NY ESSENTIALS : CINEMA > SPRING 2013
De aqui a comienzos de Mayo tendremos las carteleras ocupadas con varios festivales de cine y algunos estrenos relevantes. Veamos:
LO NUEVO EN CARTELERA
* NEW DIRECTORS / NEW FILMS > Marzo 20 al 27 > NDNF.
The Festival New Directors / New Films is dedicated to the discovery of new works by emerging filmmaking talent. For this edition the festival presents 25 features (19 narrative, 6 documentary) and 17 short films representing 24 countries – all having their New York City premieres. And relevant Latino filmmaking, of course!: Matías Peñeiro's Viola; Jazmin Lopez's Leones; Marcelo Lordello's THEY’LL COME BACK; Eryk Rocha's JARDS, plus films from Italy and France and shorts from Mexico, Colombia, Spain and Brazil.
Read our article about the Festival New Directors / New Films > NDNF.
* BLANCANIEVES. Directed by Pablo Berger > En Cartelera Marzo 29 > Varios Teatros. 
Set in a romanticized 1920s Seville, Berger's Snow White is Carmen (Macarena García), the daughter of a famous bull fighter, who lives under the tyrannical rule of her monstrous, evil stepmother, Encarna (Maribel Verdú). She escapes and joins a troupe of bullfighting dwarves, where her beauty and natural talent in the ring attract notices from the press. But soon the news reaches Encarna, who at last she knows where to find Carmen, and she prepares for the final showdown.
Watch our interview with director Pablo Berger > TespisTV.
* THE GIRL > Directed by David Riker > En Cartelera > Varios Teatros > Girl.
More than a decade after bursting onto the scene with his acclaimed debut feature The City (La Ciudad)—a quartet of stories about Spanish-speaking immigrants trying to make it in New York—director David Riker travels south of the border for his long-awaited follow-up, The Girl. In a performance of staggering power, Abbie Cornish (Bright Star, SevenPsychopaths) stars as Ashley, a single Austin mother and recovering alcoholic trying to hold her life together after losing custody of her son and her job at a Wal Mart-esque big box store. Desperate for cash, Ashley offers her services as a “coyote” for a Mexican family trying to cross the border illegally. But when the attempted crossing ends in tragedy, Ashley finds herself playing surrogate mother to a lost and confused young girl desperate to find whatever family she has left. The harrowing, moving and ultimately hopeful journey that ensues takes us deep into the heart of Mexico, and of a woman trying to make amends for her troubled past.
* NO. Directed by Pablo Larrain > Nominada al Oscar como Mejor Película Extranjera > Varios Teatros. 
In 1988, Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, due to international pressure, is forced to call a plebiscite on his presidency. The country will vote YES or NO to Pinochet extending his rule for another eight years. Opposition leaders for the NO persuade a brash young advertising executive, Rene Saavedra (Gael Garcia 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.
Watch director Pablo Larraín speaking about NO > TespisTV.
* SAVING LINCOLN. Directed by Salvador Litvak > Varios Teatros. 
Based on true events, SAVING LINCOLN tells the little-known story of our 16th President (whose life, and death, is currently generating a plethora of films, television and book projects), through the eyes of his long-time friend and law partner from 1852 to 1857 colleague, Ward Hill Lamon. Lamon, a Southerner, was a banjo-player, singer, and pistol-packing jokester who appointed himself Lincoln’s bodyguard after the first assassination attempt in 1861, and who foiled repeated attempts on the President's life throughout their four years in Washington. Despite some pronounced differences between the two men, they shared a fondness for telling jokes and stories, and both felt slavery should be eliminated. Lamon often served as Lincoln's private confidant, and kept him functioning during the darkest hours of the Civil War. Lincoln was never far from him – save that fateful night at
Ford’s Theatre when Lamon was sent by the President on a Reconstruction mission to Richmond.
This unique feature film was shot entirely on a single green screen stage and composited into vintage photographs of the Civil War era. As Director Litvak says, “I borrowed techniques from painting, photography, animation, stereoscopy, and VFX compositing to create a style I call CineCollage.
* MARIACHI GRINGO > En Cartelera > Jackson Heights Cinema. (Tom Gustafson, USA/Mexico, 2012, 95 min.)
A stifled small-town man, stuck in a dead end life runs away to Mexico to be a mariachi singer. Mariachi Gringo is a musical tour-de-force exploring the reality of "following your dreams" across cultural, personal, social and geographical borders. Featuring Martha Higareda and Lila Downs.
* EVERYBODY HAS A PLAN > En Cartelera > Angelika Film Center and AMC Empire 25.
(Todos tenemos un plan, Ana Piterbarg, Argentina/Spain, 2012, 117 min. In Spanish with English subtitles).
In this dazzling thriller from first-time filmmaker Ana Piterbarg, Viggo Mortensen (in his third Spanish-language film) stars as twin brothers whose deadly pact plunges them into the sordid depths of the Argentinean underworld. Everybody Has a Plan tells the story of Agustín, a man desperate to abandon his frustrating existence in Buenos Aires. After the death of his two brother Pedro, Agustín decides to adopt the identity of his brother and return to the mysterious region of Argentina where they lived as boys. But shortly after his return, Agustín fins himself unwillingly involved in the dangerous criminal world that was a part of his brother's life.
* BLESS ME, ULTIMA > En Cartelera Marzo 27 > AMC Loews Village 7. (Carl Franklin, USA, 2012, 104 min. In Spanish and English with English subtitles).
Based on the controversial novel by acclaimed author Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima is a turbulent coming-of-age story about Antonio Marez (Luke Ganalon), a young boy growing up in New Mexico during World War II. When a mysterious curandera named Ultima (Miriam Colon) comes to live with his family, she teaches him about the power of the spiritual world. As their relationship grows, Antonio begins to question the strict Catholic doctrine that has been taught by his parents. Through a series of mysterious and at times terrifying events, Antonio must grapple with questions about the relationship between good and evil and ultimately how to reconcile Ultima’s powers with those of the God of his church.
* Epic Encounters: Flaherty NYC at 92Y TRIBECA > Ongoing > Epic. 
Some things in life fall away into a forgotten chasm, relegated to imperfect human memories, tucked away in a remote abyss where you will probably never hear from them again.
Film often reverses the course of events, giving these things a place in our history. This program focuses specifically on the ability of film to shed light on those spots that might otherwise be lost forever. The selected films deal with episodes of a nebulous past, with activities that are not usually represented, with fractured spaces and finally, with the frailty of memory. Filmmakers, videographers, professionals and amateurs from Latin America, Spain and the US help create a bridge between what is seemingly irrelevant and what takes on significance. This show features a Hi-8 home video, an underground scream, a fading memory, an unknown story, a rehearsal and a rarely seen film.
* VIOLETA WENT TO HEAVEN > En Cartelera Marzo 29 > The Quad Cinema. (Violeta se fue a los cielos, Andrés Wood, Chile, 2011, 110 min., In Spanish with English subtitles)
The extraordinary story of the iconic poet, musician and folksinger Violeta Parra, whose songs have become hymns for Chileans and Latin Americans alike. Director Andrés wood (Machuca) traces the intensity and explosive vitality of her life, from humble origins to international fame, her defense of indigenous cultures and her devotion to art.
* The Place Beyond the Pines > con Eva Mendes > En Cartelera Marzo 29 > Varios Teatros.
A motorcycle stunt rider turns to robbing banks as a way to provide for his lover and their newborn child, a decision that puts him on a collision course with an ambitious rookie cop navigating a department ruled by a corrupt detective.
* WAR WITCH. Directed by Kim Nguyen > Varios Teatros. 
WAR WITCH tells the story of Komona, a young girl whose life is anything but normal. Kidnapped by African rebels at the age of 12, Komona was forced at gunpoint to slaughter her own parents and fight as a child soldier against the government in the jungles. But Komona was no ordinary solider. Due to her ability to see gray ghosts in the trees that warn her of approaching enemies, she was deemed a sorceress and bestowed the title of War Witch by the supreme leader of the rebels, Great Tiger. War Witch exudes visceral energy and emotional power as Komona’s journey ultimately finds her in love with a fellow child soldier named Magician, but pregnant with another man’s child. Saddled with the reality that a life of normalcy is forever beyond her grasp, Komona must find a way to resolve the actions of her past. WAR WITCH is Canada’s submission to the 2012 Academy Awards, an Indepdenent Spirit Award Nominee, was named one of the National Board of Review’s 5 Best Foreign Lanuage Films of 2012.
* Brazilian Saga: Carlos Diegues’ Cinematic Adventures > Abril 12 -18 > Film Society Lincoln Center > Diegues.
Carlos Diegues was a pioneer of the revolutionary Cinema Novo movement, which made film an integral part of the cultural and sociopolitical struggles facing Brazil in the 1960s. Diegues’ now-iconic films had a historical emphasis but were conceptually groundbreaking and were among the first to bring Afro-Brazilian culture to life on film. We are proud to present this comprehensive survey of his work. Carlos Diegues in person!
Watch our interview with Zezé Motta, the original Xica Da Silva! > Xica on TespisTV.
* 14th Havana New York Film Festival > Abril 12 - 19 > HNYFF.
El 14vo. HAVANA FILM FESTIVAL NEW YORK (HFFNY) se llevará a cabo del 12 al 19 de abril, presentando más de 45 películas de América Latina, el Caribe y de latinos en otros lugares del mundo; los países participantes son: Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Republica Dominicana, Ecuador, España, Guatemala, México, Puerto Rico, Venezuela y Estados Unidos.
Películas que van de una variedad de géneros y temas, desde comedia, suspenso, acción, drama, historias infantiles y documentales así como filmes de y sobre los pueblos indígenas de Guatemala, Colombia y México. 19 Películas Competirán por el Havana Star Prize.
* 29th Chicago Latino Film Festival > Abril 11 - 25 > CLFF.
The Chicago Latino Film Festival is the largest and oldest Latino film festival in the nation, and presents over 100 films of cultural and social significance from Latin America, Spain, Portugal and the U.S.
* 12th Tribeca Film Festival > Abril 17 - 28. Varuos Teatros > TFF.
The Festival’s mission is to help filmmakers reach the broadest possible audience, enable the international film community and general public to experience the power of cinema and promote New York City as a major filmmaking center. Tribeca Film Festival is well known for being a diverse international film festival that supports emerging and established directors. This year we have little Latino presence with Reaching for the Moon (Flores Raras), directed by Bruno Barreto from Brazil.
* Gypsy Davy. Directed by Rachel Leah Jones (2012) Abril 23 > The JCC Manhattan.
When an American white boy with Alabama roots becomes a Spanish flamenco guitarist in Andalucian boots, what happens along the way and behind the scenes? Gypsy Davy tells the story of David Jones, stage name: "David Serva," through his five women and five children—one of whom is the director. After all, who knows the man who came and saw and conquered, “strumming their pain with his fingers,” better than they? Part duel and part duet—between a guitar-wielding father and a camera-pointing daughter—Gypsy Davy is a personal and political portrait of a man, a family, a generation. Shot over a ten-year period in five countries across three continents, and featuring some of the finest “old-school” Gypsy Flamenco artists: Inés Bàcan, Concha Vagas, Miguel Funi, as well as some of the hottest names in American and Spanish alternative rock: Counting Crows and La Shica, not to mention a title song made famous by Woody Guthrie, Gypsy Davy is much more than another hunt-down-the-absent-father movie, it’s a home-made epic.
* The Mexican Suitcase (La Valija Mexicana). Directed by Trisha Ziff (2011). Mayo 3. In collaboration with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) > Casa Mezcal.
The Mexican Suitcase tells the story of the recovery of 4,500 negatives taken by photographers Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and David Seymour during the Spanish Civil War. The film follows the journey of these negatives to Mexico – images as exiles, recovered seventy years later. The Mexican Suitcase brings together three narratives: the suitcase, the exile story, and looks at how people in Spain today address their own past, 30 years after transition. The Mexican Suitcase addresses the power of memory and asks who owns our histories?.
* Voyage to Italy. Directed by Roberto Rossellini > Mayo 1 al 9 > Film Forum.
* Madrid, 1987. Directed by David Trueba (2012).
Spectacle Theater. Junio, 2013 (Exact Date TBD).
José Sacristán and María Valverde shine in David Trueba’s intelligent, witty, and sensual new film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to great acclaim. On a hot summer day in a vacant Madrid during a period of social and political transition in Spain, Miguel, a feared and respected journalist, sets up a meeting in a café with Ángela, a young journalism student. He takes her to a friend's studio. His intentions are clearly sexual; hers are less clear. Chance events force them together for more time than they would have chosen, locked in a bathroom, naked, without the possibility of escape. Removed from the outside world, the pair, who represents polarized generations, is pitted in an unevenly matched duel involving age, intellect, ambition and experience. The political and social context of the period provides the background to the power shifts that continually take place between them over twenty-four hours.
Y más por venir: La última de Almodóvar, Los amantes pasajeros (I'm so excited) is coming soon; la última de Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity; también las esperadas: Chávez, Pacific Rim, Turbo, Sin City, Elysium, Star Trek, Fast and Furious, Getaway, The Counselor, La danza de la realidad, La contadora de películas, Europa Report y 33 días.
Para más información de cine, visita nuestro artítulo reciente > CINE LATINO SOMEWHERE NEAR YOU! > http://goo.gl/fb/OZcJd.
LATINOS POR UN OSCAR
Por su parte, The Impossible de Juan Antonio Bayona consigue una nominación para Naomi Watts como Mejor Actríz.
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Bayona acaba de conseguir el Goya español como Mejor Director por esta película. Toda la suerte para Searching For Sugar Man y su nominación a Documentary Feature. Todos celebramos el re-descubrimiento de Sugar Man Rodríguez (foto).
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PABLO LARRAIN NOS HABLA DE 'NO'
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Pablo Larraín at the New York Film Festival. Photo by Alex Guerrero®2012
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Venezuela was heading to the polls soon after our encounter. Chileans got rid of Pinochet. Venezuela has no president but a signature. The reelected Chávez has not been seen in 2 months. It will be an oversimplification to think that only one element, the NO ad campaign, was the reason a dictator fell. Grassroots community organization was key as well just to name these two. It was a concerted effort by a nation to move forward. That is what it takes.
Opposition leaders for the NO persuade a brash young advertising executive, Rene Saavedra (Gael Garcia 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.
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#CINE : 'NO' de PABLO LARRAIN LLEGA A CARTELERA
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CINE LATINO EN EL 50TH NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
Richard Peña nos presenta un Cine Latino rico, variado y en vigorosa expansión en la edición 50 del Festival de Cine de Nueva York. Ese vigor que se siente y se ve en cada película nos habla de una nueva 'confidence' de los creadores latinos que los hace más audaces, a explorar más el medio y a cimentar una presencia cada día más reconocida a nivel mundial.
* NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET (La Noche de enfrente) (2012) 107min
Director: Raul Ruiz
Country: France/Chile
October 7.
In August 2011, the cinema sadly lost one of its most magical artists, director Raul Ruiz—but, happily, not before he left us with one final masterpiece. Returning to his native Chile, Ruiz introduces us here to Don Celso, a bespectacled office worker heading into retirement.
After an evening’s poetry class, Celso starts to narrate several tales from his childhood to his teacher, guiding the audience both within and outside the film through various levels of reality that mix the private and the public, the historical and the mythic, the here and the beyond. The journey is, of course, full of Ruizian flights of visual and verbal wit, where resonances between words and images form connections that at times defy traditional storytelling. NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET is both a moving meditation on one man’s mortality as well as an insightful summation of an artist’s brilliant career. A Cinema Guild release. Ruiz will also have his work presented during NYFF’s soon-to-be-announced Views From the Avant-Garde schedule.
* NO (2012) 110min
Director: Pablo Larrain
Country: Chile/USA/Mexico
October 12, 13.
In 1988, in an effort to extend and legitimize its rule, the Pinochet military junta announced it would hold a plebiscite to get the people’s permission to stay in power. Despite being given 15 minutes a day to plead its case on television, the anti-Pinochet opposition was divided and without a clear message.
Enter Rene Saavedra (an excellent Gael Garcia Bernal), an ad man who, after a career pushing soft drinks and soap, sets out to sell Chileans on democracy and freedom. Winner of the top prize in this year’s Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, NO is little short of a miracle: shooting on U-matic video tape to give the film the look of the Eighties, filmmaker Pablo Larrain (TONY MANERO, POST MORTEM) has created a smart, funny and totally engrossing political thriller with a powerful resonance for our times.
* THE DEAD MAN AND BEING HAPPY (El muerto y ser feliz) (2012) 94min
Director: Javier Rebello
Country: Spain/Argentina
October 11, 14.
It is a journey that takes him through an interior Argentina rarely glimpsed in movies, from the Cordoba resort town of La Cumbrecita (with its disproportionate—and disconcerting—population of elderly Germans) to the northern province of Santiago del Estero. Along the way, Santos finds himself joined by Alejandra (the wonderful Roxana Blanco), an attractive middle-aged woman who impulsively jumps into his vintage Ford Falcon at a gas station and soon thwarts him from his intended path. At one point, our curious couple stops off at a decrepit beach town described by one of the film’s dueling voice-over narrators as “a strange mix of paradise and apocalypse”—which, as it happens, also perfectly sums up Rebollo’s playful and unexpectedly moving reverie on love, death and the open highway.
* HERE AND THERE (Aquí y Allá) (2012) 110min
Director: Antonio Mendez Esparza
Country: Spain/USA/Mexico
October 2, 10.
With the money he’s earned he can create a better life for his family, and maybe even start the band with his cousins he’s dreamed about for years. But work back home remains scarce, and the temptation of heading back north of the border remains as strong as ever. Antonio Mendez Esparza has made a most remarkable debut; rarely, if ever, has a film about US/Mexican border experience felt so fresh or authentic. Using non-professionals, Mendez Esparza gets remarkably nuanced performances that gives a richness of nuance and detail to each of his characters that goes way beyond cliché and stereotype. Winner of the Grand Prize at this year’s Critics Week in Cannes.
* THE LAST TIME I SAW MACAO (A Última Vez Que Vi Macau) (2012) 82min
Director: João Pedro Rodrigues
Country: Portugal/France
October 12, 13.
After a spectacular opening scene, in which actress Cindy Scrash lip-synchs, as tigers pace behind her, to Jane Russell’s “You Kill Me”—from Josef von Sternberg’s MACAO (1952), a key reference here—the film shifts to da Mata’s off-screen recollections of growing up in this gambling haven in the South China Sea. He’s come back to Macao to help a friend who later vanishes—a mystery that begets not only poetic ruminations on time, place, and memory but also magnificent compositions of flora, fauna, and cityscapes. Rodrigues will also have his work presented during NYFF’s soon-to-be-announced Views From the Avant-Garde schedule.
* TABU (2012) 118min
Director: Miguel Gomes
Country: Portugal
October 10, 14.
The ghosts of F.W. Murnau, Luis Buñuel, Joseph Cornell and Jack Smith hover above Miguel Gomes’s third feature—an exquisite, absurdist entry in the canon of surrealist cinema.
Shot in ephemeral black-and-white celluloid, TABU is movie-as-dream—an evocation of irrational desires, extravagant coincidences, and cheesy nostalgia that nevertheless is grounded in serious feeling and beliefs, even anti-colonialist politics. There is a story, which is delightful to follow and in which the cart comes before the horse: the first half is set in contemporary Lisbon, the second, involving two of the same characters, in a Portuguese colony in the early 1960s. “Be My Baby” belted in Portuguese, a wandering crocodile, and a passionate, ill-advised coupling seen through gently moving mosquito netting make for addled movie magic. The winner of the Alfred Bauer Prize (for a work of particular innovation) and FIPRESCI (International Film Critics) award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.
Director: Noémie Lvovsky
Country: France
October 2, 10.
Lvovsky is hilarious and touchingly vulnerable as Camille. Hard as she tries to avoid the classmate (Samir Guesmi) who she knows will become her first love, her husband, and the father of her daughter, and who will ditch her after she turns 40, she nevertheless winds up in his arms. Her double take, just before their lips meet for a first kiss the second time around, is indescribably delicious. In the tiny role of a watchmaker who may have set Camille’s time travel in motion, New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud is perfect.
* LINES OF WELLINGTON (Linhas de Wellington) (2012) 151min
Director: Valeria Sarmiento
Country: France/Portugal
October 8, 9.
* OUR CHILDREN (À perdre la raison) (2012) 111min
Director: Joachim Lafosse
Country: Belgium
October 12, 13.
* SOMETHING IN THE AIR (Après Mai) (2012) 122min
Director: Olivier Assayas
Country: France
October 5, 8, 12.
In the months after the heady weeks of May ’68, a group of young people search for a way to continue the revolution believed to be just beginning.
For Gilles (newcomer Clément Mettayer), this means having to balance his political commitments with his desire to explore painting and filmmaking; for his girlfriend Christine (GOODBYE, FIRST LOVE star Lola Créton), this means throwing herself wholeheartedly into the task of organizing. Olivier Assayas (CARLOS, SUMMER HOURS) here describes the sentimental education of a generation that was too young to have been on the barricades; he brilliantly captures its explorations of new lifestyles, the arguments about strategies and tactics, and above all its music, a constant presence that becomes something like the artistic unconscious of an era. The period details are perfect, but what makes this film so special is the sense it conveys of history as lived experience.
* YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET (Vous n'avez encore rien vu) (2012) 115min
Director: Alain Resnais
Country: France
October 2, 3, 9.
From its impish title to its vibrant formal experimentation, YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET proves that, at age 90, master French filmmaker Alain Resnais (HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, WILD GRASS) is indeed still full of surprises. Based on two works by the playwright Jean Anouilh, the film opens with a who’s-who of French acting royalty (including Mathieu Amalric, Michel Piccoli and frequent Resnais muse Sabine Azéma) being summoned to the reading of a late playwright’s last will and testament. Upon their arrival, the playwright (Denis Podalydès) appears on a TV screen from beyond the grave and asks his erstwhile collaborators to evaluate a recording of an experimental theater company performing his Eurydice—a play they themselves all appeared in over the years. But as the video unspools, something curious happens: instead of watching passively, these seasoned thespians begin acting out the text alongside their youthful avatars, looking back into the past rather like mythic Orpheus himself. Gorgeously shot by cinematographer Eric Gautier on stylized sets that recall the French poetic realism of the 1930s, YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET is an alternately wry and wistful valentine to actors and the art of performance from a director long fascinated by the intersection of life, theater and cinema.
* LIFE OF PI (2012)
Director: Ang Lee
Country: USA
Opening Night selection. In theaters soon.
Based on the book that has sold more than seven million copies and spent years on the bestseller list, Academy Award winner Lee's LIFE OF PI takes place over three continents, two oceans, many years, and a wide world of imagination.
Lee’s vision, coupled with game-changing technological breakthroughs, has turned a story long thought un-filmable into a totally original cinematic event and the first truly international all-audience motion picture. LIFE OF PI follows a young man who survives a disaster at sea and is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While marooned on a lifeboat, he forms an amazing and unexpected connection with the ship¹s only other survivor…a fearsome Bengal tiger.
PELICULAS LATINAS EN TELLURIDE
Vean más información sobre Telluride >> TFF.
