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FEATURE
FILMS 2007
THE TWELVE CHAIRS (Las Doce Sillas)
7pm
Wed 14th, RENOIR
Dir: Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Cuba, 1962, 97 min, Colour.
Cast: Enrique Santiesteban, Reynaldo Miravalles, Rene Sanchez, Ana
Vinas,
Pilin Vallejo, Idalberto Delgado.
Awards:
Award of the Society of Filmmakers of the USSR presented at the
III. International Film Festival in Moscow 1963.
Following the revolution in Cuba, property
belonging to the bourgeoisie was confiscated. Hipolito learns from
his mother-in-law, on her deathbed, that she had hidden her jewels
in one of the twelve English chairs which formerly stood in the
Blue Salon of her villa. Hipolito wastes no time in going to search
for them. In the villa itself (which now serves as a retirement
home) he draws a blank. He runs into Oscar, one of his mother-in-law’s
former servants, and they join forces in their quest. Little do
they know that they have a dangerous rival, in the person of the
priest to whom his mother-in-law had confessed her secret! An outrageous
classic of Cuban cinema.
BARRIO CUBA
4.30p, Sun 11th, RENOIR
Dir: Humberto Solas, Cuba, 2005, 105 min, Colour.
Cast: Luisa Maria Jimenez, Rafael Lahera, Adela Legra, Mario Limonta,
Jorge
Perugorria, Sheila Roche, Isabel Santos.
Awards:
Cartagena Film Festival 2006
Golden India Catalina, Best Supporting Actor: Mario Limonta
Golden India Catalina, Best Supporting Actress Luisa Maria Jimenez
OCLACC Award Humberto Solas
Nominated Golden India Catalina, Best Film
The outstanding “Barrio Cuba”, the latest feature from
the great Humberto Solas (Miel para Ochun, Un hombre de Exito),
stars Isabel Santos and Mario Limonta.
Comic and tragic by turns, it navigates the complicated twists in
the relationships of three sets of characters, all living from day
to day in a poor area of Havana. Never ignoring the political, this
film is, nonetheless, a deeply moving account of the human longing
for love and meaning, in the midst of hardship. The power of dreams,
set against the realities of life, is the theme for this humane
examination of longing, disappointment and redemption. Delicate
scripting and wonderfully observed performances make for a luminous
film which explores the darkest depths of experience, as well as
its most sublime heights.
IMITATION
4pm, Sat 17th, MAYFAIR
Dir: Federico Hidalgo, Canada, 2006, 87 min, Colour.
Cast: Vanessa Bouche, Jesse Aaron Dwyre, Conrad Pla, Paulina Abarca,
Cory
Bertrand. Garth Gilker, Paula Jean Hixson.
Teresa, a sorrowful Mexican girl, played by stunning actress Vanessa
Bouche of “Amores Perros” fame, is pursuing a man. The
only thing we know about him is his name: Angel. In the course of
her quest, she happens upon Fenton, a grocery store shelf filler
who finds himself attracted to the mysterious and lonely Teresa.
By way of subterfuge he manages to persuade her that he can help
her to find the elusive Angel.
This charming couple embark on their determined search, right across
the city of Montreal coming across strange characters offering contradictory
information that complicates the narrative with comic and tragic
divertions. On this way, the past starts to come to light in a confused
and ambiguous way, with Teresa’s obstinate secret creating
strain and uncertainty until the very last minute.
BELOVED (Amada)
6.30pm, Mon 12th, RENOIR
Dir: Humberto Solas, Cuba, 1982, 113 min, Colour.
Cast: Eslinda Nunez, Cesar Evora, Silvia Planas, Andres Hernandez,
Oneida
Hernandez, Gerardo Riveron.
Havana 1914. After the death of her wealthy father, a former slave
trader, Amada is now trapped in a loveless marriage with her unfaithful
husband Dionisio, sharing the family villa with her blind mother
and an old servant. Temptation arrives in the form of her younger
cousin, Marcial, a journalist devoted to the cause of freedom and
social justice. This meeting, after many years, stirs deep passions
within her and she dreams of running away with him to start a new
life.
Dionisio forces his mother-in-law to terminate the leases of the
native tenants and to sell lock, stock and barrel to American interests.
He argues that only by so doing can she hope to maintain her lifestyle.
Thus, both sexual and political tensions boil over as the desperate,
dispossessed farmers stage a hunger strike and march on the villa.
A MAN OF SUCCESS
6.30pm, Tue 13th, RENOIR
Dir. Humberto Solas; Cuba/Spain; 1986; 104 min; Colour and Black
and White.
Cast: Cesar Evora, Raquel Revuelta, Daisy Granados, Jorge Trinchet,
Mabel Roch, Carlos Cruz, Miguel Navarro, Omar Valdez, Angel Torano,
Angel Espasande.
Awards:
1988 Goya Awards: Nominated: Best Foreign Spanish
Film
1986 Havana Film Festival: Best Production Design
1986 Havana Film Festival: Grand Coral First Prize
1987 Moscow International Film Festival: Golden Prize
The culture and politics of Cuba in the era spanning 1929 to 1959
is brought vividly to life through the story of two brothers from
one of
Cuba’s wealthiest families and the differing paths they choose
to take.
Dario Arguelles, one of two sons on whom the future of the family
rests, remains faithful to his socialist-revolutionary ideals. He
fights in the
Spanish Civil War with the International Brigades and later becomes
editor of a left wing newspaper. Javier, also a Leftist in his youth,
cynically plays the political field and becomes an unscrupulous
and self-serving Senator. The scene is set for a fatal collision
of ideologies and ideals between the two sides of the family, a
metaphor for the wider tragedy which is to grip Cuban society and
which is only, finally, resolved, by the success of the Revolution.
UPA! AN ARGENTINIAN FILM
(Upa! Una Pelicula Argentina)
9pm, Sat 10th, RENOIR
Dir: Tamae Garateguy, Santiago Giralt, Camila Toker, Argentina,
2007; 97 min, Colour and Black and White.
Cast: Tamae Garateguy, Santiago Giralt, Camila Toker, Hildeunn Waerness,
Florencia Braier, Silvina Acosta, Daniel Fanego, Gloria Carra, Hector
Diaz.
Awards:
International and Independent Film Festival Buenos Aires,
Argentina 2007:
Best Film BAFICI 2007, Best Film ACCA 2007
Tandil Cine 2007: Best Film, Best Actress, Best Actor.
Upa! is the story of three young Argentinean filmmakers who are
handed the opportunity to make their debut feature with the aid
of development money from a Norwegian film festival. Their delight
soon starts to fade, however, as the problems and compromises inherent
in the production start to mount up.
This is a very funny and savagely self-reflexive satire on conditions
within the New Argentine Cinema, as well as the Argentinean artistic
class, more generally, still in thrall, as it is, to European culture.
Classic Scandinavian cinema and the French New Wave are pastiched
throughout and the whole thing is strung together with a lively
Post-Dogme visual style.
Though self-conscious and clever, Upa! is saved from merely laughing
up its own sleeve by an astringent script and genuinely engaging
performances by its youthful leads. An assured, richly woven first
feature from directors Tamae Garateguy, Santiago Giralt, Camila
Toker and a really rewarding watch.
THE AERIAL (La Antena)
9pm, Fri 9th, RENOIR
Dir: Esteban Sapir, Argentina, 2007, 90 min, Black and White.
Cast: Valeria Bertuccelli, Alejandro Urdapilleta, Julieta Cardinali,
Rafael Ferro, Florencia Raggi, Sol Moreno, Jonathan Sandor, Ricardo
Merkin, Raul Hochman.
Esteban Sapir’s ravishing second feature draws upon the imagery
of the silent film, particularly German Expressionism, to satirise
(like Pabst and Murnau before him) a society in the grip of madness.
Through its wonderful art direction and cinematography it conjures
up the dark atmosphere of The City Without a Voice, patrolled by
nightmare visions and firmly in the thrall of “Mr. TV”;
a plutocrat whose aim is to control every aspect of the citizen’s
lives by creating a totalitarian, consumer society. To head off
the growing revolt against him, Mr. TV creates a distraction by
kidnapping a beautiful singer (the possessor of the last dissident
voice in The City).
Although it possesses the narrative force of a classic fairytale,
“The Ariel”, nevertheless; integrates, beautifully,
a range of highly filmic
ideas and conventions Lighting, camerawork cutting non-diegetic
text are all deployed in a masterful display of style and technique.
The result is the evocation of an utterly compelling fictional world,
a dystopia which will be uncomfortably familiar to any audience:
but here the possibilities of revolt are explored, too, through
witty, knowing and optimistic filmmaking.
CITIES AND LOVE (El Amor y La Ciudad)
9pm, Tues 13th, RENOIR
Dir: Teresa Costantini, Argentina, 2005, 104 min, Colour
Cast: Patrick Bauchau, Teresa Costantini, Adrian Navarro, Jean Pierre
Noher, Vera Carnevale, Joan Pierre Reguerraz, Jose Palomino Cortez,
Claudia Lapaco.
Youth and age, attachment, abandonment, past, present, wealth and
poverty, desire, frustration, the fictional and the real world,
Buenos Aires and Paris. The mass of binary oppositions is focussed
in upon a microcosm; the small world of a shared apartment in an
eerie and desolated version of Buenos Aires.
Juana shares a flat with Elisa and Elisa’s lover Sebastian
(younger than she) who deals in antique books. As Elisa’s
frustration about her life and her relationship mounts, there is
a mysterious phone call from a man in Paris and, shortly afterwards,
Elisa vanishes without a trace. Thus abandoned, Sebastian turns
to a relationship with the vulnerable, young Juana, a struggling
artist.
Teresa Costantini stars and directs in this, the second of her films
to be screened at the London Latin American Film Festival. It is an elegiac
waltz
through The City with its piled up edifices, secrets hidden behind
closed doors, its amalgam of dynamism and alienation.
The characters, always deeply lonely, play around with one another,
failing to understand that their yearnings are not real and that
the real emptiness resides within themselves.
FOREIGNER (Extranjera)
6.30pm, Sat 17th, MAYFAIR
Dir: Ines de Oliveira Cezar, Argentina, 2006/7, 80 min, Colour.
Cast: Carlos Portaluppi, Agustina Munoz, Eva Bianco, Aymara Rovera,
Agustin Rittano, Maciej Robakiewicz, Agustin Ponce.
In the middle of a vast, drought-stricken region of the Argentinean
badlands a man has decided that the only way to bring the rains
and save
the town is to sacrifice his daughter.
This extraordinary tale, half Greek tragedy half political parable,
is played out over the course of a single day, with an intense and
unblinking
examination of the emotions and reactions of the small cast of characters,
an inexorable narrative drive leavened by the use of multiple points
of
view.
The desert itself is integrated into the story, almost as a character
in its own right. The vast, primal landscape of stony wilderness
and the
animals that inhabit it are brought into vivid focus through a combination
of brilliant cinematography and editor Ana Poliak’s intelligent
montage.
The film thus produces a beautiful, yet implacable, backdrop to
the human drama, as it unfolds, raising profound questions over
the aesthetics of violence and the inescapable nature of suffering.
The inherent fatalism of the narrative, however, does not preclude
the possibility of renewal arising from destruction and this timeless
story ends by holding out hope for the future of humankind.
THE TOAST (El Brindis)
7pm, Fri 9th, RENOIR
Dir: Shai Agosin, Chile/ Mexico, 2007, 100 min. Colour.
Cast: Ana Serradilla, Pepe Soriano, Francisco Melo, Teresita Reyes,
Pablo Krogh, Alejandro Trejo, Jenny Cavallo.
The Toast tells the story of a Mexican woman who after many years
of separation from her old Chilean father receives an invitation
to visit him and his new family in Chile. In the course of this
journey, she meets and starts an illicit relationship with the rabbi
who is on his way to prepare her father for his (very late in life)
Bar Mitzvah. The charming quirkiness of the story belies the emotional
depth of a film which digs deep into the tangled relationships of
three disparate characters in Search of meaning at critical turning
points in their lives.
DANCEFLOOR CABALLEROS
7pm, Sat 10th, RENOIR
Dir: Dirk Boll, Brazil, 2006, 99 min, Colour.
Cast: Joyvan Guevara, Joel Antonio Dieguez, Jack Attack, Adrian
Monzon, Michel Matos, Lazaro Gonzales, Carlos Hernandez, Melvin
Rocco, Abel Aguila.
Nearly fifty years on from the Revolution, a new literacy campaign
is setting out from the capital. Havana’s DJ-Guerrilleros
aim to spread the word to the rest of the island… about electronic
dance music. Seventeen people have gathered together to help carry
out this noble mission: but where’s the bus?
XXY
9pm, Mon 12th, RENOIR
Dir: Lucia Puenzo, Argentina/ France/Spain, 2007, 86 min, Colour.
Cast: Ricardo Darin, Valeria Bertuccelli, German Palacions, Carolina
Pelleritti, Martin Piroyansky, Ines Efron, Guillermo Angelelli,
Cesar Troncoso, Jean Pierre Reguerraz
Awards:
Bangkok International Film Festival 2007: Golden Kinnaree
Award: Best Picture
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2007: New Director’s
Award
Hitting puberty is never a stroll in the park but Alex faces a personal
dilemma that surpasses most sources of teenage angst. Is she to
be male, or female? This is, ostensibly, a sensationalist theme
but Lucia Puenzo's film explores a subject which is little discussed;
mainstream society’s attitude to the millions of inter-sex
children born every year and the choices which face them and their
parents as they grow up. Acute performances (especially by the younger
cast members) are complemented by an admirably stripped - down visual
style which allows the characters to externalise their complex emotions,
around identity and sexuality, through minimal dialogue (a trick
often missed in cinema). The film passes through melodrama to a
more lyrical portrayal of the openness and tolerance of youth, in
contrast to the already crystallised attitudes of the adults who
attempt to map their own insecurities and concerns over status onto
the lives of their children.
DOCUMENTARIES
WITH OR WITHOUT FIDEL
5.30pm, Sat 10th, RENOIR
Dir: Ishmahil Blagrove, UK, 2007, 58
min, Colour.
Rice N Peas, acclaimed producers of Hasta Siempre tackle, head on,
the “elephant in the room” of London Latin American politics:
what happens after Castro? Anyone who assumes that Cuba is ripe for
the development of Western style representational government, should
see this documentary. Given the rocketing social inequity in other
countries which have joined the “free world” in recent
years, it seems the sacrifices made by the Cuban people and the hard-won
gains in social capital, education, health, will not lightly be brushed
to one side. Required viewing.
RAIMUNDA, THE QUEBRADEIRA
9pm, Wed 14th, RENOIR
Dir: Marcelo Silva, Brazil, 2007, 52 min, Colour.
Widely despised for their poverty, their reliance on subsistence farming
and, not least, for their sex, the female “nut breakers”
of lawless Bico of
Papagayo, in Brazil, are fighting for a fair distribution of land
in the face of the powerful landowning and corporate interests surrounding
them. Central to the struggle is 60 year old Raimunda who is helping
to unite the women despite the problems of illiteracy and ignorance
she has to overcome on a daily basis.
CHE GUEVARA AS YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN HIM
BEFORE
9pm, Thurs 15th, RENOIR
Dir: Manuel Perez, Cuba, 2006, 52 min, Black & White.
This detailed and fascinating documentary takes a long, hard look
at the life of a man who became an icon. Ernesto Rafael Guevara de
la Serna was born in Argentina to middle-class, liberal, parents.
He was studying medicine at the University of Cordoba when he embarked
on his famous motorcycle odyssey through South America.
After completing his medical studies and witnessing the CIA putsch
in Guatemala, Che ended up in Mexico, in 1955, where he met Fidel
Castro. By July 1957, he had become second in command of the rebel
army and, the next year, took the town of Santa Clara, which victory
cleared the path of the revolution to Havana. In 1959 he became Minister
of Industry, responsible for tackling the shortages of machinery and
spare parts resulting from the USA’s trade embargo.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I WANT TO LIVE
6.30pm, Fri 16th, MAYFAIR
Dir: Muriel Brener, France, 2006, 80 min, Colour.
The Cyrulnik conception of resilience holds that any child, however
badly damaged by their early life, can grow into a happy and fulfilled
adult, once they find themselves in a loving and supportive environment.
Muriel Brener’s film is an uplifting insight into the lives
of three such people, Hugo, Gustavo and Delia, living under the aegis
of NGO “Enda Bolivia” in the El Alto district (the poorest
in La Paz). Observing, in an impressionistic style, their everyday
activities in Enda Bolivia and hearing them in interviews describing,
with enormous wit and generosity, the pain and endurance of their
early lives, one is left with a powerful impression of the human capacity
to heal and grow even in conditions of the utmost cruelty and inequity.
M
1.30pm, Sun 11th, RENOIR
Dir: Nicolas Prividera, Argentina, 2007, 150 min, Colour and Black
& White.
In his first feature-length documentary, director Nicolas Prividera
bravely revisits the Montoneros guerrilla movement in Argentina and
the subsequent massacre of the “disappeared” (among whom
is numbered Prividera’s own mother).
This is a hugely important film about the period which is still nigh
on impossible to talk about, yet which represents a gaping open wound
in
Argentinean society to this day. It is part of the ever growing chorus
of voices calling for these appalling crimes to be uncovered, finally,
and
faced up to and for the victims to be honoured.
M is for Mama, for Muerte for Montoneros and for Memory.
MADE IN JAMAICA
6.30pm, Thurs 15th, RENOIR
Dir: Jerome Laperrousaz, France/USA, 2006, 90 min, Colour.
This is the long awaited and hugely ambitious feature documentary
from Jerome Laperrousaz which charts the rise of Reggae from its humble
beginnings to the massive international, cultural force it is today.
An unprecedented array of interview material from the Roots aristocracy
(Gregory Isaacs, Bunny Wailer, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare,
to mention just a few) is underscored by a throbbing, classic soundtrack.
The film also comes up to date with the Dancehall artistes who are
continuing to transform the genre with an amalgam of social commentary
and blistering sexuality.
The film itself is a visual feast, taking in the variety and beauty
of the island of Jamaica and its people from Kingston to the Blue
Mountains. For all fans of the Music, this is the biggest party in
town.
HORTS
END
THE GAME
6.30pm, Fri 16th, MAYFAIR
Dir: Nestor Dennis, Spain, 2007, 4
min, Colour.
A terrorist of the airwaves sets a double trap; for a TV producer
and for the police snatch squad on his tail.
LOLA
9pm, Wed 14th, RENOIR
Dir: Betty Marisol Garcia, USA/ Dominican Republic/ Chile, 2007,
15 min, Colour.
The adventures of a young immigrant woman seeking her very own version
of the American Dream, in New York.
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