Iñárritu Makes History at the Oscars

Mexican director Alejandro González Iñarritu’s Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) was awarded the Oscar for Best Picture this evening, becoming the first production directed by a Latino filmmaker to win the top honors in the history of the Academy Awards.

González Iñárritu, 51, received the award as a producer of the film, and dedicated the award to his fellow Mexicans. "I pray that we can find and build a government that we deserve, and the ones that live in this country, who are a part of the latest generation of immigrants in this country, I just pray that they can be treated with the same dignity and respect as the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation," he said. "I am very, very thankful, grateful, humbly honored by the Academy for this incredible recognition," Iñárritu added. "This is crazy."

The Mexican filmmaker was also awarded the Oscars for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, along with Argentinean screenwriters Armando Bo and Nicolás Giacobone. With the three Oscars he won this evening, he automatically become the Mexican national to have won the most Oscars.

González Iñarritu’s feat comes exactly one year later after Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón won the Academy Award for Best Director, making it the second year in a row a Mexican national wins the Oscar in the same category.

Mexican DP Emmanuel Lubezki won the Oscar for Best Cinematography for his work in Birdman. It was the second Oscar win for Lubezki in a row, as last year he won the Academy Award in the same category for his work in Cuarón’s Gravity. Lubezki became the fourth Mexican to win two Oscars after Cuarón, actor Anthony Quinn, and art director Emile Kuri.

The 87th Annual Academy Awards were presented at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California.

Latin America Conquers Berlin

Latin American cinema was the big winner at the 65th edition of the Berlinale as many filmmakers from the region were awarded prizes in most of the competitive sections of the German festival.

The Chilean film El club / The Club by director Pablo Larraín was the winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, while the Guatemalan film Ixcanul by Jayro Bustamante won the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer award. It was the first time a film from Guatemala participated in the official competition of the festival.

Patricio Guzmán was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay for El botón de nácar / The Pearl Button. The film was also the winner of the Prize of the  Ecumenical Jury.

For second year in a row a Mexican film was awarded with the prize for Best First Feature Film. Gabriel Ripstein’s (pictured below left) debut feature 600 millas / 600 Milles follows on the footsteps of Alonso Ruizpalacios’ Güeros, which won last year. The Best First Feature Award is endowed with 50,000 Euros.

The Brazilian film The Second Mother / Que Horas Ela Volta? by Anna Muylaert was the winner of the Audience Award in the Panorama competition, as well as the winner of the Confédération Internationale des Cinémas d’Art et d’Essai Art Cinema Award.

As it was previously announced, three Latin American films were presented with the Teddy Award, honoring the best LGBT productions: Nasty Baby by Chilean director Sebastián Silva was the winner for Best Feature Film; El hombre nuevo / The New Man by Uruguayan director Aldo Garay was the winner for Best Documentary; and San Cristóbal by Chilean director Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo was the winner for Best Short Film.

And in the Berlinale’s Co-Production Market, Los Perros by Marcela Said from Chile was the winner of the Arte International Prize with 6,000 euros, and the Panamanian project Biencuidao by Abner Benaim was the winner of the VFF Talent Highlight Pitch Award with a cash prize of 10,000 euros.

The 65th edition of the Berlinale took place February 5-15 in Germany.

Latin America Rocks the Teddy Awards

Filmmaker Sebastián Silva with Panorama programmer Paz Lázaro.

Three Latin American films were presented with Teddy Awards -the Berlinale’s international award for films with LGBT topics- this evening in Berlin. Nasty Baby by Chilean director Sebastián Silva won the top award for Best Feature Film; the Uruguayan film El hombre nuevo / The New Man by Aldo Garay received the award for Best Documentary; and the Chilean film San Cristóbal by Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo won the award for Best Short Film.

Silva’s Nasty Baby follows Freddy (played by Silva himself), an artist whose desire for a baby has become something of an obsession. He surrounds himself with photographs of his childhood and is working feverishly on a fresh piece about newborns. He and his partner Mo have even managed to persuade their best friend Polly to have their baby. However, after numerous failed attempts to conceive, this proves to be more difficult than they first envisaged.

Freddy’s planned video installation also turns out to be rather more complicated than he thought. And then, when the ‘Bishop’, their rather deranged neighbor, begins tormenting them with his serious chicanery, their hitherto carefree existence starts to go dangerously awry. A series of surprising events brings their frustrations to a head and before long, Freddy and his friends begin to lose their grip on reality.

Garay’s The New Man had its world premiere in the Panorama competition of the festival. At the tender age of twelve, Roberto supported the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and fought for education and social reforms. He was to continue his political struggle fighting alongside the communist Tupamaros in Uruguay. Thirty years later he is struggling to live his life as a woman named Stephanía and striving to be accepted by both society and his family.

Documentary filmmaker Aldo Garay has followed Stephanía for over twenty years. In The New Man he provides a personal and tender portrait of a woman who can look back on a tempestuous life in which violence, drugs, prostitution and political commitment all found its place.

In Zúñiga’s San Cristóbal two young men -Lucas and Antonio- meet and fall in love in a remote fishing village in the south of Chile. One lives there, the other is visiting. Sensuality dictates the pace of the narrative and the lives of both in the days to follow: being one another’s mirror. Recognizing one another. Yielding to one another. When the village rebels against their love, the experience of this limitation marks a momentous step in Lucas’ and Antonio’s adulthood.

Since the award was first given in 1987, several Latin American filmmakers have won the award. Last year Brazilian director Daniel Ribeiro won the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film last year for his debut feature film The Way He Looks / Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho.

Latin American Films Selected for Miami

The 32nd Miami International Film Festival has announced its line up, which promises to be another stellar showcase of Latin American cinema. The festival will screen 125 feature, documentary and short films from 40 countries during its ten day run and will kick off with the wonderfully deranged satire and Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Wild Tales / Relatos salvajes by Damián Szifron.

Multiple Latino titles will vie for the Knight Competition Award, and the accompanying $40,000 cash prize, distributed to the outstanding feature length film, director and actor, as selected by the jury. The films include the Argentinean films Butterfly / Mariposas from Marco Berger and Sunstrokes/ Las insoladas from Gustavo Taretto; the Brazilian film Blue Blood / Sangue azul by Lírio Ferreira; the Chilean films Aurora by Rodrigo Sepúlveda and Voice Over / La Voz en off by Cristián Jiménez; the Colombian films Los Hongos by Oscar Ruiz Navia and Life is Sacred by Andreas Dalsgaard, Viviana Gómez and Nicolás Servide; the Cuban film The Project of the Century / La obra del siglo by Carlos Machado Quintela, the Mexican film The Obscure Spring / Las oscuras primaveras (pictured above left) by Ernesto Contreras, and Panama's first official submission to the Oscars, The Invasion / Invasión by Abner Benahim.

The Latino films competing for the Knight Documentary Achievement Award include the Mexican film, Before We Are Forgotten / Antes de que nos olviden from Matías Gueilburt; from Peru, Finding Gastón/ Buscando a Gastón by Patricia Perez; from Colombia, Playing Lecuona by Pavel Giroud and Juan Manuel Villar; from Brazil, The Salt of the Earth / Le sel de la terre by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and Wim Wenders; from Chile, Tea Time / La once by Maite Alberdi; and The Holders by Carla Forte. The award comes with a $10,000 cash prize given to the most engaging feature-length documentary.

Five films will compete for the Lexus Ibero-American Opera Prima Award, including the Venezuelan film, 3 Beauties / 3 Bellezas by Carlos Caridad Montero; from Argentina, Easy Sex, Sad Movies / Sexo fácil, películas tristes by Alejo Flah; from Chile, In the Grayscale / En las gamas de gris by Claudio Marcone; from the Dominican Republic, On the Road, Somewhere / Algun lugar by Guillermo Zouain and from Mexico, They Are All Dead / Todos están muertos by Beatriz Sanchís. The award comes with a $10,000 cash prize.

The Latino films included in the Cinema 360˚ section include Architecture of Color / A arquitetura da cor by José Henrique Fonseca and Priscilla Lopes, Ciudad Delirio by Chus Gutiérrez, Panama Canal Stories / Historias del canal by Carolina Borrero, Pinky Mon, Luis Franco, Abner Benaim and Pituka Ortega Heilbron, Sand Dollars / Dólares de arena by Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas, Tango Glories / Fermín: Glorias del Tango and Venice / Venecia by Kiki Álvarez.

Additional sections will include the Jordan Alexander Ressler Foundation Screenwriting Prize, the Park Grove Shorts Competition, the Emerging Cuban Independent Film/Video Artists Program, the Spotlight on French Cinema, the Spotlight on Asian Cinema, a Florida Focus program, a Culinary Cinema program, as well as Master Classes.

The Miami Dade College’s Miami International Film Festival will take place March 6-15, 2015.

Iñárritu Wins DGA Award, Beats Out Linklater

Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu  won the Directors Guild of America (DGA) award for Best Feature Film Director for Birdman, beating out the favorite Boyhood’s Richard Linklater.

This was Iñárritu’s third DGA Award nomination, and second win. He was previously nominated for Best Feature Film Director for Babel in 2006. He won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials for “Best Job” (Procter and Gamble) in 2012.

It was the second time in a row that a Mexican director wins the DGA Award in the Feature Film category, last year Alfonso Cuarón received the honors for his film Gravity. Cuarón went on to win the Academy Award for Best Director. Iñárritu’s DGA Award win puts him closer to the Oscar, as in the previous 66 editions, in all but seven times, DGA winners got the Oscar for Best Director.

The 67th annual DGA Awards were presented at a ceremony last nigh in Los Angeles, California.

MoMA's Doc Fortnight to Show Films from Mexico, Cuba and Brazil

The Museum of Modern Art has announced the lineup for Documentary Fortnight 2015: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media, which will feature three Latin American films, from Mexico, Cuba and Brazil.

MoMA's 14th annual showcase of recent documentary film will host the U.S. premiere of Hatuey Viveros' Café: Cantos de humo / Coffee: Chants of Smoke (pictured left) from Mexico; the New York premiere of Irene Gutiérrez Torres's Hotel Nueva Isla from Cuba; and the North American premiere of Eryk Rocha's Campo de Jogo / Sunday Ball from Brazil.

This year’s festival includes an international selection of 21 feature films and seven short films, a lecture performance, an archival film program, and a flat-screen installation. Many of the directors, including the three Latin American filmmakers, will be present at the screenings and will participate in discussions following the films. Documentary Fortnight 2015 is organized by Sally Berger, Assistant Curator, Department of Film, with Jesus Hernandez Bach, Festival Liaison. The selection committee consists of Sally Berger; Chi-hui Yang, independent curator; and Kimi Takesue, filmmaker.

Vivero's Coffee tells the story of promising Nahuatl Mexican student Jorge who, following the death of his father, struggles against difficult odds to become the first lawyer to represent the people from the mountains of Puebla. During their intimate conversations—while she cleans and roasts coffee beans—Jorge's mother encourages him to prevail against their loss. When his 16-year-old sister reveals that she is pregnant, their mother counsels her to make her own decisions despite her age and a ne'er-do-well boyfriend. A Cinema Tropical Award winner for Best Latin American Documentary of the Year.

First-time director Gutiérrez and cinematographer Javier Labrador have created a compelling portrait of the mysterious Jorge de los Rios, a retired clerk who lives in Old Havana's Hotel Nueva Isla, a former luxury hotel that became a shelter for homeless people in the wake of the Cuban Revolution. Slowly digging his way through debris and ripping off parts of the building, Jorge has encounters with a few other inhabitants—his lover, La Flaca, and a young itinerant, Waldo. Influenced by the work of Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, the film speaks to a lost generation that fought in the Cuban Revolution and dreamed of a better society.

In Rocha's Sunday Ball (pictured left), at an ordinary football field in Rio de Janeiro's Sampaio neighborhood—close to the Maracana Stadium, where the grand final of the 2014 World Cup 2014 was held—a somewhat smaller match occurs every Sunday. This passionate expression of Brazilian culture is captured with great intimacy and joy, as the cinematographer follows the enthusiasm of the cheering crowds and the precision of the players' movements. The annual "favela" football league has 14 teams, with each representing the colors and specific aspects of their community. The final contest, between Geração and Juventude, draws football-fans into the fervid action of this imaginary game representing the symbolism and community of Brazilian culture.

Documentary Fortnight 2015: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media will take place February 13-27, in New York City.