TropicalFRONT on Intelatin Cloudcast: August 2014

The August 2014 edition of TropicalFRONT on Intelatin Cloudcast features a review of Latin American cinema with Carlos Gutiérrez of Cinema Topical. The featured films of the month include The Empty Hours / Las horas muertas by Aarón Fernández and We Are Mari Pepa / Somos Mari Pepa by Samuel Kishi Leopo and Cry Now by Alberto Barboza. Also listen to an interview with Miguel Ángel Caballero for Cry Now, an interview with Manuel Martín Cuenca para Canibal (en español) + music by Gustavo Santaolalla, Natalia Clavier & El Conjunto Nueva Ola + Film Movement's VOD pick of the month: XXY by Lucía Puenzo. Produced by Sergio C. Muñoz at Intelatin.

Listen to the show on PodBean or iTunes.

Enjoy!

Brazilian Film THE WAY HE LOOKS Wins NewFest

Brazilian director, Daniel Ribeirowas presented the NewFest Audience Award for his first full length feature film, The Way He Looks / Hoje eu quero voltar sozinho at the close of New York's LGBT festival at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

The coming-of-age tale, expanded from the 2010 award winning short film, I Don’t Want to Go Back Alone, centers on blind teenager Leonardo (Ghilherme Lobo), and his best friend Giovanna (Tess Amorim) who’s secretly in love with him.

The arrival of a new student alters the dynamic as both start to fall for Gabriel (Fabio Audi). As Leo and Gabriel start to spend more time together their feelings for each other deepen. With a melodic soundtrack that includes tunes from Belle and Sebastian, One Direct and David Bowie, the film offers a positive portrayal of young gay teenagers in love.

The Way He Looks premiered earlier this year at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Teddy Award for Best Dramatic Feature as well as the FIPRESCI Prize for Best Feature Film in the Panorama section. It also screened earlier in the summer at Outfest in Los Angeles where it won the prize for Best Dramatic Feature.

The film was acquired by Strand Releasing and is slated for a November theatrical release. The 26th edition of NewFest took place July 24- 29 in New York.

NY Film Fest Will Feature the 30th Anniversary Screening of LOS SURES

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced yesterday that the New York Film Festival will feature a special 30th anniversary screening of Diego Echeverría's Los Sures (pictured) as part of NYFF Convergence. Echeverria’s nearly lost 1984 documentary skillfully represents the challenges of its time: drugs, gang violence, crime, abandoned real estate, racial tension, single-parent homes, and inadequate local resources in Brooklyn’s Los Sures neighborhood.

Yet Echeverria’s portrait also celebrates the vitality of this largely Puerto Rican and Dominican community, showing the strength of their culture, their creativity, and their determination to overcome a desperate situation. Nearly lost, this 16mm film has been restored, reframed, and remixed by Southside based UnionDocs just in time for the 30th anniversary of its premiere at the New York Film Festival.

 The film by the Chilean-born director will be accompanied by the interactive presentation Living Los Sures. Using Escheverria’s film as a starting point, Southside-based UnionDocs has created a massive mixed-media project that defies easy categorization. Composed over the course of four years and pulling on the talents of over 30 different artists, Living Los Sures paints a picture of a neighborhood from street level, an ever-evolving mosaic of people and places captured through film, audio, and now an online participatory experience.  With the premiere of two new elements—Eighty-Nine Steps, a continuation of the story of one of the original characters from Los Sures, and Shot by Shot—that invite people to share their personal stories inspired by the shots and locations of the original film, the UnionDocs team will take audiences through the process of building this unique documentary storyworld.

NYFF Convergence  is an ongoing initiative of the New York Film Festival focused on the intersection of technology and storytelling. It  offers audiences and creators the unique opportunity to experience a curated selection of some of the most exciting immersive storytelling projects being produced today. Convergence is about creators and makers and the fact that in our digital world every member of the audience is not just an observer but an active participant in building their entertainment. The 52nd edition of the New York Film Festival will take place September 16 - October 12.
 

From Guadalajara, WE ARE MARI PEPA Opens in NYC August 15

Cinema Tropical and FiGa Films have announced the New York theatrical premiere run of Samuel Kishi Leopo’s We Are Mari Pepa (pictured), August 15 - 21, at Anthology Film Archives. An official selection of the Berlin, AFI and Morelia film festivals, Kishi Leopo’s "tender, pitch-perfect coming-of-ager" (Variety) is at the forefront of a new wave of Mexican filmmakers emerging from the city of Guadalajara.

Kishi Leopo’s debut feature film, 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, 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, Kishi Leopo has created a film that is both funny and bittersweet.

Watch the trailer:

Julián Hernández's I AM HAPPINESS ON EARTH Opens in NYC and LA on August 15

Breaking Glass Pictures has announced the U.S. theatrical and DVD/VOD release of the LGBT Mexican drama I Am Happiness on Earth (Yo soy la felicidad de este mundo, pictured) by acclaimed director Julián Hernández. The film opens at the Quad Cinema in New York City and at the Laemmle Playhouse in Los Angeles on Friday, August 15th, followed by its DVD/VOD release (all cable providers, iTunes, Amazon Instant) on August 19, 2014. 

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. It will be making its New York premiere at the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of NewFest’s lineup this week.

Watch the trailer:

González Iñárritu's BIRDMAN Selected for Closing Night of NY Film Fest

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has just announced that Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance (pictured) by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu will be the Closing Night selection for the upcoming 52nd New York Film Festival, which will take place September 26 – October 12.

The black comedy stars Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone and Naomi Watts. This marks González Iñárritu’s third time at the festival, having previously screened Amores Perros (2000) and 21 Grams (2003). The Fox Searchlight Pictures and New Regency release is slated to open in select theaters on October 17, 2014.
 
New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair, Kent Jones said: "Birdman is a knockout. It’s consistently surprising and inventive – you think the movie is going in one direction and then Iñárritu shifts gears and takes you somewhere else completely unexpected: the movie is like an intricate machine generating greater and greater amounts of beautiful radiant energy. The entire cast is amazing and they mesh perfectly, but I have to say that Michael Keaton is astonishing. He’s always been a terrific and, in my opinion, underrated actor. Here he gets the role he deserves, and he makes the most of it. And, it’s a great Broadway movie."