By Mary Jane Marcasiano
A Brazilian friend recently told me that Cariocas love to see themselves on screen. I imagine they are very happy this week! In the Premiere Brazil section of this year's Festival do Rio, as well as other sections, we find Brazilian and foreign filmmakers looking at Rio and particularly at one of Rio's iconic cultural forms, the samba.
Jefferson Mello's Doc, Samba & Jazz (pictured left), premiered September 26th and explores the synergy between samba and jazz and the similarities between the cities and inhabitants of Rio and New Orleans. The following day, a film that was originally shot in 2005, on the Velha Guarda of Rio's samba schools, was finally finished in 2013, after the passing of some of these old samba personalities. Directors Eric and Marc Behassen's documentary shows the past and present samba worlds through the eyes of these Guardioes Do Samba.
On October first, at Rio's classic Teatro Municipal, the fiction film Trinta (pictured right) had its world premier. Based on the real life story of Joãosinho Trinta, the famed carnival parade director, Paulo Machline's film, set in 70's Rio, chronicles Trinta's rise from a corp de ballet dancer at Teatro Municipal to his first assignment as the artistic director of Rio's famed Salgueiro Samba School. As Trinta struggles with his first Carnival he ultimately reinvents the genre and starts a career that will have a lasting effect on the samba schools Salgueiro and Beija-Flor, making him one of the most beloved and influential figures of contemporary Carnival. Matheus Nachtergaele, asTrinta, captures this artist's fiery drive for fame and the screenplay, along with the beautiful sets and costumes, creates the excitement and tension of a community's quest to become carnival champions.
A few nights earlier, George Gachot's film O Samba (pictured left), premiered in the Panorama section of the festival, in the company of some of Rio's samba royalty. Gachot, a Swiss filmmaker who's genre is the music documentary, has previously made beautiful films on Brazilian singers Maria Bethania and Nana Cayami. O Samba focuses on the samba school Vila Isabel and Martinho da Vila, the schools famed composer, telling the story of Samba's roots and exploring its contemporary identity. In the film and in attendance were Mart'nalia, Beth Carvalho and many of Vila Isabel's members.
Also premiering in the Panorama section of the festival is British director Julien Temple's film, Rio 50 Graus, referring to the high Celsius temperature that heats up Rio to its max. This prized documentarian (The Filth and The Fury and Joe Strummer:The Future is Unwritten) offers a look at the cultural and social history of Rio from the end of slavery up until the preparations for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. Interviewing former revolutionaries, the city's current mayor, transvestite prostitutes and favela citizens, the film explores many aspects of the cities joys and problems. Of course samba plays an important role in this telling of Rio's history.
The Mexican film 
Kathy Brew and UnionDocs have announced the creation of the Roberto Guerra Documentary Award, an annual prize to be given to a (U.S. or foreign-born) Latino documentary filmmaker based in New York. Brew, Guerra’s long-time collaborator and wife, in partnership with UnionDocs, are establishing the award to honor Guerra’s legacy in the field. Originally from Peru, Guerra came to New York as a young, aspiring filmmaker to meet the cinema verité pioneers. He was inspired to create a number of films while living in New York and Europe. He continued to shoot and produce through the last year of his life. Several projects, some based in Peru, remain to be completed.
The prize for Best Narrative Feature in the World Cinema competition went to Los Ángeles (pictured right) directed by Damian John Harper. The German-Mexico co-production focuses on 17 year-old Mateo, from a small Zapotec community in southern Mexico. As he prepares to make the journey north to Los Angeles, he is forced to juggle the demands imposed on him by the local gang that can provide him safe passage. Earlier this year, Harper also won the Best First Work Award at the 2014 Guadalajara International Film Festival and the LA Muse Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
Anthology Film Archives has announced the film series 'Matías Piñeiro Selects: Bridges over Argentinean Cinema,' which will take place October 15-26 in New York City. Curated by the famed filmmaker, the series will feature 13 films from the South American country, many of which have never been screened in the city before.
All this attention is richly deserved: Piñeiro is possessed of one of the most idiosyncratic, quietly confident sensibilities in contemporary cinema. To celebrate Piñeiro’s increasingly important place in the constellation of contemporary cinema, to take advantage of his presence in NYC (where he’s been resident for the past couple years), and to reveal his passionate and perceptive cinephilia, we’ve invited him to guest-curate this survey of Argentine cinema, past and present.
The series will feature Edgardo Cozarinsky's (...) or Waiting for the Barbarians / Puntos suspensivos o esperando a los bárbaros (1971); Federico León's Everything Together / Todo juntos (2002); Alberto Fischerman's The Players Vs. Ángeles Caídos (1969); Alejo Moguillansky's The Parrot and the Swan / El loro y el cisne (2013); Leopoldo Torre Nilsson's The Kidnapper / El secuestrador (1958); Ignacio Masllorens' Marín Blasko III (2011); Santiago Palavecino's Some Girls / Algunas chicas (2013); Leonardo Favio's Juan Moreira (1973); and Inés de Oliveira Cézar's Foreigner / Extranjera (2007).
The Margaret Mead Film Festival has announced the lineup for its 2014 edition which will feature several Latin American titles. Making their U.S. premiere is the Bolivian film The Corral and the Wind / El Corral y el viento (pictured) in which director Miguel Hilari documents his return to his father’s Andean village, Santiago de Okola that he visited briefly as a child and where his only remaining relative is his uncle. The resulting film is a subtle and deeply personal meditation on the regrets of exile and the fading of culture.
Having their New York premiere are Mexican documentary films Elevator / Elevador (pictured right) by Adrian Ortiz Maciel and José Cohen and Lorenzo Hagerman's H2O MX. In Elevator, director Ortiz Maciel takes us on a poetic trek up and down a historic Latin American high rise, capturing the ebb and flow of tenants entering and leaving. 
Also having its New York premiere is Tiago Campos' Master and Divino / O mestre e o Divino which follows Adalberto, an eccentric German missionary with a passion for film, and Divino (Xavante) who is a young indigenous Amazonian filmmaker in his Brazilian village, where Adalberto has lived for over 50 years. Both have been devoted to filming everyday life among the Xavante; the film reveals their congenial and sometimes fractious relationship, shaped by humor, competition, criticism, and ultimately mutual affection. It’s the story of a dynamic duo with different histories and equally different personalities, with lives brought together in this Amazonian village, all captured by yet a third filmmaker, Tiago Campos, who works with the well-known film collective Video nas Aldeias along with Divino.
