Chile, Mexico and Argentina to Represent at Cannes' Cinéfondation

Making selections from 1,550 submission from 277 film schools from around the world, the 66th Cannes Film festival has announced its 18 selections, 14 fiction and 4 animated shorts, for its Cinéfondation, which devotes itself to searching for new talent. Latin America is represented this year with three projects from Mexico, Chile and Argentina.

Mexico is represented by Alejandro Iglesias Mendizabal's with the film Fable of a Blood Drained Girl / Contrafábula de una niña disecada from the prestigious Centro de Capacitación Cinematrográfica. Camila Luna Toledo's Asunción (pictured) from the Pontificia Universidad Católica represents Chile, and Sebastián Schjaer's Tomorrow All Things / Mañana todas las cosas from Argentina's Universidad del Cine.

The Cinéfondation prizes will be awarded on May 24, 2013.

Mandoki's SABINA RIVAS Leads Mexico's Ariel Award Noms

The Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences has announced the nominees for the 55th edition of the Ariel Awards, Mexico's national film prize, which will take place on Tuesday, May 28 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

Luis Mandoki's La vida precoz y breve de Sabina Rivas / The Precocious & Brief Life of Sabina Rivas (pictured, left) leads this year's nominations with 11 total including for Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. The film, which failed to receive a nomination as Best Picture, tells the story of Sabina and Jovany, two young lovers from Honduras, who are reunited by chance in the Mexico-Guatemala border. It is a love story set through situations both real and ordinary in which loyalty is put to the test, within the context of immigration.

With 10 nominations including Best Film, Best Direction, Best Original Screenplay, and Best First Feature, El Premio / The Prize, (pictured), directed by Paula Markovitch tells the story of a young mother and her daughter who flee Buenos Aires for the seclusion of a ramshackle cottage along the windy dunes of an Argentine beach under the cloud of a military dictatorship. Although the reconstruction of their lives begins as idyllic, seven-year-old Cecilia's new school becomes contaminated by he general political crisis as her teacher recruits the class for a patriotic essay contest sponsored by the very people who may have already disappeared her father.

Matías Meyer's Los últimos cristeros / The Last Christeros (pictured, right) who was also a winner of Best Director of a Feature Film at the 3rd Annual Cinema Tropical Awards this past January is up for 8 Ariel awards. Nominated for Best Film and best director to name a few, the film takes place at the end of the nineteen-thirties, in the arid mountains of Mexico, as a christero colonel and his last men resist to surrender.  This men are peasants, poor and proud people. They are followed by the government and are in need of ammunition in order to fight. The support does not arrive and life in the sierra turns more difficult every day; the war is almost over.

Other nominees include Cinema Tropical Award nominee, Cuates de Australia / Drought (pictured, left) directed by Everardo González for Best Documentary, El fantástico mundo de Juan Orol, directed by Sebastián del Amo for Best First Feature and La Demora, directed by Rodrigo Plá for Best Film. In the Best Ibero-American film the three nominated films are the Chilean film No by Pablo Larraín, the Ecuadorean film Pescador by Sebastián Cordero, and the Spanish film Blancanieves by Pablo Berger.

Additionally, the Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences will honor director Rafael Corkidi, and the late actors Mario Almada and Columba Domínguez, with the Golden Ariel. 

The Ariel Awards, which have been seen as "Mexico's Oscars," recognize excellence in motion picture making and has been awarded annually since 1947. Its is considered the most prestigious award in the Mexican movie industry. 

Global Film Initiative Announces Four Latin American Recipients

The Global Film Initiative announced today the 11 new recipients awarded production funds for the Initiative's Winter 2013 granting cycle, including two film projects from Colombia and one project from Ecuador and Argentina each.

Directed by Oscar Ruiz Navia, from Colombia is Los Hongos, in which two disaffected graffiti artists wander the city of Cali together, rendering their hopes and desires on the walls they pass and in the people they meet.

The second film chosen from Colombia directed by José Luis Rugeles, is Marìa, about a 13-year-old guerilla fighter in Colombia's decades-long armed conflict who must choose a new path for herself--and her unborn child--while on a mission to hide her commander's infant baby. 

Historia del miedo / History of Fear, directed by Benjamin Naishtat, from Argentina, tells the story of gardener of a gated suburban community who resents a makeshift camp growing beyond the fence, as a summer blackout gives way to an atmosphere of apprehension.

From Ecuador comes Saudade (pictured) directed by Juan Carlos Donoso Gómez. As Miguel and his friends prepare to graduate high school during Ecuador's 1999 banking crisis, the country and his family come to respective crossroads, throwing his own future into turmoil.

Founded in 2002 to create global understanding, empathy and connectivity through film, the initiative has awarded at least 15 awards fifteen to twenty grants per year. Of up to $10,000 each, the grant js given to filmmakers whose work exhibits a unique and powerful narrative.

A past recipient was Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge's So Much Water / Tanta Agua which has gone on to successfully navigate the festival circuit, awarded Best First Feature at the 2013 Guadalajara International Film Festival; FIPRESCI at the 2013 Cartagena International Film Festival; Official Selection of the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival (world premiere) to name a few.

Spanish Diva Sara Montiel Dies

Spanish actress Sara Montiel (pictured) who was a popular actress in Mexican cinema and was the first Spanish actress to become a Hollywood star, died today at the age of 85 in Madrid.

Born Maria Antonia Abad in 1928, got her first role in film in the 1944 production Te quiero para mi which lead to a three-decade long film career where she featured in almost 50 films in Spain, Mexico and the United States.

After some films successes in Spain, Montiel was invited to Mexico to star in the film Furia roja in 1950 with Arturo de Córdova and Carlos López Moctezuma. What was supposed to be brief stay in the country, ended up being a six-year period in Mexico in which she made more than a dozen films.

Her more popular Mexican films were the ones she co-starred with idol actor Pedro Infante: Necesito dinero, Ahí viene Martín Corona and El enamorado (the three of them released 1952). It is during these years that Sara Montiel got the Mexican nationality.

In 1954, she rose to international fame when she got invited to act in the Hollywood western film Vera Cruz starring Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster and directed by Robert Aldrich.  She followed up with the musical Serenade starring Mario Lanza, Joan Fontaine, and Vincent Price, directed by Anthony Mann, with whom she married shortly after.

She returned to Spain where she made two of her most popular films El último cuplé / The Last Torch Song (1957) and La Violetera / The Violet Seller (1958), which became two of the highest grossing movies in Spanish cinema history. By the mid-seventies she had given up her film career and fully dedicated herself to music.

In Pedro Almodóvar’s 2004 film La mala educación / The Bad Education, Mexican actor Gael García Bernal plays three roles include that of a transsexual who sings Montiel’s popular song Quizás, Quizás, Quizás.

Film by Uruguayan Director Tops U.S. Box Office

The film Evil Dead (pictured) the anticipated remake of Sam Raimi's 1981 cult-hit horror film, directed and co-written by Uruguayan director Fede Álvarez was the number one film this past weekend in the U.S. box office earning an estimated $26 million dollars.

Álvarez attracted attention with his five-minute short film ¡Ataque de pánico! / Panic Attack! (2009) which became an instant YouTube sensation. The film in which giant robots attack Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, was reportedly made with a $300 budget. Following his short's success, Álvarez was then signed to a $30 million contract to direct a Hollywood movie, which ultimately became the fourth installment of The Evil Dead franchise.

Starring Jessica Lucas and Jane Levy, Álvarez debut feature film tells the story of five twenty-something friends become holed up in a remote cabin. When they discover a Book of the Dead, they unwittingly summon up dormant demons living in the nearby woods, which possess the youngsters in succession until only one is left intact to fight for survival. 

Álvarez follows in the recent footsteps of Argentinean director Andrés Muschietti, whose supernatural thriller Mamaalso topped the U.S. box office when it debuted in January 2013, grossing over $70 million. Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro acted as executive producer of the film which starred Jessica Chastain.

Watch ¡Ataque de pánico!:

In Appreciation: Les Blank

American documentary filmmaker Les Blank died yesterday, Sunday, April 7 at the age of 77, victim of cancer. He had a prolific filmography, making 42 films in his a career than spanned over four decades.

Perhaps best known for his documentary films on filmmaker Werner Herzog Burden of Dreams (1982), where he followed the German filmmaker in the Peruvian Amazon where he was shooting his epic film Fitzcarraldo, and Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1979), Blank nevertheless had a very rich and diverse film career which included some key documentaries on Latino musicians and culture including Chulas Fronteras (1976, pictured left), Del Mero Corazón (1979, pictured right) and Sworn To the Drum: A Tribute to Francisco Aguabella (1995).

Les Blank’s films on Latino culture helped bring attention to popular forms of music like Tejano and Norteño music that were largely unknown in this country.

Chulas Fronteras is a pioneering documentary on the complexity of Tejano culture of the Texas-Mexican border featuring acclaimed Norteño musicians such as Flaco Jimenez Lydia Mendoza and Los Alegres de Terán.

Del Mero Corazón is lyrical journey through the heart of Chicano culture as reflected in the love songs of the Tex-Mex Norteña music tradition and features Little Joe & La Familia, Leo Garza, and Chavela Ortiz, among other musicians.

Sworn To the Drum: A Tribute to Francisco Aguabella is a portrait of the acclaimed master Afro-Cuban master percussionist. Francisco Aguabella was born in Matanzas, Cuba, and he was a master of the Yoruba-derived bata drums and rumba form as well as contemporary traditions including Cuban son, salsa, and Latin jazz.