From the film Canicula.
This week at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight continues with the New York premiere of Jose Álvarez’s Canícula. Winner of the Cinema Tropical Award for Best Documentary Director, Jose Álvarez will be present at the screening for a discussion following the screening.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center is presening the New York premiere of the Uruguayan film 3 by Pablo Stoll as part of the series ‘Film Comment Selects’. Puerto Rican thriller Los Condenados, the debut feature film by Roberto Busó-García opens next Friday, March 1 at the Quad Cinema.
And we wish the best of luck to Pablo Larraín’s No at the Oscars this Sunday. We hope Chile can take the statuette home!
‘MoMA’s DOCUMENTARY FORTNIGHT 2013’
Friday, February 22, 4pm
The Museum of Modern Art
(José Álvarez, Mexico, 2012, 65 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
In the ancient rural Totonac village of Zapotal Santa Cruz, Mexico, the inhabitants perform their daily rituals with grace, beauty, and courage. Álvarez’s film is comprised of a series of indelible moments: an awkward first dance, a lonely wash in a spring, the daily toil of ceramic makers, and young men’s first “flight” as Voladores (Bird Men) and aerialists. Canícula captures the tension between tradition and the creeping forces of modernity, and highlights the universality of that struggle.
SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN
‘SUNDAY SCHMOOZE’
Sunday, February 24, 11am
92YTribeca
(Malik Bendjelloul, Sweden, 2012, 86 min.)
Searching for Sugar Man tells the incredible true story of Rodriguez, the greatest ’70s rock icon who never was. Discovered in a Detroit bar in the late ’60s by two celebrated producers struck by his soulful melodies and prophetic lyrics, they recorded an album which they believe would secure his reputation as the greatest artist of his generation. In fact, the album bombed and the singer disappeared into obscurity amid rumors of a gruesome on-stage suicide. But a bootleg recording found its way into apartheid South Africa and over the next two decades, he became a phenomenon. The film follows the story of two South African fans who set out to find out what really happened to their hero. Their investigation leads them to a story more extraordinary than any of the existing myths about the artist known as Rodriguez. Brunch and discussion will take place before the film!
THE CONDEMNED
‘THEATRICAL RELEASE’
Opens Friday, March 1
The Quad Cinema
(Los condenados, Roberto Buso-García, Puerto Rico, 2013, 121 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Determined to restore her dying father’s reputation, Ana travels to the remote town of Rosales. Decades ago, he settled there and opened his first free clinic for cancer research. He launched an illustrious medical career-and fell in love. Ana plans to celebrate her father’s scientific and humanitarian achievements by transforming the old family mansion into a world-class museum. She will preserve his legacy, and also breathe new life into the forgotten Rosales. But the townspeople-now destitute and helpless-do not greet her warmly. Neither does the house. Director Roberto Buso-García will be present for a Q&A session after the 7:35 screening on March 1!
NO
‘THEATRICAL RELEASE’
Now Playing
Angelika Film Center & Lincoln Plaza Cinemas
(Pablo Larraín, Chile, 2012, 118 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
In this political drama, Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet is forced by international pressure to call a plebiscite on his presidency in 1988. The country will vote Yes or No to Pinochet extending his rule for another eight years. Opposition leaders for the No campaign persuade a brash young advertising executive, Rene Saavedra (Gael García Bernal), to spearhead their campaign. Against all odds, with scant resources and under scrutiny by the despot’s minions, Saavedra and his team devise an audacious plan to win the election and set Chile free from Pinochet’s oppression.
3
‘FILM COMMENT SELECTS’
Wednesday, February 27, 4:30 pm
Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
(Pablo Stoll, Uruguay, 2012, 119 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
A low-key and unexpected melancomédie from the co-director of Whisky. A middle-aged dentist with a quietly unraveling life makes repeated and poignantly ineffectual efforts to renew his relationship with his ex-wife and adolescent daughter. The two remain as oblivious to his approaches as they are to one another, caught up in their own burgeoning romantic and sexual entanglements. While setting up a refreshingly eccentric tempo through an episodic construction consisting of very brief scenes, Stoll never undercuts the pathos that gradually begins to emerge. Slight and unassuming, 3 is small but beautiful, full of wry observations and little heartbreaks.
WE ARE YOU
Saturday, February 23, 7pm
Maysles Institute
(Duda Penteado, USA, 2012, 35 min.)
The We Are You documentary examines current Latino culture through the eyes of prominent U.S.-Hispanic visual artists and educators participating in the We Are You Project and its traveling art exhibition Through interviews of various lengths, the subjects share their personal histories, their artistic visions and their sense of place in the American Experience. Not all are citizens; some were born here; others did not come on their own accord, but were children when their parents arrived as willful immigrants or refugees. Yet, each one has made or found a home in the United States and achieved personal and professional success. The documentary points out that more than 90% of Latinos in the U.S. are here legally, and contribute on a daily basis to take their rightful place in the affairs of the nation. Director Duda Penteado and several artists featured in the film will be present for a Q&A session following the film!
INOCENTE
‘ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATED DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILMS 2013’
Through February 28
The IFC Center
(Sean Fine and Andrea Nix, USA, 2012, 39 min. In English)
Inocente is an intensely personal and vibrant coming of age documentary about a young artist’s fierce determination to never surrender to the bleakness of her surroundings. Hers is not just a story of survival, but of resilience. At 15, Inocente refuses to let her dream of becoming an artist be caged by her life as an undocumented immigrant forced to live homeless for the last nine years. Color is her personal revolution and its extraordinary sweep on her canvas creates a world that looks nothing like her own dark past – a past punctuated by a father deported for domestic abuse, an alcoholic and defeated mother of four who once took her daughter by the hand to jump off a bridge together, and an endless shuffle year after year through the city’s overcrowded homeless shelters. Told entirely in her words, we come to Inocente’s story as she realizes her life is at a turning point, and for the first time, she decides to tale control of her own destiny. Inocente is both a timeless story about the transformative power of art and a timely snapshot of the new face of homelessness in America — children.
‘CARLOS REYGADAS AT NYU’
Thursday, February 28, 7pm
King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU
Conversation in Spanish
Join the King Juan Carlos Center for a conversation with Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas, Juan de Dios Vazquez and Ruben Ríos Ávila. Carlos Reygadas, born in Mexico City 1971, is known for his films: Japón (2002), Battle in Heaven (2005, Silent Light (2007) and Post Tenebras Lux (2012). Reygadas’ films explore spirituality and the sublime through the interior lives of men suffering existential crises. He has become on fo the most prominent writer-directors of modern Mexican Cinema. A reception will follow the discussion.
LA PLAYA D.C.
‘NEW VOICES IN BLACK CINEMA’
Thursday, February 28, 7pm
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, 3rd Floor
(Juan Andrés Arango Garcia, Colombia/Brazil/France, 2012, 90 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
La Playa D.C. is a coming-of-age story set in the culturally vibrant politically and socially turbulent city of Bogotá, Colombia. The film follows Tomás, a young Afro-Colombian barber’s apprentice, on a journey of self-discovery as he tries to locate Jairo, his younger brother, who has recently disappeared. Through the story of Tomás, Andrés Arango portrays the complexities of racism and identity politics in contemporary Latin American cities and produces a fresh portrait of the largely misrepresented city of Bogotá and its inhabitants.
LATINOS BEYOND REEL: CHALLEN-
GING A MEDIA STEREO-
TYPE
Saturday, February 23, 7:30 pm
Bronx Documentary Center
(Miguel Picker, USA, 2012, 75 min.)
One in six adults and one in four children in the United States are Latinos, but their reality is rarely depicted in the mainstream media. Interviews with scholars, actors, filmmakers , and a group of Latino children reveal a striking pattern: in both news and entertainment, Latinos appear overwhelmingly as gangsters, drug dealers, prostitutes, maids, sexy Latinas and welfare-leeching ‘illegals.’ Most disturbingly, even children’s games depict the killing of Mexicans. The film shows how a narrow range of misrepresentation, combined with hate speech against undocumented immigrants and Latinos, had devastating consequences for this nation as a whole. Director Miguel Picker and producers Edwin Pagan and Lorena Manriquez will be present after the screening for a Q&A session!
MAMA
‘THEATRICAL RELEASE’
Now Playing
Select Theaters
(Andres Muschietti, USA, 2013, 100 min.)
The debut film of Argentine director Andrés Muschietti, Academy Award nominee Guillermo del Toro presents Mama, a supernatural thriller that tells the haunting tale of two little girls who disappeared into the woods the day their parents were killed. When they are rescued years later and begin a new life, they find that someone or something wants to come tuck them in at night.
