovation and creativity in documentary and narrative filmmaking, will be premiering in the U.S. the Brazilian film Hard Labor (pictured) from director/screenwriter team, Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra. In this film, Helena prepares to open her own business: a neighborhood grocery store. When her husband Octavio is suddenly fired from his job, Helena is left to support the family alone.

 In this same section, Mark Kendall's debut feature La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus (pictured) will be making its world premiere. The documentary films follows the journey of one out-of-service American school bus on a 3,000-mile adventure across the borders between the Americas, at it is repaired, repainted and resurrected into a Guatemalan camioneta.

The 24 Beats per Second section, focusing on sounds, culture and influence of music and musicians, with an emphasis on documentary will be featuring the world premiere of Amor Crónico (Cuba / USA) directed by famed actor Jorge Perugorría. Weaving footage of singer Cucu Diamantes’ Cuban tour into a fictional love story, the film is an energetic display of her glamorous and infectious performance style and a fascinating portrait of Cuba today.

 The SX Global section, featuring filmmaking talent, including premieres, interactive documentaries and shorts will show Argentinean film Pompeya from director/screenwriter team, Tamae Garateguy and and Diego A. Fleischer. The film tells the story of a film director who hires two screenwriters to make a gangster movie, and a fiction feast starts: femmes fatales, mobs fighting for the same neighborhood and a limitless hero who defies every movie concept. Meanwhile on the Estonian-Swedish co-production documentary film Cubatón - El Médico Story (pictured) by Daniel Fridell, El Médico, a Cuban house doctor who wants to become a cubatón star is facing a serious choice between serving the state and becoming a popstar. The SX Global section will also feature ¡Vivan las Antipodas! (Germany/The Netherlands/Argentina/Chile) by director Victor Kossakovsky. This documentary film takes a look at a common question: What is happening just at this moment beneath our very feet at the other side of the planet?

The Festival Favorites section will feature the U.S. Premiere of the horror film Lovely Molly, by Cuban-born director Eduardo Sánchez, whilst the Special Events section of the festival will feature Casa de mi Padre (pictured) by director Matt Piedmont and screenwriter Andrew Steele. In this comedy, Will Ferrell plays a Mexican rancher who must defend his father's home against the country's most infamous drug lord. The film is costarred by Mexican actors Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and the late Pedro Armendáriz Jr.

MoMA's Doc Fortnight Will Show THE TINIEST PLACE; EL FIELD and ARGENTINIAN LESSON

The Museum of Modern Art announced the lineup of their annual Documentary Fortnight Festival which will feature three Latin American films including Tatiana Huezo's acclaimed debut feature El lugar más pequeño / The Tiniest Place (pictured) as opening film -along with Jim Hubbard's United in Anger: A History of ACT UP. The film is the account of the village of Cinquera in El Salvador, where the surviving residents restore the village and their lives after the brutal Civil War of 1980–1992. The Mexican filmmaker will be in attendance to introduce and participate in a post-screening Q&A.

MoMA will also present the US premieres of the Mexican film El Field directed by Daniel Rosas and the Polish film, Argentinian Lesson, by Wojciech Staroń. Rosas' film, shot in California's Imperial Valley and Mexico's Mexicali Valley, illustrates the contrasts between field and desert, urban and countryside, and men and machine. El Field presents cross-border relationships as a stunning, complex, and often chaotic symbiosis. Argentinian Lesson tells the story of Janek, a young Polish boy, is thrust into an unknown world when his family moves to Argentina.

These three films will be co-presented by Ambulante, the celebrated traveling documentary film festival created by Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, and Pablo Cruz; and Cinema Tropical. Established in 2001, MoMA's annual two-week showcase of recent nonfiction film and media takes place each February. This international selection of films present a wide range of creative categories that extend the idea of the documentary form, examines the relationship between contemporary art and nonfiction filmmaking, and reflects on new areas of nonfiction practice.

The Highest Grossing Latin American Films of 2011

A few days ago, news portal LatAmcinema.com, published a special report with the highest grossing local films of 2011 for some Latin American countries, which happened to be mostly comedies. According to information offered by the publication, the most successful film from Argentina was Un cuento chino / Chinese Take-Away, directed by Sebastián Borensztein and starring Ricardo Darín about a hardware salesman and a Chinese boy in Buenos Aires, grossing a whopping equivalent of 4.4 million dollars.

The highest grossing picture for the neighboring country Brazil was Roberto Santucci's De pernas pro ar, a comedy about the exploration of the changes one woman faces after being fired from her job. The most successful Chilean film of the year was a biopic of Violeta Parra entitled Violeta se fue a los cielos by renowned filmmaker Andrés Wood (Machuca), which just had its US premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this week.

The most successful Colombian film was El paseo, director Harold Trompetero's comedy of a family road trip to Cartagena produced by Dago García. In Mexico, the animated film Don Gato y su pandilla, directed by Alberto Mar in co-production with Argentina and based on the American cartoon created by Hannah-Barbera, ranked number one at the box office.

Director Gaston Vizcarra's El Guachimán, a film about an ordinary man's sudden acquisition of a large amount of money, took the top spot in Peru last year. Likewise, Uruguay's top-grossing film was Artigas - La Redota, César Charlone's fusion of history and fantasy that was part of the film series "Libertadores" about key historical figures in the fight for the independence of eight Latin American countries.

Lastly, the Indiana Jones parody, Er Conde Jones: El secreto de la bola criolla written and directed by Benjamín Rausseo, not only topped the year's box office in Venezuela, it became the highest grossing Venezuelan film ever with more than 650,000 spectators.  

 

Watch the trailers:

Argentina: Un cuento chino

 

Brazil: De pernas pro ar

Chile: Violeta se fue a los cielos

Colombia: El paseo

Mexico: Don Gato y su pandilla

Peru: El Guachimán

Uruguay: Artigas- La Redota 

Venezuela: Er Conde Jones

 

List of Latino Actors Ever Nominated for an Oscar

As Mexican filmmaker Demián Bichir received this morning a nomination as Best Actor for this year's Academy Awards for his work in Chris Weitz'sA Better Life, TropicalFRONT offers a recount of all of the Latino actors ever nominated for an Academy Award.

The very first Latino actor to receive an nomination was Puerto Rican actor José Ferrer as Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1948 for his work in Joan of Arc. Just two years later Ferrer became the first Latino actor to win the Oscar for Best Actor for the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac. Anthony Quinn would become the most nominated Latino actor to the Oscars having been nominated as Best Supporting Actor for Viva Zapata! in 1952 and Lust for Life in 1956, winning both times, and receiving nominations as Best Actor in 1957 for Wild is the Wind and in 1964 for Zorba the Greek.

In the nineties Cuban-born actor Andy Garcia was nominated for his supporting role in The Godfather: Part III; and more recently Puerto Rican actor Benicio del Toro took the Oscar as Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 2000 for Traffic, and nabbed another nomination in the same category in 2003 for Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams.

In regards to Latina Actress, the first one ever to receive a nomination was Mexican actress Katy Jurado for her supporting role in Broken Lance in 1954. Few years later, Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno won the Oscar as Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her legendary role as Anita in West Side Story in 1961. Norma Aleandro became the first and only Argentine actor to date to be nominated for an Oscar for her supporting role in Luis Mandoki's Gaby: A True Story in 1987.

Only three Latin American women have been nominated as Best Actress: Fernanda Montenegro for Central Station in 1998; Salma Hayek for Frida in 2002; and Catalina Sandino for Maria Full of Grace in 2004. No Latina has ever won the Oscar as Best Actress in a Leading Role to date.

Pictured (from left to right): Rita Moreno, Anthony Quinn and Benicio del Toro.