Trailers:
3 (Pablo Stoll, Uruguay)
La Playa DC (Andrés Arango, Colombia)
La Sirga (William Vega, Colombia/Mexico/France)
Q&A's:
NO (Pablo Larraín, Chile)
INFANCIA CLANDESTINA (Benjamín Ávila, Argentina)
3 Trailer
A film Pablo Stoll, Uruguay
(Trailer with French subtitles)
La Playa DC Trailer
A film by Juan Andrés Arango
La Sirga Trailer
A film by William Vega, Colombia/Mexico/France
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First Edition of the
Cinema Tropical AWARDS
Friday, October 22, 2010
On Friday, October 22, Cinema Tropical awarded the 10 Best Latin American Films of the Decade (2000-2009) with the first edition of the Cinema Tropical AWARDS at the TimesCenter in New York City. This cutting edge event is the first of its kind ever, and aims to establish an annual tradition in the future. It honors the tremendous and constantly growing creative output of Latin American cinema and demonstrates this region's great quality and diversity.
Filmmakers like directors Carlos Reygadas and Lucrecia Martel --three of her productions scored among the ten best - were present at the ceremony. The Awards represents a prestigious endeavor with international impact, and were just one of four integral parts of ten days of immersion into the fascinating world of Latin American cinema.
Award Winners
1. LA CIÉNAGA
(Argentina/France/Spain, 103 min., 2001) Written and Directed by Lucrecia Martel; Producers: Ana Aizenberg, Diego Guebel, Jose Maria Morales, Mario Pergolini and Lita Stantic; Editor: Santiago Ricci; Director of Photography: Hugo Colace; Sound: Herve Guyader, Emmanuel Croset, Guido Berenblum and Adrian De Michele. Cast: Mercedes Moran, Graciela Borges, Martin Adjemian and Leonora Balcarce.
2. AMORES PERROS
(Mexico, 154 min., 2000) Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu; Written by Guillermo Arriaga; Producers: Guillermo Arriaga Jordán, Raul Olvera Ferrer, Francisco Gonzalez Compean, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, Pelayo Gutierrez, Mónica Lozano and Martha Sosa Elizondo; Editors: Luis Carballar, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and Fernando Pérez Unda; Director of Photography: Rodrigo Prieto; Original Music: Gustavo Santaolalla; Sound: Martín Hernandez. Cast: Emilio Echevarria, Gael García Bernal, Goya Toledo, Álvaro Guerrero and Vanessa Bauche.
3. LUZ SILENCIOSA / SILENT LIGHT / STELLET LICHT
(Mexico/France/Netherlands/Germany, 145 min., 2007) Written and Directed by Carlos Reygadas; Producers: Jeroen Beker, Jean Labadie, Carlos Reygadas, Jaime Romandia and Frans van Gestel; Editor: Natalia Lopez; Director of Photography: Alexis Zabe; Sound: Sergio Diaz and Martin Hernandez. Cast: Cornelio Wall, Maria Pankratz, Miriam Toews, Peter Wall, Jacobo Klassen and Elizabeth Fehr.
4. CIDADE DE DEUS / CITY OF GOD
5. ÔNIBUS 174 / BUS 174
(Brazil, 150 min., 2002) Directed by Jose Padilha, co-directed by Felipe Lacerda; Written by Jose Padilha. Producers: Jose Padilha, Rodrigo Pimentel, and Marcos Prado; Editor: Felipe Lacerda; Director of Photography: Marcelo "Guru" Duarte and Ceza Moraes; Original Music: Sacha Amback, Joao Nabuco; Sound: Denilson Campos.
6. Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN
7. WHISKY
8. LA MUJER SIN CABEZA / THE HEADLESS WOMAN
9. LA NIÑA SANTA / THE HOLY GIRL
10. EL LABERINTO DEL FAUNO / PAN'S LABYRINTH
As it's been reported by TropicalFRONT, Pablo Larraín's newest film No had a very enthusiastic reception after its World Premiere last Friday as part of Cannes' Directors' Fortnight selection.
In this video, the Chilean director along with producer Juan de Dios Larraín, actors Gael García Bernal, Alfredo Castro, Luis Gnecco and Pascal Montero, and screenwriter Pedro Peirano talk about their film in the Q&A session after its premiere.
(video via Quinzaine des Realisateurs)
The Chilean film No by Pablo Larraín received a prolonged and ecstatic standing ovation as well as highly positive initial reviews by the critics yesterday, after its world premiere in the Directors' Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival. "Brilliant," "a masterwork," and “extraordinarily well-made," are some of the fervent adjectives that the Chilean film received, which was the first Latin American production at bat at the 65th edition of the festival.
Along with Tony Manero (2008) and Post Mortem (2010), No is the third in Larraín's loose trilogy on the Pinochet era. The film was based on Antonio Skármeta's play ‘Referendum’ and adapted by Pedro Peirano and stars Mexican actor Gael García Bernal and Larraín's regular leading man Alfredo Castro (playing here the villain role of the leader of the government opposition). No tells the story of René Saavedra, a Chilean adman who orchestrates a marketing campaign against the reelection of dictator Augusto Pinochet in the historic plebiscite of 1988.
LA Times ’ Kenneth Turan's called it "a smart, involving, tangy film that mixes reality and drama to provocative effect (…) No is a most unusual underdog story, the kind of heady, relevant filmmaking we don’t see often enough at Cannes. Or anywhere else."
James Rocchi writing for indieWIRE's blog ‘The Playlist’ referred to it as "extraordinarily well-made, superbly acted, funny, human, warm, principled and, yes, as enthrallingly entertaining as it is fiercely moral and intelligent." Furthermore he described the film as "a masterwork! No is one of the breakout films of Cannes. As wonderful as it was to find it here, the only thing to regret is that it isn't in the main competition where it deserves to be.”
Eric Kohn writing for indieWIRE called the film "brilliant", Larraín's "most accomplished work (…) delivering a lively, mesmerizing drama." Leslie Felperin wrote in his review for Variety that the performances “as one has come to expect from Larraín's work, are immaculate. García Bernal has seldom been better than he is here” and added “No has the potential to break out of the usual ghettos that keep Latin American cinema walled off from non-Hispanic territories.”
“Anchored by an admirably measured performance from Gael García Bernal (…) the quietly impassioned film seems a natural for intelligent arthouse audiences” wrote David Rooney for Hollywood Reporter, whilst Guy Lodge for HitFix calls No the "film of the festival so far" and Larraín's "most narratively robust and emotionally rousing film to date, a hearty celebration of hard-earned democracy spiked with just enough of the director's acidly crooked humor to remind us whose house we're in."
El Velador / The Night Watchman, the most recent documentary film by Natalia Almada, will have its U.S. theatrical premiere run starting June 14 at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, followed by a tour across the U.S., and will have its national television premiere on September 27 as part of the 25th anniversary season of PBS’ POV, as it was announced today.
Hailed by A.O. Scott (The New York Times) as "an unsettlingly quiet, even lyrical film about a world made and unmade by violence," Almada's film accompanies Martín, the night watchman who guards a labyrinthine graveyard in Culiacán, capital of Sinaloa and Mexico’s drug heartland. The film had its world premiere at New Directors/New Films Festival in 2011, and was an official selection of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight last year.
The film -an Icarus Films release, will have an exclusive one-week theatrical engagement June 14-20 at MoMA, and then will travel to other cities across the country: Northwest Film Center in Portland (July 6-8); Northwest Film Forum in Seattle (July 6-12); UCLA Film and Television Archive in Los Angeles (July 13); Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley (July 15); the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (August 4 and 6); the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (September); the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (September 8); the Cleveland Museum of Art (September 12); the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus (September 25-26); the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (September 27-28).
Almada, who was the recipient of the 2009 Sundance Documentary Directing Award for her film El General and was the recipient of the 2011 Alpert Award, will be at MoMA for a discussion following the screening of her film on Monday, June 18 at 7pm. Additionally she'll will also be present for a conversation with Mexican-American director Lourdes Portillo on Saturday, June 23 at 7:30pm also at MoMA, on the occasion of the film series "Lourdes Portillo: La Cineasta Inquisitiva."
For all of the influence and vitality of Latin American cinema over the past dozen years or so, the Cannes Film Festival has been lukewarm in its acknowledgement. Considered by many the most important showcase for international filmmaking, Cannes began at last to open itself to this region’s cinema in the past few years, and the 65th edition that starts today (and runs through May 27) marks the strongest and most positive representation of Latin American film in recent memory.
This year’s Official Selection includes Post Tenebras Lux, the newest film by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, as well as On the Road by Brazilian director Walter Salles. Among the 22 productions in competition, Reygadas’s film is one of those with the most expectation and interest. Variety’s Robert Koehler has named it his pick to win the Palm d’Or.
Reygadas and Salles have been regulars in the Official Competition (Reygadas in 2005 with Batalla en el cielo / Battle in Heaven, and in 2007 with Luz silenciosa / Silent Light for which he won the Jury Prize; Salles in 2004 with Motorcycle Diaries and in 2008 with Linha de Passe). Pablo Trapero, Hector Babenco, Lucrecia Martel, Guillermo del Toro, Fernando Meirelles and Alejandro González Iñárritu, have been the other Latin American directors to be included in the main section in the past decade.
It’s worth mentioning that since the inception of the Palm d’Or award in 1955, only two Latin American films have won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival: Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana (Mexico/Spain) in 1961 and Anselmo Duarte’s O pagador de promesas / The Given Word (Brazil) the following year.
Beyond the Official Selection, it’s on the parallel sections where we’re seeing unprecedented representation of Latin American cinema this year. The Directors’ Fortnight, an independent section of the festival, adds to the lineup with a record-breaking number of six Latin American productions.
These include the Uruguayan film 3 by Pablo Stoll; the Mexican-Canadian co-production Fogo by Yulene Olaizola; the Argentine film Infancia clandestina / Clandestine Childhood by Benjamin Ávila; the Chilean-French co-production La noche de enfrente / The Night in Front by the late Raúl Ruiz; the Colombian Film La Sirga by William Vega; and the Chilean film No by Pablo Larraín starring Mexican actor Gael García Bernal.
Additionally, Directors' Fortnight will also feature two Brazilian short films in its official competition: Porcos raivosos / Enraged Pigs by Leonardo Sette et Isabel Penoni, and Os mortos vivos / The Living Dead by Anita Rocha da Silveira.
A Certain Regard section includes the Colombian film La Playa the debut feature film by Juan Andrés Arango, Después de Lucía / After Lucía by Michel Franco, and two productions by Argentine director Pablo Trapero: Elefante blanco / White Elephant and the omnibus film 7 días en La Habana / 7 Days in Habana sharing director credits with Benicio del Toro, Julio Medem, Elia Suleiman, Juan Carlos Tabío, Gaspar Noe, and Laurent Cantent.
The International Critic’s Week will feature the Argentine film Los Salvajes / The Wild Ones by Alejandro Fadel, and the Spanish-American-Mexican co-production Aquí y allá / Here and There by Antonio Méndez Esparza. The selection also include the Argentine short film Yeguas y cotorras / Mares and Parakeets by Natalia Garagiola and the Brazilian short O Duplo / Doppelgänger by Juliana Rojas.
Two other Latin American films will be shown in the festival as special screening: the Brazilian film A musica segundo Tom Jobim / The Music According to Tom Jobim by veteran director Nelson Pereira de Santos, as well as the debut feature film by Argentine director Gonzalo Tobal, Villegas.
The Puerto Rican short Mi santa mirada by Alvaro Aponte-Centero makes the first film from the Caribbean island to be selected for Cannes’ official competition in this category. Additionally, the Festival also announced the lineup for the Cinefondation Selection which includes Los Anfitriones / The Hosts by Miguel Angel Moulet from the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV de San Antonio de los Baños in Cuba, and Pude ver un Puma / Could See a Puma by Eduardo Williams from the Universidad del Cine in Argentina.
Furthermore, Brazil has been selected as the festival's special guest nation this year, and veteran Brazilian filmmaker Carlos Diegues will head the Camera d'Or Jury, which awards the Best First Film of the festival.
With all of the above representation we can only hope that Latin American cinema will finally get the international attention that’s long over due.
Photos: (from top to bottom) No by Pablo Larraín Chile); Post Tenebras Lux by Carlos Reygadas (Mexico); Elefante blanco by Pablo Trapero (Argentina); Villegas by Gonzalo Tobal (Argentina); and La Sirga (Colombia) by William Vega.
