Wednesday,
January 6 - Saturday, January 9,
2010
New
Latin Discoveries
A
wide ranging selection of new films from South America including
Margot Benacerraf’s recently restored masterpiece and landmark
of Latin cinema, Araya. Films from Brazil, Argentina,
Venezuela and Chile are featured in this survey of contemporary
Latin cinema.
Wednesday,
January 6, 2010
Araya
– New Restored Print
dir.
Margot Benacerraf, Venezuela, 1959, 35mm, 82 mins, b/w, Spanish
w/ English subtitles
Acclaimed
as a forerunner of feminist Latina cinema, Araya was
never released theatrically in the United States and has all
but been forgotten since the initial acclaim it garnered when
it shared the Cannes International Critics Prize with Hiroshima,
Mon Amour. It’s a film of such lasting beauty, that Jean
Renoir told director Benacerraf after seeing it, "Above
all… don’t cut a single image!"
Araya,
a salt-producing peninsula in northeastern Venezuela, is one
of the most arid places on earth. For five hundred years, the
region’s salt has been exploited manually and a 17th-century
fortress built to protect against pirate raids stands as a reminder
of the days when salt was worth almost as much as gold and great
fortunes were made. Benacerraf captures the life of the salineros
and their back-breaking work in breathtaking images. The
three stories underline the harsh life of this region –
all of which vanished with the arrival of industrial
exploitation.
Thursday,
January 7, 2010
Alice’s
House (A Casa de Alice)
dir.
Chico Teixeira, Brazil , 2007, 35mm, 93 mins, Portuguese w/
English subtitles
Alice
is
in her forties and works as a manicurist in a beauty salon.
She lives in a neighborhood in the outskirts of Sao Paulo, sharing
an apartment with her mother, her husband, Lindomar, a taxi-driver
and their three sons. Drifting apart after 20 years of marriage,
neither Lindomar nor Alice expects much in the way of reconciliation.
The taxi-driver saves his sexual impulses for affairs with teenage
girls while Alice pretends not to acknowledge her husband's
infidelities. Enter Nilson, Alice’s old boyfriend from adolescence.
Alice sees in him the possibility to realize her romantic dreams,
changing the course of both her love life and finances.
Friday,
January 8,
2010
Tony
Manero – Philadelphia Premiere
dir.
Pablo Larrain, Chile, 2008, 35mm, 98 mins, Spanish w/ English
subtitles
As
Augusto Pinochet holds Chile in the grip of dictatorship, fifty-year
old Raúl Peralta is obsessed with John Travolta’s character
from Saturday Night Fever. Each weekend he imitates
his idol in a small bar on the outskirts of Santiago. Raul longs
to become a showbiz superstar, and when the national television
announces a Tony Manero impersonating contest, it seems like
he may finally have a shot at living his dreams. But as Raul
is driven to commit a series of crimes and thefts in order to
reproduce his matinee idol’s persona, his dancing partners (also
underground resistance fighters who rail against the regime)
are persecuted by the secret police.
Saturday,
January 9,
2010
Suden
dir.
Gaston Solnicki, Argentina, 2008, video, 67 mins, English, German,
Spanish, French and Italian w/ English subtitles
The
legendary composer Mauricio Kagel passed away last year at the
age of 77, but not before Gaston Solnicki made this remarkable
film, a record of Kagel’s return to his native Argentina after
an absence of almost 50 years to participate in a festival in
his honor alongside the Ensemble Suden. Concentrating on the
ten days of intensive rehearsals between the composer and the
Ensemble, Suden intimately chronicles the interaction
between a patient, detail-oriented composer forced to adjust
his high standards to less-than-ideal conditions, and dedicated
musicians struggling with difficulties imposed by the ongoing
financial crisis in Argentina.
Saturday,
January 9,
2010
The
Headless Woman (La Mujer sin Cabeza)
dir.
Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, 2009, 35mm, 87 mins, Spanish w/
English subtitles
A
mysterious and intriguing tale of a woman who may have killed
someone or something while driving on a dirt road. Dazed and
confused, she tries to piece together what happened, while her
husband systematically tries to erase her tracks. From the acclaimed
director of The Holy Girl, Lucrecia Martel’s third
feature explores the intricacies of class in a male dominated
society. An official selection of the Cannes and New York Film
Festival.
One
of the great films of the decade, Artforum. The exacting
formalism and beauty of The Headless Woman …is undeniable,
The New York Times.
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