Kathy Brew and UnionDocs have announced the creation of the Roberto Guerra Documentary Award, an annual prize to be given to a (U.S. or foreign-born) Latino documentary filmmaker based in New York. Brew, Guerra’s long-time collaborator and wife, in partnership with UnionDocs, are establishing the award to honor Guerra’s legacy in the field. Originally from Peru, Guerra came to New York as a young, aspiring filmmaker to meet the cinema verité pioneers. He was inspired to create a number of films while living in New York and Europe. He continued to shoot and produce through the last year of his life. Several projects, some based in Peru, remain to be completed.
Experts in the field of documentary art will choose the recipient from a pool of nominees. The award will be presented each year in the spring. UnionDocs will serve as the non-profit administrator of the fund and will conduct the selection process and panel review.
The award is currently setting up funds accepting donations, which are tax-deductible via UnionDocs. For more information contact Kathy Brew at (212) 481-4490 or kathybrew@verizon.net.
The prize for Best Narrative Feature in the World Cinema competition went to Los Ángeles (pictured right) directed by Damian John Harper. The German-Mexico co-production focuses on 17 year-old Mateo, from a small Zapotec community in southern Mexico. As he prepares to make the journey north to Los Angeles, he is forced to juggle the demands imposed on him by the local gang that can provide him safe passage. Earlier this year, Harper also won the Best First Work Award at the 2014 Guadalajara International Film Festival and the LA Muse Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
Anthology Film Archives has announced the film series 'Matías Piñeiro Selects: Bridges over Argentinean Cinema,' which will take place October 15-26 in New York City. Curated by the famed filmmaker, the series will feature 13 films from the South American country, many of which have never been screened in the city before.
All this attention is richly deserved: Piñeiro is possessed of one of the most idiosyncratic, quietly confident sensibilities in contemporary cinema. To celebrate Piñeiro’s increasingly important place in the constellation of contemporary cinema, to take advantage of his presence in NYC (where he’s been resident for the past couple years), and to reveal his passionate and perceptive cinephilia, we’ve invited him to guest-curate this survey of Argentine cinema, past and present.
The series will feature Edgardo Cozarinsky's (...) or Waiting for the Barbarians / Puntos suspensivos o esperando a los bárbaros (1971); Federico León's Everything Together / Todo juntos (2002); Alberto Fischerman's The Players Vs. Ángeles Caídos (1969); Alejo Moguillansky's The Parrot and the Swan / El loro y el cisne (2013); Leopoldo Torre Nilsson's The Kidnapper / El secuestrador (1958); Ignacio Masllorens' Marín Blasko III (2011); Santiago Palavecino's Some Girls / Algunas chicas (2013); Leonardo Favio's Juan Moreira (1973); and Inés de Oliveira Cézar's Foreigner / Extranjera (2007).
The Margaret Mead Film Festival has announced the lineup for its 2014 edition which will feature several Latin American titles. Making their U.S. premiere is the Bolivian film The Corral and the Wind / El Corral y el viento (pictured) in which director Miguel Hilari documents his return to his father’s Andean village, Santiago de Okola that he visited briefly as a child and where his only remaining relative is his uncle. The resulting film is a subtle and deeply personal meditation on the regrets of exile and the fading of culture.
Having their New York premiere are Mexican documentary films Elevator / Elevador (pictured right) by Adrian Ortiz Maciel and José Cohen and Lorenzo Hagerman's H2O MX. In Elevator, director Ortiz Maciel takes us on a poetic trek up and down a historic Latin American high rise, capturing the ebb and flow of tenants entering and leaving. 
Also having its New York premiere is Tiago Campos' Master and Divino / O mestre e o Divino which follows Adalberto, an eccentric German missionary with a passion for film, and Divino (Xavante) who is a young indigenous Amazonian filmmaker in his Brazilian village, where Adalberto has lived for over 50 years. Both have been devoted to filming everyday life among the Xavante; the film reveals their congenial and sometimes fractious relationship, shaped by humor, competition, criticism, and ultimately mutual affection. It’s the story of a dynamic duo with different histories and equally different personalities, with lives brought together in this Amazonian village, all captured by yet a third filmmaker, Tiago Campos, who works with the well-known film collective Video nas Aldeias along with Divino.
Matson Films has announced the U.S. theatrical premiere and national tour of the U.S.-Mexico co-production film Purgatorio by director Rodrigo Reyes, named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema. The documentary feature will have its U.S. Theatrical run opening on Friday, October 3 at Cinema Village in New York City, and October 10 at Laemmle Noho in Los Angeles, followed by a other engagements across the country.
By capturing a stunning mosaic of compelling characters and broken landscapes that live on the both sides of the border, the filmmaker reflects on the flaws of human nature and the powerful absurdities of the modern world. An unusual border film in the auteur tradition of caméra-stylo, Purgatorio ultimately becomes a fable of humanity, an epic and visceral experience with powerful and lingering images.
The Venezuelan Film Festival in New York has announced the lineup for its second edition which will take place September 19-25 at Tribeca Cinemas in Manhattan, and it will feature 14 feature films including Papita Maní Tostón by Luis Carlos Hueck, My Straight Son / Azul y no tan rosa by Miguel Ferrari, La Casa del Ritmo: A Film About Los Amigos Invisibles
by Javier Andrade, and The House at the End of Time / La casa del fin de los tiempos by
Alejandro Hidalgo among others.
