2nd Cinema Tropical Awards

Thursday, December 1, 2011

WINNERS 2011

Best Feature Film:
OCTUBRE
(Daniel and Diego Vega, Peru)

Best Documentary Film:
NOSTALGIA DE LA LUZ / NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT
(Patricio Guzmán, Chile)

Best Director, Feature Film:
Michael Rowe, AÑO BISIESTO / LEAP YEAR
(Mexico)

Best Director, Documentary Film:
Tatiana Huezo, EL LUGAR MÁS PEQUEÑO / THE TINIEST PLACE
(Mexico)

Best First Film:
EL LUGAR MÁS PEQUEÑO / THE TINIEST PLACE
(Tatiana Huezo, Mexico)

The winners of the 2nd Annual Cinema Tropical AWARDS were announced on Thursday, December 1, 2011 at a special event at the 15th Floor Conference Center of The New York Times headquarters in New York City.

The Cinema Tropical AWARDS are presented by Cinelatino and Dish LATINO, and sponsored by The Lift.

The Cinema Tropical AWARDS are presented in partnership with VOCES, Latino Heritage Network of The New York Times Company; 92YTribeca; Festival Scope; and Tóxico Cultura. Special thanks to Andrew Vargas-Stehney, Amber Shields, Lucila Moctezuma and Mario Díaz.

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NOMINATIONS 2011

BEST FEATURE FILM

       

- AÑO BISIESTO / Leap Year (Michael Rowe, Mexico, 2010)
- LOS LABIOS / The Lips (Iván Fund and Santiago Loza, Argentina, 2010)
- LA MIRADA INVISIBLE / The Invisible Eye (Diego Lerman, Argentina/France/Spain, 2010)
- OCTUBRE (Daniel and Diego Vega, Peru, 2010)
- POST MORTEM (Pablo Larraín, Chile/Germany/Mexico, 2010)
  

BEST DIRECTOR, FEATURE FILM

       

- MICHAEL ROWE, AÑO BISIESTO / Leap Year (Mexico, 2010)
- DIEGO LERMAN, LA MIRADA INVISIBLE / The Invisible Eye (Argentina/France/Spain, 2010)
- DANIEL AND DIEGO VEGA, OCTUBRE (Peru, 2010)
- PABLO LARRAÍN, POST MORTEM (Chile/Germany/Mexico, 2010)
- NICOLÁS PEREDA, VERANO DE GOLIAT / Summer of Goliath (Mexico/Canada/Netherlands, 2010)

BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM

     

- EL AMBULANTE / The Peddler (Eduardo de la Serna, Lucas Marcheggiano and Adriana Yurcovich, Argentina, 2010)
- CUCHILLO DE PALO / 108 (Renate Costa, Paraguay/Spain, 2010)
- EL LUGAR MÁS PEQUEÑO / The Tiniest Place (Tatiana Huezo, Mexico, 2011)
- NOSTALGIA DE LA LUZ / Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzmán, Chile/France/Germany, 2010)
- EL VELADOR (Natalia Almada, Mexico/USA, 2011)

BEST DIRECTOR, DOCUMENTARY FILM

     

- RENATE COSTA, CUCHILO DE PALO / 108 (Paraguay/Spain, 2010)
- TATIANA HUEZO, EL LUGAR MÁS PEQUEÑO / The Tiniest Place (Mexico, 2011)
- PATRICIO GUZMÁN, NOSTALGIA DE LA LUZ / Nostalgia for the Light (Chile/France/Germany, 2010)
- RODRIGO SIQUEIRA, TERRA DEU, TERRA COME, The Earth Giveth, The Earth Taken (Brazil, 2010)
- NATALIA ALMADA, EL VELADOR (Natalia Almada, Mexico/USA, 2011)

BEST FIRST FILM

       

- ABEL (Diego Luna, Mexico, 2010)
- AÑO BISIESTO / Leap Year (Michael Rowe, Mexico, 2010)
- EL LUGAR MÁS PEQUEÑO / The Tiniest Place (Tatiana Huezo, Mexico, 2011)
- OCTUBRE (Daniel and Diego Vega, Peru, 2010)
- ROMPECABEZAS / Puzzle (Natalia Smirnoff, Argentina/France, 2010)

The films were selected from a list of Latin American feature films with a minimum of 60 minutes in length that were premiered between January 1, 2010 and March 31, 2011. The winners and final nominees were selected by a six-member jury panel from a list of 31 fiction films and 19 documentary films compiled from the selections of a nominating committee composed of 15 film professionals from Latin America, the U.S. and Europe (see list below).

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2011 JURY

Sally Berger, assistant curator, The Museum of Modern Art

Nicolás Entel, filmmaker
Marcela Goglio, programmer, Latinbeat, The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Jerónimo Rodríguez, film critic, NY1 News/Noticias
Paul Julian Smith, FBA, film scholar and critic, CUNY Graduate Center
Mauricio Zacharias, screenwriter
 

2011 NOMINATION COMMITTEE

Gonzalo Aguilar, film scholar, Argentina
Violeta Bava, film producer, Argentina
María Lourdes Cortés, director, Cinergia, Costa Rica
Josexto Cerdan, artistic director, Punto de Vista Festival, Spain
Hugo Chaparro, film critic, Colombia
Howard Feinstein, film critic, USA
Elena Fortes, director, Ambulante, Mexico
Mike Goodridge, film journalist, Screen International
Sonja Heinen, World Cinema Fund, Germany
Gabe Klinger, film critic/scholar, USA
Daniela Michel, director, Morelia Film Fest, Mexico
Mariana Rondón, filmmaker, Venezuela
Jorge Ruffinelli, film scholar, Stanford University, USA
Diana Sánchez, programmer, Toronto Film Festival, Canada
Tanya Valette, ex director, EICTV, Cuba

                            Presented by                                                           Sponsored by

                                                 

Co-presenting Partners:

     

Global Film Initiative Awards Peruvian and Venezuelan Projects

San Francisco-based Global Film Initiative announced today the ten film projects that have been selected to receive production funds as part of the Initiative's Winter 2012 granting cycle which include two projects from Latin America: Chicama (pictured) by Omar Forero Alva from Peru and El Regreso / The Return by Patricia Ortega from Venezuela.

Chicama is the story of César, who dreams of living in cosmopolitan Trujillo, but a lack of available teaching posts there takes him to a bucolic Andean village, where he unwittingly falls for his charming students and a captivating colleague. El Regreso tell the story of a young Wayuu girl narrowly escapes the massacre of her beach-dwelling community at Bahia Portete and then attempts to rebuild her life in urban Maracaibo, where she befriends a Castilian girl and learns to overcome differences in language and culture.

The Global Film Initiative is a U.S.-based international arts organization specializing in cultural diplomacy, education and literacy through film. Established in 2002, it has awarded numerous grants to filmmakers in emerging nations around the world, and promoted community arts and education through distribution and exhibition of its signature world cinema series, Global Lens.

LOS ÚLTIMOS CRISTEROS Tops Toulouse Latin American Film Fest

The Mexican film Los últimos cristeros / The Last Christeros (pictured) by Matías Meyer won the top prize at the 24th edition of the Toulouse Latin American Film Festival (Cinélatino, Rencontres de Toulouse), which ran March 24 through April 1. The jury also gave a Special Mention to the Chilean film Sentados frente al fuego / Seated by the Fire by Alejandro Fernández Almendras.

 The Turkish-Nicaraguan co-production film Una vida sin palabras / A Life Without Words by Adam Isenberg took the top prize as Best Documentary, whilst Andrés Wood's Violeta se fue a los cielos / Violeta Went To Heaven from Chile took home the Audience Award. Additionally, on the Cinema en Construction section for films in development, the main prize went to the Colombian project La Sirga by William Andrés Vega.

For a list of all the awards click here.

Chilean Film POST MORTEM by Pablo Larraín Opens April 11 at NYC's Film Forum

The distribution film company Kino Lorber  announced this week the theatrical premiere run of the acclaimed Chilean film Post Mortem by Pablo Larraín at Film Forum in New York City. The film will have a two-week engagement, from April 11 - 24.

A companion film to Larraín's critically acclaimed Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem is a macabre, comic drama that begins during the onset of the bloody 1973 Chilean military coup that overthrew democratically elected President Salvador Allende. Alfredo Castro (who starred as the disco-obsessed, white-suited title character in Tony Manero) is a dour coroner's assistant who, while obsessively wooing an erotic dancer at the Bim Bam Bum cabaret, is caught up in a historic, cataclysmic event. His ordinarily dull job is now under military command. As anonymous bodies chaotically pile up in the hallway of the morgue, he is given the task of performing an autopsy on a key government figure.

Once again, Larraín invests his characters with metaphoric undertones, suffusing Santiago with rich period detail and a surreal visual texture that evokes the nightmarish landscape it was rapidly becoming. Post Mortem premiered at the 2010 Venice Film Festival and was featured at the New York Film Festival.

POV Celebrates 25 Years with Strong Mexican and Latino Component

POV (Point of View), the celebrated PBS award-winning documentary series has announced its lineup celebrating its 25th annual season which will air from June 21-October 18. The celebration will have a strong Latino component with five feature films and a short film, three of them featuring Mexican stories.

The Latin American documentary contingent that will be featured include the Mexican feature films Reportero by Bernardo Ruiz; El Velador / The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada (pictured); and Presunto culpable / Presumed Guilty by Roberto Hernández, Layda Negrete, and Geoffrey Smith. The lineup also includes the acclaimed Chilean film Nostalgia de la luz / Nostalgia for the Light by Patricio Guzmán; and two American productions focused on Guatemala: the feature film Granito: How to Nail a Dictactor by Peter Kinoy, Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís; and the short film Sin país / Without Country by Theo Rigby.

Launched in 1988 to showcase new and challenging point-of-view documentaries on PBS, POV has grown to become American television's longest-running series dedicated to contemporary nonfiction programming. POV films have won virtually every major film and broadcasting honor, including Academy Awards®, Emmys® and Peabodys.

LOS ÚLTIMOS CRISTEROS and CUATES DE AUSTRALIA Winners of the Riviera Maya Film Fest

The first edition of the Riviera Maya Film Festival came to a close last night in which Mexican films Los últimos cristeros / The Last Christeros (pictured) by Matías Meyer and Cuates de Australia / Drought by Everardo González were the big winners, each receiving a cash prize of $300,00 Mexican pesos (about $25,000 USD). The jury was composed by Uruguayan producer Sandino Saravia, Mexican documentary filmmaker Eugenio Polgovsky and Argentine film critic Diego Lerer.

In parallel to the official selection in the Mexican competitions, awards were given in the RivieraLAB for projects in development. Three projects were selected to receive a cash prize of $200,000 Mexican pesos (about $16,000 USD) for development: Tormentero / Stormmaker by Rubén Imaz (Mexico); Réimon by Rodrigo Moreno (Argentina); and Nueva España the new project by Raya Martin (Philippines). Additionally in the Work in Progress section, the Uruguayan project Tanta agua by filmmakers Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge Romero won the main prize for postproduction, whilst the Brazilian project Material de composición by Pedro Aspahan received a Special Mention.

After its first edition, the Riviera Maya Film Festival promises to become an important showcase for Mexican cinema as well as a solid platform for international films.