Chilean Filmmaker Ricardo Larraín Dies

Chilean director, producer, writer and editor Ricardo Larraín died yesterday at the age of 58 in Santiago Chile.

With over almost four decades of artistic career, he is best known for his 1991 debut feature film La Frontera / The Frontier (pictured below), winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Goya Award to Best Ibero-American Film, and Best Director at the Havana Film Festival.

Set during Chile’s military dictatorship and starring Patricio Contreras, Gloria Laso and Héctor Noguera, the film is the story of school teacher Ramiro Orellana who is sentenced to internal exile for questioning the disappearance of a colleague in this examination of dictatorship and military rule. La frontera is a desolate land inhabited by the world's castaways, who live lives of dreams and frustrations.

Larraín also directed  the films El entusiasmo / The Enthusiasm in 1998, Chile Puede / Chile Can Do It in 2008, and El niño rojo / The Red Child in 2014.

The Chilean filmmaker studied in the School of Communication Arts in the Catholic University of Chile. On the last years he centered his work in the life of the Chilean independence leader Bernardo O´Higgins and he presented a miniseries of his life in open television.

He was founder of the film school at Chile’s University Mayor of Chile, where he taught, and was developing a new project under the title of El Guerrero enamorado / The Warrior in Love.

Waiting in the Sun: On the Filming of Julio Hernández Cordón’s OJALÁ EL SOL ME ESCONDA

By Alberto Rodríguez Collía

On the 14th of May 2011, the Zetas invaded Los Cocos Farm (Petén, northern Guatemala) and decapitated 27 of its 28 workers as they awaited the arrival of their boss on payday. Using one of the victims’ legs, they painted a message on the front of the main house for the owner, who was absent at the time. This brutal crime brought to mind the viciousness of the massacres that had taken place during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996).

Julio (Hernández Cordón) would come to use this event as a starting point for what would be his fifth film, a western based on narcos—drug traffickers—with the dry settings of the country’s east as a background. We had first collaborated on Until the Sun Has Spots, a film for which all of the backdrops were drawn in chalk, in a sort of reimagining of the origins of film. That picture, like Work in Progress, was awarded a prize that paid for the production of the next film without needing a script. [CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL TEXT]

This is the second in a series of articles co-presented with Colección Cisneros. The series explores themes in contemporary culture and the overlap between the visual arts and film.

In Memoriam: José Carlos Avellar

Renowned and influential Brazilian film critic and journalist José Carlos Avellar died today at the age of 79. Details on the cause of death have not been disclosed. Born in 1936 in Rio de Janeiro, he was a leading theorist of Latin American and Brazilian cinema.

Avellar worked for over twenty years as a film critic for the Jornal do Brasil newspaper. He published six books of essays on cinema: Imagem e som, imagem e ação, imaginação (Paz e Terra, 1982), O cinema dilacerado (Alhambra, 1986), Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (Rocco, 1995), A ponte clandestina – teorias de cinema na América Latina (Editora 34 e Edusp, 1996), Glauber Rocha (Cátedra, 2002), O chão da palavra – cinema e literatura no Brasil (Rocco, 2007).

He was author of several texts on Brazilian and Latin American cinema, and a frequent collaborator with diverse publications. His writings appeared in numerous anthology books and catalogs of film festivals. He also taught cinema in various institutions. Since 2008, he served as film programmer at the Moreira Salles Institute.

Avellar served as deputy director of the cinematheque at Rio’s Museum of Modern Art in two periods (1969 and 1985), and director from 1991 to 1992. He also served as cultural director of Embrafilme (1985-1987), director of Rio de Janeiro's municipal film agency, Riofilme (1994-2000), and president of the board of the Petrobras Cinema program.

The Brazilian film critic was vicepresident of FIPRESCI, the International Association of Film Critics between 1986 and 1995, and was secretary of the same organization for Latin America. He participated in official juries and critical of juries in several international festivals, including Cannes and Venice.

Avellar also directed the short film Treiler (1965), and co-directed two collective short films: Destruição Cerebral (1977) with Nick Zarvos and Jotham Vilela; and Iver é uma festa (1972) with Tereza Jorge, This Milan, Manfredo Caldas and Alvaro Freire. He also worked as cinematographer for the films Manhã Cinzenta (Olney São Paulo, 1969) and Triste Trópico (Arthur Omar, 1974).

For his professional achievements, he received the decoration of Chevalier des Arts et Lettres conferred by the French government in December 2006. In 2014 he was honored at the Fénix Awards in Mexico City with a special award for his contribution to film criticism.

A collection of his writings (in Portuguese) is available at www.escrevercinema.com.

PAULINA and FROM AFAR Awarded at Miami

The Miami International Film Festival announced its winners this past weekend  at a ceremony in Downtown Miami’s Olympia Theater. The Festival is the only major film festival to be produced by a college or university and this year’s edition featured 129 films from 40 countries. Latin America took home a few big wins last night, including Argentine La patota / Paulina (pictured left) which took home the top prize of the Lexus Ibero-American Feature Film Competition.

Paulina premiered last year in the International Critics' Week section at Cannes where it won the Grand Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize. This marks filmmaker Santiago Mitre’s second feature. After Paulina moves back home to teach in a suburban high school, she must deal with the disapproval of the people around her when she returns to work after being brutally assaulted by a gang.

The Jordan Alexander Ressler Screenwriting Award went to Venezuelan production From Afar / Desde allá (pictured right) by Lorenzo Vigas. Vigas’ debut film follows a middle-aged man who searches for young men in Caracas and pays them for company. When he meets a 17-year-old leader of a criminal gang, both of their lives are changed forever.

The Miami Encuentros competition which consists of films produced partially or entirely by Ibero-American-based productions was won by Uruguayan film The Candidate / El candidato by helmer Daniel Hendler and produced by Cordon Films. It tells the story of a man as he weighs his options within a career in politics.

Miami Film 2016 presented by The Related Group is an initiative to award cash prizes in the amount of $32,500 to films in development, this year from Argentina, based on project quality and production feasibility. This year’s winners were in first place Diego Lerman for A Sort of Family, second place, Gonzalo Tobal for Dolores and third place, Camilla Toker for The Death of Marga Maier.

OSCURO ANIMAL, EL CHARRO DE TOLUQUILLA, and MAQUINARIA PANAMERICANA Win at Guadalajara

The Colombian film Oscuro Animal, and the Mexican films El Charro de Toluquilla and Maquinaria Panamericana were the top winners at the 31st edition of the Guadalajara Film Festival.

Oscuro Animal (pictured left), a Colombian-Argentinean co-production by director Felipe Guerrero was the winner of four awards. The film was awarded the prize for Best Ibero-American Film, with a cash prize of about $14,000 USD, Best Director, Best Actress (presented to Marleyda Soto, Luisa Vides Galiano, and Jocelyn Meneses), and Best Cinematography. The film is the story of three women who who manage to escape a dangerous war situation in the Colombian jungle, and settle in Bogota, looking to start a new life.

In the Ibero-American competition the Mexican film La 4a compañía / The 4th Company by Amir Galván Cervera and Mitzi Vanessa Arreola received a Special Jury Prize, and was the winner of the Best Actor Award for Adrián Ladrón, while the Puerto Rican film La granja / The Farm by Ángel Manuel Soto was the winner of the Best First Film Award.

The Mexican documentary feature El Charro de Toluquilla (pictured right), José Villalobos’ directorial debut, was the winner of the Award for Best Documentary, with a cash prize of $8,400 USD approximately, and was also the most popular film of the festival winning the Audience Award.

The film tells the story of Jaime García, who appears to be the quintessentially machismo mariachi singer, yet beneath his magnetic confidence lies a man struggling to maintain a relationship with his estranged family while living as an HIV-positive man. 

The Colombian film Paciente / Patient by filmmaker Jorge Caballero was the winner of the Jury Special Prize in the Ibero-American documentary competition.

In the Mexican competition, Joaquín del Paso’s debut feature Maquinaria Panamericana / Pan-American Machinery (pictured left) was the winner of the Mezcal Award for Best Mexican Film. The film follows the employees of the outdated factory Maquinaria Panamericana, who after finding the boss is dead, discover the company is bankrupt, the workforces have no prospects of employment elsewhere and no hope for any retirement funds. In a state of confusion, fear and grief they agree to lock themselves in their dusty workplace to play out improbable solution.

Bruno Santamaría’s documentary feature Margarita, received a Special Jury Mention also in the Mexican competition.

The 31st edition of the Guadalajara Film Festival took place March 4-13 in Mexico.

Brazilian Sensation NEON BULL Opens at Lincoln Center on April 8

Kino Lorber has announced the U.S. theatrical run of Neon Bull / Boi Neon (pictured), filmmaker Gabriel Mascaro’s sensual and immersive new film set against the backdrop of the Brazilian rodeo world.

Presented at the Venice (Special Jury Prize) and Toronto festivals, the film will soon be seen at New Directors/New Films. It will open theatrically in New York on Friday, April 8 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center with a national rollout to follow. The Film Society will also be presenting "Gabriel Mascaro: Ebbs and Flows," a special showcase of the director’s previous work, running April 15-21.

Neon Bull confirms writer-director Gabriel Mascaro as a rising star in a burgeoning new wave movement coming out of Brazil's northeast. His visually stunning new film (shot by Cemetery of Splendor DP Diego Garcia) unfolds within the tough, macho world of the vaquejada, a traditional exhibition sport in which cowboys try to pull bulls to the ground by their tails.

The film explores the vaquejada through the eyes of Iremar (Juliano Cazarré), a rugged cowboy who works the events. Home for Iremar is the truck used to transport the animals from show to show, which he shares with his makeshift family: Galega, an exotic dancer, the truck driver and mother to the young and spirited Cacá, and Zé, his compadre in the bullpen. While he's not afraid to get his hands dirty, Iremar's real dream is to become a fashion designer and create outfits for dancers, with Galega as his muse.