Latin American Docs Headed to IDFA

The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has announced the official lineup for its 25th anniversary edition which will take place between November 14-25 in The Netherlands and will feature several Latin American films. The Brazilian documentary film Doméstica / Housemaids by Gabriel Mascaro, will be representing Latin American in the official feature-length competition.

Te Uruguayan film Todavía el amor / Love Still (pictured) by Guzmán García and the Chilean film Nosotras, las mujeres, y el pasajero / The Women and the Passenger by Patricia Correa and Valentina Mac-Pherson will be participating in the mid-length competition, while the Swedish-British film Searching for Sugar Man by Malik Bendjelloul will be screened in the Music Documentary Section.

The Brazilian film Elena by Petra Costa will be competing in the First Appearance category for emerging filmmakers, while the Mexican short film El árbol / The Three by Gastón Andrade has been selected for the Student Documentary Competition.  

The Panorama section of the festival will feature four Latin American films including Bernardo Ruiz's Reportero (USA/Mexico); Gabriel Mascaro's Ebb & Flow (Brazil, pictured right); Cristian Soto and Catalina Vergara's The Last Station (Chile); and Carlos Klein's Where the Condors Fly (Chile). This last film will be shown as part of a retrospective of Russian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky's work which also includes the film ¡Vivan las Antípodas! an Argentina-Germany-The Netherlands-Chile co-production.

The Argentine film La chica del sur / The Girl from the South by José Luis García will be shown in the non-competitive Reflecting Images - Best of Fests section, while Mercedes Moncada's Palabra mágicas / Magic Words ((Mexico/Guatemala/Nicaragua) will be screened in the Reflecting Images - Masters presenting new works from renowned documentary authors.

Three Brazilian shorts will participate in the Paradocs section of the festival, featuring films that go beyond the frame of traditional documentary filmmaking: Cao Guimaraes' Limbo (pictured right); Leonardo Sette and Isabel Penoni's Enraged Pigs; and Gregorio Graziosi's Monument. Additionally, Nicolás Entel's Pecados de mi padre / Sins of My Father will have a special screening as part of the Constructing History program.

IDA Documentary Awards Nominates Latino Films

The International Documentary Association announced today the nominees for the 28th edition of the IDA Documentary Awards which includes some Latino-themed films. Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man (pictured), about the incredible story of Mexican-American musician Sixto Rodríguez who became an unlikely star in South Africa, was nominated for Best Feature Award, while Mark Kendall's La Camioneta was nominated for the David L. Woper Student Documentary Award.

Peter Getzels and Eduardo López's Harvest of Empire, which is based on the book by the columnist Juan González focuses on the direct connection between the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America and the immigration crisis, was nominated for two awards: the ABCNews Videosource Award, which is given for the best use of news footage as an integral component in a documentary; and the Humanitas Documentary Award, given to a documentarian whose film strives to unify the human family by exploring the stories of human beings who are different in culture, race, lifestyle, political loyalties and religious beliefs.

The 2012 IDA Documentary Awards winners will be announced in ceremony in Los Angeles on Friday, December 7.

NEIGHBORING SOUNDS Is the Big Winner at Rio

The Brazilian film Neighboring Sounds / O som ao redor (pictured) by Kleber Mendonça Filho's was the big winner of the 2012 edition of the Rio Film Festival which ran September 25-October 11 in Brazil, taking the prizes for Best Film and Best Screenplay. The film portrays life in the a middle class neighborhood in Recife, which changes with the arrival of a private security firm.

The award for Best Director was for Eryk Rocha for his documentary Jards about Brazilian musician and composer Jards Macalé, an influential local figure in the 1970s. The documentary film Helio Oiticica, made by César Oiticica Filho, the nephew of the late famed Brazilian visual artist won the prize for Best Documentary Film.

DOC NYC Selects a Handful of Latino-Themed Docs for its 3rd Edition

DOC NYC, New York’s Documentary Festival has announced its lineup for its third edition, which will take place November 8-15 at the IFC Center and Chelsea’s SVA Theater, showcasing 115 films, including a handful of Latino-themed films: the feature films La Camioneta, Shenandoah, Searching for Sugar Man, and the short films Crooked Lines and The Needle.

This year's DOC NYC will present the local premiere of La Camioneta, directed by Mark Kendall, which shows the migration of decommissioned American school buses that to Guatemala where they are repaired, repainted and resurrected as brightly-colored camionetas. This film follows  on bus and the five lives it intertwines with during its transformation.

Shenandoah directed by Pulitzer Prize-winner David Turnley is the portrait of a U.S. community on trial. A town’s identity in disrepair when four football stars are charged in the beating and murder of an undocumented Mexican immigrant named Luis Ramirez. DOC NYC will also present a special screening of Malik Bendjelloul’s Searching for Sugar Man, which is currently out in theaters, about Mexican-American singer Sixto Rodriguez.

From a clandestine cosmetic clinic in his modest home in Puerto Rico, Carmen Oquendo-Villar and José Correa-Vigier's The Needle follows José Quiñones who deals both treatment and advice. But in spite of the tight bond he has formed with his largely LGBT clientele, Quiñones decides to reach out to the estranged family that rejected him.

Lucy Walker's short film Crooked Lines is the story of Ailson Eraclito Da Silva, the best rower in Brazilian history, the Micheal Phelps of his sport. Growing up in a leper colony on the banks of the Amazon, he’s constantly discriminated against. His dream, though, is to win Olympic Gold. But Ailson has an Achilles heel — he’s heavy for the lightweight category he competes in.

Mexican Film Selected for Rome Film Fest's Official Competition

The Rome Film Festival announced yesterday its official lineup for this year’s 7th edition, which will take place November 9-17 at the Italian capital, and includes the Mexican film Mai Morire (pictured) directed by Enrique Rivero, as the only Latin American film in its official competition.

Starring Margarita Saldaña, Amalia Salas and Juan Chirinos, Mai Morire tells the story of Chayo, and her return to her hometown of Xochimilco, a place of incomprehensible beauty, in order to care for he elderly mother and cope with her death. In the process, she must give up something that as a woman and mother is inalienable: her freedom. Spanish-born filmmaker Enrique Rivera presents his sophomoric drama after his 2008 acclaimed debut feature Parque Via.

The Festival also announced part of the lineup for its Cinema XXI which includes the Argentine/Nicaraguan documentary El ojo del tiburón / The Eye of the Shark by Alejo Hoijman, the Brazilian film O batuque dos astros by Júlio Bressane and the Brazilian-produced omnibus film Invisible World/ Mundo invisível by international filmmakers Wim Wenders, Theo Angelopoulos, Atom Egoyan, Manoel De Oliveira, Guy Maddin, Marco Bechis, Laís Bodanzky, Maria de Medeiros, Jerzy Stuhr and Gian Vittorio Baldi.

Additionally, it was announced that Dominican filmmaker Laura Amelia Guzmán (Cochochi, Jean Gentile), will be a member of this year's jury for First and Second Films.

Global Film Initiative Awards Projects from Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Uruguay

The San Francisco-based organization the Global Film Initiative announced today that ten film projects have been selected to receive production funding as part of their Initiative's Summer 2012 granting cycle which includes four Latin American projects from Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Uruguay.

The Latin American winning projects are:

- Pelo malo / Bad Hair by Mariana Rondón, Venezuela.
A showdown looms as nine-year-old Junior suspects his haggard, out-of-work single mother would love him more if he straightens the unruly hair he inherited from his absent father;

- Del color de la noche / Colored Like the Night by Agliberto Meléndez, Dominican Republic.
In the last days of his mayoral campaign, terminally ill José Francisco Peña Gómez, leader of the Dominican Revolutionary Party, records a dramatic public address of forgiveness to his racist opponents before returning home to die.


- Puerto Padre / Port Father by Gustavo Fallas Vargas, Costa Rica.
As a teenage orphan from Chira Island searches for his godfather on the mainland, his innocent memory of childhood is gradually replaced by an unsettling reality upon learning the truth about his origins.

- Tanta agua / So Much Water (pictured) by Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge, Uruguay.
As a rainstorm puts a damper on a seaside family vacation, fourteen-year-old Lucía struggles to assert her independence and individuality--in spite of her father's well-intentioned but overbearing attempts to bond with her.

The Granting Program awards fifteen to twenty grants per year, of up to $10,000 each, to filmmakers whose work exhibits artistic excellence, accomplished storytelling and cultural perspective on daily life. Funds received from grants are used to subsidize post-production costs such as laboratory and sound mixing fees, and access to advanced editing systems.
 
Since the Initiative's founding in 2002, the Granting Program has awarded 132 grants to deserving film projects from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central & Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Oceania.