DE JUEVES A DOMINGO Wins Valdivia

The Chilean film De jueves a domingo / Thursday till Sunday (pictured) by Dominga Sotomayor won the top prize for Best Film with a cash prize of $4,000 USD in the international competition of the 19th edition of the Valdivia Film Festival, which ran October 2-7 in Chile. The Argentine film Viola by director Matías Piñeiro received the Jury's Special Prize, while Polvo by Guatemalan director Julio Hernández Cordón received a Special Mention in the same category.

The prize for Best Chilean Film was for Carlos Klein's Donde vuelan los cóndores, with a cash prize of over $6,000 USD, and Ignacio Rodríguez's La chupilca del diablo received a Special Jury Prize in the Chilean cinema category with a cash prize of $10,000 for international promotion. Klein's film also received the Audience Award, along with the Uruguayan film El Bella Vista by Alicia Cano.

The jury for the international competition was composed by Argentine producer Violeta Bava, Peruvian film critic/programmer John Campos Gómez, and Chilean filmmaker Ignacio Agüero, while the Chilean competition jury was composed by Argentina actress Romina Paula, Argentine producer Pablo Udenio and Chilean filmmaker Alberto Fuguet.

González Iñárritu Directs Ad for Facebook

Mexican director Alejandro González Iñarritu has directed a 90-second promotional video for social network Facebook which was launched this week as the social network reached the billion-member mark. The video untitled "The Things that Connect Us" is Facebook's first major ad, and it was undertaken by Wieden & Kennedy, a Portland-based ad agency who hired the Oscar-nominated director of films such as Amores Perros, Babel and Biutiful to direct it.

Watch the video:

Complete List of Latin American Academy Award Submissions

[October 2, 2012 Update] Uruguay announced it has selected Rodrigo Plá's La Demora (a co-production film with Mexico and France) to represent the country in the Foreign Language category for the Oscars. The third feature film by Plá, starring Carlos Vallarino and Roxana Blanco, is a study of a single-mother and his aging, dangerously forgetful father, whose presence in her cramped home is driving her to desperate measures. 

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[September 28, 2012 Update] Argentina has selected Benjamín Ávila's Infancia clandestina / Clandestine Childhood as its Oscar entry for this year. Produced by filmmaker Luis Puenzo, the film  screened at Cannes' Directors' Fortnight, and has been acquired for US distribution by Film Movement for a November release. Set in Argentina in 1979, the film shows the hidden lives of political militants during the Argentine dictatorship through the eyes of a 12 year-old boy that has just returned from exile with his family. Ávila's debut feature film is largely based on his own personal story.

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[September 26, 2012 Update] Peru announced today that Rosario García-Montero's debut feature Las malas intenciones / The Bad Intentions will represent the country in the Oscar's Foreign Language category. The film, a coming of age tale set in the convoluted Lima in the 1980s, tells the story of eight-year-old Cayetana who is captivated by reports of guerrilla attacks and fascinated with the lives and deaths of the heroes of Peruvian independence. On more related news, Argentina will announce its candidate film this Friday, September 28. 

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A handful of Latin American countries have already selected their official submissions for the Foreign Language Film category for the 85th edition of the Academy Awards which will take place on February 24, 2013. So far Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Venezuela, have announced the films that will be representing each country for the Oscars.

Brazil has selected O Palhaço / The Clown, a charming, light-hearted dramedy co-written and directed by lead actor Selton Mello. The film tells the story of the father/son clown duo of Pangaré and Puro Sangue who work in a traveling circus in the Brazilian countryside.

Chile is submitting No the newest film by Pablo Larraín which stars Mexican actor Gael García Bernal and was the winner of the top prize in this year's Directors' Fortnight at Cannes. The film tells the fictionalized story of René Saavedra, an ad man who designs the marketing campaign to take dictator Augusto Pinochet out of power in the 1988 national plebiscite.

Colombia has opted for Carlos Moreno's drug crime thriller El Cartel de los Sapos / The Cartel of Snitches which stars Manolo Cardona, Tom Sizemore, Juana Acosta and Kuno Becker. The third film by Moreno (Perro come perro, Todos tus muertos) is based on the life story of former drug trafficker Andrés López who adapted his memoir into a telenovela and co-wrote the film's screenplay.

Jaque mate / Checkmate by José María Cabral is the Dominican Republic's candidate which is the fourth film ever that the Caribbean nation has submitted to the Oscars. The film was selected out of 10 contenders, which marks a local record. Cabral's film is about a TV host who receives a call from his family's kidnappers while he's on air. Mexico has selected Michel Franco's Después de Lucía / After Lucía which won the top prize at Cannes' Un Certain Regard section. The film follows the young Lucía, who just moved to town with her dad. She is new at school and becomes a victim of bullying by his new classmates.

Last, but not least, Venezuela has announced that Hernán Jabes' drama Piedra, papel o tijera / Rock, Paper Scissors will be representing the South American country.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce the five nominees for Best Foreign-Language Film on January 10. The last Latin American film to have won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film was Juan José Campanella's El secreto de sus ojos / The Secret in their Eyes in 2009. 

      

 

        

Natalia Almada Bestowed a MacArthur 'Genius' Grant

Filmmaker Natalia Almada is one the 23 recipients of this year's MacArthur Foundation's 'genious grants' as it was revealed this afternoon, few hours ahead of the scheduled official announcement. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awards $500,000 (paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years) to between 20 and 40 U.S. citizens a year who display "exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work."

Unlike most other grants, there is no way to apply for the MacArthur, often referred to as the 'genius grant.' Past recipients include writers, scientists, artists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, farmers, and fishermen, among others.

Almada’s most recent film El Velador: The Night Watchman premiered at New Directors/New Films Festival and the Cannes' Directors' Fortnight last year, the film is currently being broadcast on PBS as part of the 25th anniversary season of the P.O.V. Series. Almada was the recipient of the 2009 Sundance Documentary Directing Award for her film about her great-grandfather, Mexican president Plutarco Elías Calles, El General. Almada’s previous directing credits include All Water Has a Perfect Memory (2001), an experimental short film that received international recognition, and Al Otro Lado, her award-winning debut feature documentary about immigration, drug trafficking and corrido music.

Her films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), dOCUMENTA(13) and the Whitney Biennial. Almada has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, a USA Fellow and a TEDx speaker, and was the recipient of the 2011 Alpert Award in Film/Video. She lives in Mexico City.

Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz also received one of this year's grants.

In Memoriam: Octavio Getino

Argentine filmmaker Octavio Getino died today at the age of 77, victim of cancer. Born August 6, 1935 in León, Spain, Getino became one of the leading figures and protagonist of the vigorous political and social cinema of South America in the late sixties and the seventies.

In 1968, along with Fernano "Pino" Solanas, he directed La hora de los hornos / The Hour of the Fournace, the epic milestone film, a three-part, four-hour-plus indictment of the neocolonialist exploitation of Argentina. "For the first time", said Getino, “we demonstrated that it was possible to produce and distribute a film in a non-liberated country with the specific aim of contributing to the political process of liberation." 

With Solanas and Gerardo Vallejo he created the Grupo Cine Liberación, an organization that was linked to the creation of the Third Cinema movement, along with Brazilian Cinema Nôvo, Raymundo Gleyzer's Cine de la base, the Cuban Revolutionary cinema, among others. The term Third Cinema was coined in the manifesto "Towards a Third Cinema" which was written by Solanas and Getino and published in 1969 in the Tricontinental cinema journal by the OSPAAL (Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. [Click here to read the complete manifesto].

He also directed with Solanas and the Grupo Cine Liberación the documentary films Argentina, mayo de 1969: Los caminos de la liberación (1969); Perón: La revolución justicialista (1971); and Perón: Actualización política y doctrinaria para la toma del poder (1971), and he directed the feature film El Familiar (1975).

Argentine Film DE MARTES A MARTES Wins Biarritz Latin American Film Fest

The Argentine production De martes a martes by Gustavo Triviño was the winner of the Best Film award at the 21st edition of the Latin American Film Festival of Biarritz which took place September 24-30 in France. The Cuban film Juan de los Muertos / Juan of the Dead by Alejandro Brugués was awarded the Special Jury Prize while the Argentine film El etnógrafo by Ulises Rosell won the prize for Best Documentary Film.

Other awards announced at the festival were the prize for Best Actress for Roxana Blanco in the Mexican-Uruguayan co-production La Demora by Rodrigo Plá; the prize for Best Actor for Luis Tosar in the Colombian-Spanish co-production Operación E by Miguel Courtois Paternina; the French Critics Award to Pablo Larraín's No (Chile); and the Audience Award prizes to the Feature Fiction Film Sofía y el terco by Andrés Burgos Vallejo (Colombia) and the Documentary Film La máquina loca by Emilio Maillé.