NY Latino Film Fest Announces Lineup

The New York International International Latino Film Festival (NYILFF),  announced today its lineup for its 13th edition which will run August 13-19. Opening the festival is Youssef Delara and Michael D. Olmos' Filly Brown, starring Gina Rodriguez as a tough LA street poet, and closing with Laura Brownson and Beth Levison's Lemon the incredible story of three-time felon and one-time Tony Award-winner, Lemon Anderson.

This year, NYILFF will also include panel discussions and other activities in celebration of Latino films beginning with a presentation of Selena at Cinema Under the Stars, a free outdoor screening at St. Nicholas Park. Presenting Dominican Night, the festival will screen the winner of the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Audience Award, the heartwarming film Elliot Loves by Terracino, a story finding love in New York.

The World Premiere of The Girl is in Trouble, starring Wilmer Valderrama and Columbus Short, will screen with actors in attendance for a Q&A. Valderrama plays a bartender entangled in a murder mystery involving a desperate woman, a missing rug dealer and the scion of a powerful investment firm. NYILFF will also be presenting its in competition domestic and international features, documentaries and shorts, including Tom Gustafson's Mariachi Gringo, Winner of the prize for Best Mexican Film at the last edition of the Guadalajara Film Festival, Alejandro Bellame Palacio's El rumor de las piedras / The Rumble of the Stones from Venezuela, and Rodrigo Marín's Zoológico / Zoo from Chile. 

For complete lineup, click here.

Limited Latin American Representation at Venice

The Venice Film Festival announced today the full lineup for its 69th edition, which includes two Argentine feature films and some Latin American shorts. The festival’s more cutting-edge section, Orizzonti (Horizons), which features films screening both in and out of competition, will present Leones (pictured), an Argentinean production in partnership with France and the Netherlands, the debut feature film by Jazmín López.

Also from Argentina, documentary film El impenetrable (in co-production with France), directed by Daniele Incalcaterra and Fausta Quattrini is scheduled to screen as part of the special events screening out of competition. The Mexican documentary film Miradas múltiples by Emilio Maillé about the legendary cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, will also be screened out of competition in the Venice Classics program.

Three Latin American shorts were also selected to compete in the Orizzonti section: Las manos limpias by Carlos Armella from Mexico, O Afinador directed by Fernando Camargo and Matheus Parizi from Brazil, and Resistente by Renate Costa and Salla Sorry from Paraguay (in co-production wth Denmark and Finland), becoming the first Paraguayan production ever to participate in the Italian festival.

The 69th edition of the Venice Film Festival will screen run from August 29th through September 8th.

Guanajuato Announces its 2012 Winners

The Guanajuato Film Festival (formerly Expresión en Corto) announced the winners of its 15th edition which runs July 20-25 in Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The prize for Best Mexican First Film was awarded to Hatuey Viveros for Mi universo en minúsculas / My Universe in Lowercase, while Sebastián del Amo's El fantastic mundo de Juan Orol / The Fantastic World of Juan Orol received a Special Mention in the same category.

The prize for Best Mexican documentary went to Flor en otomí / Flower in Otomi by Luisa Riley while Karla Castañeda's La noria received the awards for Best Mexican Short Film. The festival was inaugurated last Friday with the Mexican premiere of Michel Franco's Después de Lucía / After Lucía, winner of the Un Certain Regard section at the last edition of the Cannes Film Festival.

For a complete list of winners click here.

First Latin American Films Selected for Toronto

The Toronto Film Festival announced the first slate of films selected for the 37th edition of the Canadian festival that will take place September 6-16. Among the over 60 film announced today are two Latin American productions: the Argentine film Todos tenemos un plan / Everyone Has a Plan (pictured) by Ana Piterbarg and the Chiean film No by Pablo Larraín.

Starring Viggo Mortensen and Soledad Villamil, the debut feature by Argentine director Ana Piterbarg is a thriller about a man who assumes the identity of his deceased twin and becomes caught up in his sibling’s shady dealings in the Tigre Delta region of Argentina.

Pablo Larraín's No starring Mexican actor Gael García Bernal about a hot-shot advertising executive hired by the opposition party to campaign against Chilean dictator Augustin Pinochet, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival to great success last May, will be making its North American debut in Toronto.

Jorge Ruiz, Pioneer of Bolivian Documentary Filmmaking, Dies at 88

Filmmaker Jorge Ruiz (pictured), one of Bolivia’s foremost documentary filmmakers, died in Cochabamba today at the age of 88. Born in Sucre in 1924, he studied Agronomy in Argentina where he started to experiment with an 8mm camera. He got his first break in cinema in 1947 when he was hired by American Kenneth Wassan to work at his film company. In 1949 he worked with Augusto Roca to make Donde nació un imperio, Bolivia’s first color film.

In 1953 he directed Vuelve Sebastiana, his most well known film, about a young indigenous Andinian girl. John Grierson declared in 1958 that Ruiz was "one of the six most important documentary filmmakers." Between 1957 and 1960 he was the director of the Bolivian Film Institute (Instituto Cinematográfico Boliviano). He lived abroad between 1962 and 1983 living in Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Ecuador and New York City. His filmography lists a rich body of work. He also worked as a cameraman for many projects, including second camera operator for Werner Herzog's Cobra Verde (1987).

Mela Márquez, director of the Bolivian Cinematheque, recently referred to Ruiz as "the father of the Bolivian documentary film." In 1992 at the Nantes Film Festival in France, Vuelve Sebastiana was recognized as the first indigenous film made in Latin America, and Ruiz was declared the "father of indigenous Andean cinema." He was awarded the National Culture Prize in Bolivia in 2001, and the IberoAmerican Festival of Huelva, Spain paid tribute to his work with a special retrospective in 2003.

Doc About Cuban Art School Named Among Best of the Decade by 'Architectural Digest '

The renowned magazine Architectural Digest published a list of the ten essential films from the past decade dealing with architecture, design, and urban planning as selected by the publication's editors, which includes the documentary Unfinished Spaces (2011) by filmmakers Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray.

The documentary tells the story of Cuba's National Art Schools which were commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Havana in 1961. According to the magazine, "the documentary examines the schools’ creation and decay, offering a revealing portrait of architecture in post-revolution Cuba. Most poignantly, the filmmakers chronicle the efforts of the schools’ architects—Roberto Gottardi, Ricardo Porro, and Vittorio Garatti, all now in their 80s—to restore and complete the campus after years of neglect and criticism.

The film was ranked number seven among the list which also includes Nathaniel Kahn's My Architect: A Son Journey (2003) and Sidney Pollack's Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005).

To read the complete list click here.