Mexican Actress Receives Top Prize at the Shangai Film Fest

Úrsula Pruneda received the prize for Best Actress for her starring role in the Mexican film El sueño de Lu / Lu's Dream (pictured) by Hari Sama at the Shangai International Film Festival, which, in its 15th edition, ran June 16-24.

The jury headed by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud and comprised by Iranian director Rakhshan Banietemad, Chinese-American producer Terence Chang, American actress Heather Graham, Chinese actress Lee Bingbing, Hungarian director György Pálfi, and Chinese director Zhang Yang decided to give the award to Pruneda "for her outstanding performance. She was honest. She was brilliant as she was herself."

El sueño de Lu tells the story of a young Mexican mother who has lost her only child and tries to reengage back in her life. American critic Howard Feinstein praised Pruneda's performance as one of the best ones of 2011 for Filmmaker magazine. Other film credits for Pruneda includes María Novaro's Las buenas hierbas and Diego Luna's Abel. 

YOUNG & WILD and MOSQUITA Y MARI Will Have NY Premiere at NewFest

Marialy Rivas' Joven y alocada / Young & Wild (pictured) and Aurora Guerrero's Mosquita y Mari will have their New York Premiere as part of the 24th edition of NewFest, one of the world’s most comprehensive showcases of international LGBT film. The festival will run July 27-31 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center Walter Reade Theater.

A stunning and energetic look at family and youth culture in contemporary Chile, Young & Wild, deals with seventeen-year-old Daniela’s sexual exploits. In a struggle to contend with her feelings for Antonia, a cute girl at work and her well-to-do strict evangelical family, Daniela learns that having it all- sex, love and eternal salvation- is more complicated than she ever imagined. Screening on Tuesday July 31st, Marialy Rivas, co-writer Camila Gutíerrez and lead actress Alicia Rodríguez will travel to New York to present their film.

Mosquita y Mari tells the coming of age story for two young Chicanas who although drastically different, become fast friends and develop a bond that neither one expected or knows how to handle. Directed by Aurora Guerrero, the film perfectly embodies the awkwardness and cautious desire of two teenage girls experiencing love for the first time. The director will present and discuss her  first feature which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Additionally, NewFest announced that this year's edition will feature short La ducha / The Shower by María José, also from Chile.

For the first time, the festival partners with Los Angeles’ Outfest and the Film Society of Lincoln Center in presenting a captivating collection of narratives, shorts, documentaries and panels committed to fully reflecting the diversity and complexity of LGBT lives. Newfest is dedicated to bringing together filmmakers and audiences in building a community that passionately supports giving greater visibility and voice to a vast range of expressions and representations of the LGBT experience. Presented annually since 1988, and through year-round programming, NewFest celebrates film as part of its mission to bring stories that break through closet doors and glass ceilings.

LAS ACACIAS Tops Argentina's Silver Condor Awards

Pablo Giorgelli's Las Acacias (pictured) won the prize for Best Film in the 60th edition of the Silver Condor Awards, given annually by the Argentine Film Critics Association. Carlos Sorín got the prize for Best Director for his most recent film El gato desaparece / The Cat Vanishes while Santiago Mitre's El estudiante / The Student won three awards for Best Original Screenplay, Best First Film and Breakthrough Performance.

Even though Fernando Spiner's Aballay, el hombre sin miedo / Aballay, the Man Without Fear was the most nominated film for this edition, in 11 categories, the film only got three prizes for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Supporting Actor. The awards were given this evening at the Avenida Theater in Buenos Aires.

Joaquín Rodríguez, Morelia Film Fest Programmer, Dies

Joaquín Rodríguez, who was one of the original founders and who served as current programmer of the Morelia Film Festival in Mexico, died yesterday. Born in Durango, he attended Universidad Iberoamericana and worked primarily as a film critic. Since 1988 he worked for numerous publications including Primer Plano, Cinemanía, Cine Premiere, Toma, D.F., El Financiero and El Universal.

He was also an actor, having appeared in more than 20 productions since 1993 and some films including Julián Hernández's Raging Sun, Raging Sky / Rabioso sol, rabioso cielo (2009). Trough programming, criticism and education he tirelessly supported the development and recognition of recent Mexican cinema.

His death elicited messages of condolence by different members of the Mexican film community in social media. "Tireless partner of festivals and good times. We will miss you", wrote actor and director Diego Luna. In other Twitter messages, screenwriter and director Guillermo Arriaga, as well as the Morelia Film Festival, the Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE), the National Cinematheque among others, regretted his death.

Photo credit: Morelia Film Festival.

MoMA Announces Retrospective on Prominent Filmmaker Lourdes Portillo

The Museum of Modern Art has announced the retrospective film series “Lourdes Portillo: La Cineasta Inquisitiva”, to take place June 22 – 30 in New York City with the presence of the filmmaker at select screenings. For over 30 years, Portillo’s award-wining films have explored Latin American, Mexican, and Chicano experiences and social-justice issues.

In her signature hybrid style, she has produced and directed over a dozen works as a visual artist, investigative journalist, and activist. Born in Chihuahua, Mexico and raised in Los Angeles, Portillo studied at the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1970s and 1980s, where she was immersed in Chicano and avant-garde cinema, social-issue documentary film, and feminist and Latin American politics.

The retrospective series will feature Portillo's most representative work such as After the Earthquake, her first film, made with Nina Serrano in 1979, a short about the experiences of a young Nicaraguan woman immigrant to the United States; Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (1985), an Academy Award–nominated documentary about the courageous Argentinean mothers’ movement that spoke out for that country's desaparecidos; and Señorita Extraviada (2001) which brought to light the brutal cases of the hundreds of kidnapped, raped and murdered young women of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

The Houston Chronicle calls Portillo, “one of the most important filmmakers chronicling the Latino experience today,” while Variety refers to her work as “powerful…gripping…and passionate.” Her films have been widely influential for younger generations of filmmakers, particularly Latina women interested in the expression of their culture. In addition to her Academy Award® nomination, her films have also been awarded the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize; International Documentary Association’s Distinguished Documentary Award; The Nestor Almendros Human Rights Prize; San Francisco Film Festival Golden Spire Award; and Films de Femmes, Creteil, Audience Award/Women’s Journalists’ Award.

Lourdes Portillo will be in attendance for the opening four days of the retrospective, including on Friday, June 22, for the New York premiere of Al Más Allá. She will also participate in a discussion with filmmaker and Sundance award-winner Natalia Almada after the screening of The Devil Never Sleeps on Saturday, June 23. “Lourdes Portillo: La Cineasta Inquisitiva” is presented on the occasion of the 58th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, and in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of Women Make Movies, the nation's largest distributor of films by women and about women.

Pictures: Stills from Columbus on Trial (1992) and Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena (1999). Images courtesy Women Make Movies.

PASTORELA Named Best Film at Ariel Awards, Mexico's National Film Prize

 
The film Pastorela by Emilio Portes was the winner of the top categories at the 54th annual edition of the Ariel Awards, Mexico's most important film prize, having won the prizes for Best Film and Best Director. Additionally, the Christmas comedy film starring Joaquín Cossío, Ana Serradilla and Lalo España, won the prizes for Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Best Visual Effects.

Yet the greatest number of awards went to Everardo Gout's Días de gracia which won eight, including Best Actor for Tenoch Huerta and Best First Film. The award for Best Documentary was for Tatiana Huezo's El lugar más pequeño / The Tiniest Place and the award for Best Actress was for Magda Vizcaíno for her leading role in Marcelino Islas Hernández's Martha.

Pastorela was released in the U.S. by Pantelion Films last December. The Ariel Awards were announced at a ceremony took place tonight at the Fine Arts Palace in Mexico City –oddly enough it wasn't broadcasted live nor webcasted.