THE CHAMBERMAID
(La camarista, Mexico, 2018, 102 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)

“Eve (Gabriela Cartol) works long hours as a maid at a luxurious hotel in Mexico City. A young, single mother who travels far to get to her place of work, Eve has aspirations for the future and hopes that her diligence will get her a coveted spot as the cleaner on an executive floor. She enrolls in the hotel's adult education program in her quest for a better life but quickly discovers that it's not necessarily the most hard-working who get noticed for advancement.

“The Chambermaid, Lila Avilés's striking debut, employs a quasi-documentary approach as it accompanies Eve on her daily routine. She quietly enters one indistinguishable guest room after another and we are struck by the intimacy behind the act of cleaning a stranger's mess. The disparity between the guests and those working at the hotel — who often do not have hot water in their own homes — accurately reflects the reality in many Latin American countries. The impersonal hotel, a high-rise of glass and concrete, overshadows the small lives of those maintaining it for the wealthy owners and guests: a microcosm of contemporary Mexican society.

“The heart of The Chambermaid is the compelling and unique Eve. As she makes friends at work, engages in a flirtation with one of the window cleaners, and continually works hard to earn promotion, we get to know her a little better and, through Avilés's gaze, become privy to a young woman's journey of self-discovery.

—Diana Sánchez, Toronto International Film Festival

TIFF Screenings:
Saturday, September 8, 11:30pm at Scotiabank Theater 5 (P&I)
Sunday, September 9, 7:15pm at TIFF Bell Lightbox 4
Tuesday, September 11, 12:45pm at Jackman Hall
Wednesday, September 12, 9:15am at Scotiabank Theater 6 (P&I)
Thursday, September 14, 6:30pm at Scotiabank Theater 14

COCOTE
(Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, 2017, Dominican Republic/Argentina/Germany/ Qatar, 106 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)

Winner of the Best Film Award at the Locarno Film Festival’s Signs of Life competition—a recognition that marked a milestone for Dominican cinema—Cocote is a rapturous crime fable set in the Dominican Republic and directed by Nelson de los Santos Arias.

The film follows Alberto, a kind-hearted gardener returning home to attend his father’s funeral. When he discovers that a powerful local figure is responsible for his father’s death, Alberto realizes that he’s been summoned by his family to avenge the murder. It’s an unthinkable act—especially for him, an evangelical Christian. But as pressure mounts, he sees few ways out.

Questions of faith, tradition, and honor course through this electrifying film, which, seemingly at the speed of thought itself, jumps between film formats, colors, and aspect ratios, radically envisioning a community torn asunder by senseless violence. Starring Vicente Santos, Judith Rodríguez, and Yuberbi de la Rosa, and with nods to the films of Glauber Rocha and the fiction of Roberto Bolaño, Cocote marks the coming of age of Dominican cinema in the international film circuit.

Now Playing
Laemmle Music Hall
9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, 
(310) 478-3836 / Buy tickets in advance

LGBTQ Brazil

Museum of the Moving Image
July 28–29

Co-presented by Cinema Tropical

LGBTQ Brazil celebrates the Brazilian LGBTQ community’s contribution to contemporary cinema with a unique lineup of recent films, all screening in New York for the first time. As framed by Brazilian and American scholars, including Denilson Lopes and Ruby Rich, the early LGBTQ films of the 1980s and ‘90s were a protest against heteronormativity, a turn away from universal humanism to political pastiche, camp, and burlesque. And while Brazil may have largely missed this first wave—a key director, Karim Aïnouz, did not emerge until Seams (1993) and Madame Satã (2002)—it is exhilarating to see its LGBTQ cinema flourish today. 

Brazil’s contemporary LGBTQ directors embrace plurality. Taviniho Teixeira, in Sol Alegria, demonstrates a strong satirical bend and influences from Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Pier Paolo Pasolini to Brazil’s Cinema Marginal and Tropicalismo. The film’s protagonists—renegades, circus performers, nuns, and priests touting guns and staging orgies—flaunt every cultural and social norm. Ismael Caneppele’s debut, Music For When the Lights Go Out, centers on gender performativity; Luiz Roque’s short, Heaven, depicts the demonization of transwomen in a futurist scenario, while Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Búrca’s short, Terremoto Santo, explores the complexities and perils of religious fervor.

A number of featured filmmakers experiment with mixing sci-fi, horror, music video, and the musical. In Uirá dos Reis and Guto Parente’s feverish Sweet Amianto, Leonardo Mouramateus and Andreia Pires’s choreographed Vando Vulgo Vedita, Fábio Leal’s light-spirited The Daytime Doorman, and Daniel Nosco’s fetish-driven Sr. Raposo, fluidity and play take center stage, against the poignant evocations of violence, fear, and discrimination. Meanwhile We Are All Here and Bixa Travesty are both potent love poems to trans performers’ spunk and courage. 

Programmed by Ela Bittencourt.

All screenings at
Museum of the Moving Image
36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria, Queens, NY
(718) 777-6888 / www.movingimage.us

EVERYTHING ELSE
A film by Natalia Almada
(Todo lo demás, Mexico/USA, 98 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)

Selected as one of the best films of the year (Amy Taubin, Artforum), and winner of the Golden Gate Award for Best Film at the San Francisco Film Festival, Everything Else stars Academy Award–nominated actress Adriana Barraza (Amores Perros, Babel) as Doña Flor, a 63-year-old bureaucrat living in Mexico City, who has worked in the same government office for 35 years. When she loses the only living creature she cares for, she goes into crisis. 

With a keen directorial eye, impeccable framing, Natalia Almada's debut fiction film explores the interior life of Doña Flor as she awakens from her bureaucratic malaise and yearns to become visible again. Inspired by Hannah Arendt’s idea that bureaucratic dehumanization is a brutal form of violence, the story ultimately becomes a mesmerizing contemplation on solitude.

Opens Friday, July 27
The Roxie Theater
3117 16th Street, San Francisco, CA
(415) 863-1087 / Buy tickets here. 

Q&A with director Natalia Almada at the 5pm show on Saturday, July 28.

GOOD MANNERS
(As Boas Maneiras, Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra, Brazil/France, 2017, 135 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)

Filmmakers Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra’s second collaboration (after the acclaimed Hard Labor) deftly integrates art-house and genre cinema to create a thrilling and dark gothic fable with sharp social commentary.

Set in São Paulo, the film follows Clara, a lonely nurse from the outskirts of the city who is hired by mysterious and wealthy Ana to be the nanny of her soon to be born child. Against all odds, the two women develop a strong bond. But a fateful night marked by a full moon changes their plans.

With powerful visuals and an impeccable cinematography (by Zama’s Rui Poças), Good Manners is Disney meets Jacques Tourneur. The film becomes an unexpected and wild werewolf movie unlike any other, and a poignant social and racial allegory on modern-day Brazilian society.

Now Playing at the IFC Center in New York City
Opens Friday, August 17 at the Laemmle Royal Theatre and Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Los Angeles

ARABY
(João Dumans and Affonso Uchôa, Brazil, 2017, 98 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)

A favorite in over 50 international film festivals, including New Directors/New Films and Rotterdam, Araby is an epistolary ode to labor, love, and storytelling. Winner of numerous awards—including the Cinema Tropical Award for best Latin American film of the year—Araby is a stirring glimpse into the exciting revitalized cinema from Brazil.

Andre, a teenager, lives in an industrial town in the southern state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, near an old aluminum factory. One day, a factory worker, Cristiano, suffers an accident. Asked to go to Cristiano’s house to pick up clothes and documents, Andre stumbles on a notebook, and it’s here that Araby begins — or, rather, transforms.

As Andre reads from the journal entries, we are plunged into Cristiano’s life, into stories of his wanderings, adventures, and loves. Beautifully written and filmed, Araby is a fable-like and lyrical road movie about a young man who sets off on a ten-year journey in search of a better life.

"An instant classic. Marked by boundless humanism."
—Neil Young, The Hollywood Reporter

“Opens quietly but builds with tremendous emotional force.”
—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Now Playing
Film Society of Lincoln Center
144 West 65th Street, New York City

GABRIEL AND THE MOUNTAIN
(Gabriel e a Montanha, Brazil/France, 131 min. In Portuguese, English, and French with English subtitles)

Based on the true story of a close friend of director Fellipe Barbosa, this beautifully photographed travelogue recreates the fateful journey of a young Brazilian. Before going to the U.S. for university, Gabriel embarks on a voyage across the globe and finds himself in West Africa, where he reaches his final destination at Mount Malawi. This thrilling mix of fictional recreation and documentary reality poses provocative questions about big issues, and refuses easy answers. A Strand Releasing release

Official Selection: Critics’ Week, Cannes Film Festival

Now playing at
Quad Cinema in New York City
Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles

WOMEN OF THE VENEZUELAN CHAOS
(Margarita Cadenas, Venezuela/France, 2017, 83 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)

Embodying strength and stoicism, five Venezuelan women from diverse backgrounds each draw a portrait of their country as it suffers under the worst crisis in its history amid extreme food and medicine shortages, a broken justice system, and widespread fear. The women share what life is really like for them and their families as the truth of the country’s difficulties are repeatedly denied by the government. Featuring stunning visuals and creative soundscapes, Women of the Venezuelan Chaos presents a uniquely beautiful country and people, who remain resilient and resourceful despite the immense challenges they face.

Friday, June 15, 9:15pm — IFC Center
Screening followed by discussion with filmmaker Margarita Cadenas and Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Senior Americas Researcher, HRW

Saturday, June 16, 3:30pm — Film Society of Lincoln Center
Screening followed by discussion with filmmaker Margarita Cadenas and Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Senior Americas Researcher, HRW
 

VOICES OF THE SEA
(Kim Hopkins, USA/Cuba, 2018, 99 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)

In this tiny, remote Cuban fishing village, Mariela, a mother of four young children, longs for a better life. The families in her village are utterly dependent on the day’s catch, which changes with the tide. The shops are empty, school is repeatedly shut down due to a lack of resources, and basic transportation is non-existent. With the relationship between the US and Cuba in flux, Mariela, like many Cubans, is afraid that her only chance to escape to the US will soon close. Her husband, Pita, loves his community, cherishes his friendships, and is loyal to his craft as a fisherman. The tension between husband and wife—one desperate to leave, the other content to stay—builds further after her brother and neighbors flee the country, risking their lives to chase the American Dream.

June 15, 6:30pm — Film Society of Lincoln Center
Screening followed by discussion with filmmaker Kim Hopkins

June 17, 8:45pm — IFC Center
Screening followed by discussion with filmmaker Kim Hopkins

En el Séptimo Día (On the Seventh Day) is a fiction feature from director Jim McKay (Girls Town, Our Song, Everyday People) which follows a group of undocumented immigrants living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn over the course of seven days. 

Bicycle delivery guys, construction workers, dishwashers, deli workers, and cotton candy vendors, they work long hours six days a week and then savor their day of rest on Sundays on the soccer fields of Sunset Park. José, a bicycle delivery worker, is the team's captain - young, talented, hardworking and responsible. When José's team makes it to the finals, he and his teammates are thrilled. But his boss throws a wrench into the celebration when he tells José he has to work on Sunday, the day of the finals. José tries to reason with his boss or replace himself, but his efforts fail. If he doesn't work on Sunday, his job and his future will be on the line. But if he doesn't stand up for himself and his teammates, his dignity will be crushed. 

Shot in the neighborhoods of Sunset Park, Park Slope, and Gowanus, En el Séptimo Día is a humane, sensitive, and humorous window into a world rarely seen. The film’s impact is made quietly, with restraint and respect for the individual experiences, everyday challenges, and small triumphs of its characters. 

Now playing at
IFC Center in New York City
The Roxie in San Francisco

A film by Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato
(Argentina/Chile, 2017, 78 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)

54-year-old Teresa has worked for decades as a live-in maid with a family in Buenos Aires. When the family sells the house, she is forced to take a job in the distant town of San Juan. Although feeling uncomfortable with traveling, she embarks on a journey through the desert. During her first stop, in the land of the miraculous “Saint Correa”, she loses her bag with all her belongings. This unexpected incident leads her to cross paths with El Gringo, a traveling salesman and the only person who can help Teresa find her bag. What seemed like the end of her world will ultimately prove her salvation.

Now Playing!

 IFC Center
323 Sixth Avenue (at West 3rd Street)
(212) 924-7771 / Buy tickets in advance

Laemmle Royal Theatre
11523 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, CA
(310) 478-3836 / Buy tickets in advance

Laemmle Playhouse 7
673 East Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA
(310) 478-3836 / Buy tickets in advance 

ZAMA
(Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/Brazil/Spain, 2017, 115 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)

Zama, an officer of the Spanish Crown born in South America, waits for a letter from the King granting him a transfer from the town in which he is stagnating, to a better place. His situation is delicate. He must ensure that nothing overshadows his transfer. He is forced to accept submissively every task entrusted to him by successive Governors who come and go as he stays behind. The years go by and the letter from the King never arrives. When Zama notices everything is lost, he joins a party of soldiers that go after a dangerous bandit.

“Beautiful, hypnotic, mysterious and elliptical”
—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Opens Friday, April 13
Film Society of Lincoln Center and IFC Center in New York City
Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago

March 21 - 25
Presented by the Hanson Film Institute
and Cinema Tropical

Established in Tucson by the UA Hanson Film Institute in 2004, Tucson Cine Mexico (TCM) is the longest-running festival of contemporary Mexican cinema in the United States, and has become a vital platform for the screening of Mexican films in this country. The festival is free and promoted bilingually, and regularly attracts a diverse audience. Since its inception, Tucson Cine Mexico has attracted more than 20,000 festival-goers and has been host to more than 40 filmmakers and industry professionals. In addition to the annual film lineup, which generally features a mix of award-winning contemporary films and documentaries, the festival encourages audience participation and education via post-screening Q&As and filmmaker panels. Tucson Cine Mexico takes place over 4-5 days each March, with occasional special event screenings at other times through the year.

Tucson Cine Mexico’s website www.tucsoncinemexico.org is the source for all festival event details and free tickets. 

Screening Information: The 2018 Tucson Cine Mexico screenings and talk will take place across four venues in Tucson including the Center for Creative Photography (1030 N Olive Rd, Tucson 85719), Fox Tucson Theatre, Harkins Tucson Spectrum 18 (5455 S Calle Santa Cruz, Tucson 85706), and the Tucson Museum of Art & Historic Block. Tickets are free and open to all. Advance tickets are now available at www.tucsoncinemexico.org. Note that tickets do not guarantee seats. Seating will be available to ticket holders on a first-come first-served basis. Patrons are encouraged to arrive early to secure seats. Subject to availability, some tickets may be available on the night.

About our sponsors: Tucson Cine Mexico 2018 acknowledges the support of the following sponsors.
Silver: Film Tucson, Topline Entertainment, Rio Nuevo, Arizona Office of Film & Digital Media. 
Bronze: La Estrella Bakery, UA College of Fine Arts, UA Department of Spanish & Portuguese, UA Office of Global Initiatives, SplitSeed Productions, Vantage West, Calle Tepa Mexican Street Grill, Guadalajara Original Grill.
WIth support from Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block, UA Institute for LGBT Studies, UA Center for Latin American Studies, UA College of Humanities, UA College of Social & Behavioral Sciences, UA Department of Gender & Women’s Studies, and Ambulante Gira de Documentales.

The third annual Neighboring Scenes, a 17-film showcase of contemporary Latin American cinema, co-presented with Cinema Tropical, is coming the Film Society of Lincoln Center, February 28-March 4.

Highlighting impressive recent productions from across the region, this selective slate of premieres exhibits the breadth of styles, techniques, and approaches employed by Latin American filmmakers today. Neighboring Scenes spans a wide geographic rang, featuring established auteurs as well as fresh talent from the international festival scene.

Opening night is the U.S. premiere of Anahí Berneri’s award-winning Alanis, an unflinching portrait of a young mother eking out a living as a prostitute in Buenos Aires. Unfolding over the course of three days, Berneri’s “quietly radical” (Variety) fifth film explores the challenges of urban life as an immigrant woman, and is anchored by Sofía Gala’s fearless performance. Closing out the weekend is the world premiere of a new restoration of Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes (1998), celebrating its 20th anniversary. Bruno Stagnaro and Adrián Caetano’s landmark film, which follows a pair of less than talented thieves, launched the New Argentine Cinema movement and has continued inspiring Latin American filmmakers for generations.

Other highlights in this year’s lineup include such festival favorites as Niles Atallah’s formally daring Rey, which won the Special Jury Prize at Rotterdam; Santiago Mitre’s political thriller The Summit, an Un Certain Regard selection from Cannes, featuring an impressive international cast; and Fellipe Barbosa’s around-the-world travelogue Gabriel and the Mountain, a two-time prizewinner at Cannes Critics’ Week. The festival also features documentaries about Mexican fishermen, showgirls of the ’70s and ’80s, and the colonialist history of Easter Island; adaptations of Dostoevsky (António, One, Two, Three) and Hans Christian Andersen (The Little Match Girl); and a number of debut features including visual artist Adrián Villar Rojas’s The Theater of Disappearance, acinematic reimagining of his acclaimed Met rooftop installation.

Organized by Carlos A. Gutiérrez and Cecilia Barrionuevo.