The Third Annual Edition of the Cinema Tropical Festival
February 24-27, 2014 at Village East Cinema in
Featuring the Winners of the Cinema Tropical Awards Including
VIOLA (Matías Piñeiro, Argentina); POST TENEBRAS LUX (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico);
TANTA AGUA (Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge, ); and
EL ALCALDE (C. Rossini, E. Altuna and D. Osorno, Mexico)
Cinema Tropical, in partnership with Village East Cinema, is proud to present the 3rd annual edition of the Cinema Tropical Festival celebrating the year’s best Latin American film productions. The Cinema Tropical Festival will run February 24-27 and it will feature the winners of the Cinema Tropical Awards that were announced at a special ceremony at headquarters few days ago.
These winning films represent the vitality and the artistic excellence of contemporary Latin American cinema, and the festival offers a great platform for local audiences to discover the renewed and exciting world of the film production coming out from the region.
The Cinema Tropical Festival will screen the eight award-winning films including the Argentinean film VIOLA by Matías Piñeiro, which was named Best Latin American Feature Film of the Year. Piñeiro’s variation on Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ set in Buenos Aires, is a playful and poignant film that was featured in several of Best of the Year lists. The film was hailed as a “magical, mysterious romantic comedy” (Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York), and “a triumph of narrative imagination and bottom-line ingenuity” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times).
The festival will also feature Carlos Reygadas’ POST TENEBRAS LUX, winner of the award for Best Director at Cannes. An oneiric, mesmerizing and autobiographical film from the celebrated Mexican director, it explores the primal conflicts of the human condition. From Uruguay, Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge’s TANTA AGUA is a charming and poignant coming-of-age story, which was awarded the prize for Best First Film and continues the artistry of recent Uruguayan cinema.
Also in the program are documentary films EL ALCALDE by Carlos Rossini, Emiliano Altuna and Diego Osorno, which is a thrilling portrait of the polemic major of Latin American’s wealthiest municipality and his take on Mexico’s drug war; José Luis García’s THE GIRL FROM THE SOUTH, a fascinating film in which the filmmaker goes in search for a Korean peace activist after 20 years; and Ignacio Agüero’s THE OTHER DAY from Chile is an elegant reflection on layers of history, and ways they are reflected in families and communities.
The Cinema Tropical Festival also features Sundance official selection MOSQUITA Y MARI by Aurora Guerrero, and SXSW favorite WONDER WOMEN! THE UNTOLD STORY OF AMERICAN SUPERHEROINES by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, winners of the Best U.S. Latino Film award, which was presented for the first time this year.
The Cinema Tropical Festival is presented in partnership with Village East Cinema and VOCES, Latino Heritage Network of The New York Times Company. The Cinema Tropical Festival is sponsored by HBO and Hôtel Americano. Media Sponsors: Cinelatino, Remezcla and LatAm Cinema. Special thanks to Cinema Guild, Film Movement, Strand Releasing, bambú Audiovisual, Taskovski Films, and Icarus Films..
3rd Annual Cinema Tropical Festival – Complete Schedule
February 24-27, 2014
Monday, February 24, 7pm – Introduction by co-producer Tania Zarak.
TANTA AGUA
(Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge, Uruguay, 102 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Winner – Best First Film.
What could be worse than being 14 and on vacation with your father, stuck indoors during a seemingly endless rainstorm? Alberto and his two children, Lucia and Federico, set off to a hot springs resort for a short vacation. Alberto, who doesn’t see his kids much since the divorce, refuses to allow anything to ruin his plans. But the springs are closed until further notice due to heavy rains, and Lucia’s adolescent rebellion clashes against her father’s enthusiastic efforts for family quality time. Winner of multiple awards at different international film festivals, the debut feature film by the directing duo of Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge, extends the artistry of recent Uruguayan cinema.
Monday, February 24, 9pm
LA CHICA DEL SUR / THE GIRL FROM THE SOUTH
(José Luis García, Argentina, 2012, 93 min. In Spanish, Korean, and English with English subtitles)
Winner – Best Director (Documentary)
Chance took photographer and filmmaker José Luis García to North Korea in July 1989 to attend the International Youth and Student Festival in Pyongyang, soon after the Tian’anmen massacre. But what seemed to be just another meeting of socialist delegations from all over the world –through one of the most impenetrable borders of the old communist world– becomes García’s obsession when South Korean peace activist Im Su-kyong shows up and revolutionizes the event by announcing she will cross the border by foot to go back to her country. Twenty years after recording that fascinating period with his Super VHS camera, García decides to go back through the footsteps of that enigmatic woman. Zigzagging and explosive, The Girl from the South is marked by a unique life in the middle of the hurricane of history, but also by the eye –and a voice reflecting on its own process– of a filmmaker who sees in one character the condensation of everything he believes to be worth filming.
Tuesday, February 25, 7pm – Introduction by producer Kelcey Edwards.
WONDER WOMEN! THE UNTOLD STORY OF AMERICAN SUPERHEROINES
(Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, US, 2012, 65 min. In English)
Winner – Best U.S. Latino Film (ex aequo)
Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines traces the fascinating evolution and legacy of Wonder Woman. From the birth of the comic book superheroine in the 1940s to the blockbusters of today, Wonder Women! looks at how popular representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation. Wonder Women! goes behind the scenes with Lynda Carter, Lindsay Wagner, comic writers and artists, and real-life superheroines such as Gloria Steinem, Kathleen Hanna and others, who offer an enlightening and entertaining counterpoint to the male-dominated superhero genre.
Tuesday, February 25, 9pm
MOSQUITA Y MARI
(Aurora Guerrero, US, 2012, 86 min. In English)
Winner – Best U.S. Latino Film (ex aequo)
Mosquita y Mari, Aurora Guerrero’s assured directorial debut and a Sundance official selection, is a coming of age story that focuses on a tender friendship between two young Chicanas. Yolanda and Mari are growing up in Huntington Park, Los Angeles and have only known loyalty to one thing: family. When Mari moves in across the street from Yolanda, they maintain their usual life routine, until an incident at school thrusts them into a friendship and into unknown territory. As their friendship grows, a yearning to explore their strange yet beautiful connection surfaces. Lost in their private world of unspoken affection, lingering gazes, and heart-felt confessions of uncertain futures, Yolanda’s grades begin to slip while Mari’s focus drifts away from her duties at a new job. Mounting pressures at home collide with their new-found connection, forcing them to choose between their obligations to others and staying true to themselves.
Wednesday, February 26, 7pm
EL ALCALDE / THE MAYOR
(Emiliano Altuna, Carlos F. Rossini, and Diego Osorno, Mexico, 2012, 81 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Winner – Best Documentary
Winner of the Best Documentary prize at the Cartagena and the Baja Film Festivals, El alcalde is an engrossing portrait of Mexican millionaire Mauricio Fernandez, a larger-than-life and frequently controversial politician who is the mayor of Latin America’s wealthiest municipality. He presents himself as an active ruler who is capable of cleaning his municipality of the drug cartels presence without questioning the methods he uses to achieve it. El alcalde describes the wild times of a country that is marked by violence and the complete discredit of the ruling class.
Wednesday, February 26, 9pm
POST TENEBRAS LUX
(Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Germany/Netherlands, 2012, 155 min. In Spanish, English, and French, with English subtitles)
Winner – Best Director (Fiction Film)
“Post Tenebras Lux (“light after darkness”) is a new autobiographical feature from acclaimed director Carlos Reygadas (Silent Light), winner of the Best Director prize at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Ostensibly the story of an upscale, urban family whose move to the Mexican countryside results in domestic crises and class friction, it’s a stunningly photographed, impressionistic psychological portrait of a family and their place within the sublime, unforgiving natural world. Reygadas conjures a host of unforgettable, ominous images: a haunting sequence at dusk as Reygadas’s real-life daughter wanders a muddy field as farm animals loudly circle and thunder and lightning threaten; a glowing-red demon gliding through the rooms of a home; a husband and wife visiting a swingers’ bathhouse with rooms named after famous philosophers. By turns entrancing and mystifying, Post Tenebras Lux palpably explores the primal conflicts of the human condition.” – Film Forum
Thursday, February 27, 7pm – Q&A with filmmaker
VIOLA
(Matías Piñeiro, Argentina, 2012, 65 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Winner – Best Fiction Film
Directed by Matías Piñeiro, one of Argentina’s most sensuous and daring new voices, Viola is a mystery of romantic entanglements and intrigues among a troupe of young actors in a small theater in Buenos Aires performing Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” Acclaimed by the New York Times‘ Manohla Dargis as “a triumph of narrative imagination and bottom-line ingenuity,” the film landed on several top best lists of the year.
Thursday, February 27, 9pm
EL OTRO DÍA / THE OTHER DAY
(Ignacio Agüero, Chile, 120 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Special Jury Mention – Best Director, Documentary
The home of acclaimed Chilean filmmaker Ignacio Agüero is filled with objects that speak to both his family’s history and to the tumultuous history of his country. Seeking to make a quiet, personal film centered on his home and his memories, it is fitting that The Other Day begins when a ray of sunlight shines on a photograph of his parents. Agüero turns the tables on his uninvited guests, and asks them if he may knock on their doors too. His spontaneous excursions into their neighborhoods and homes broaden the film’s scope, bringing different aspects of contemporary Chilean society into the picture. Interweaving these threads, collapsing past and present, interior and exterior, the film is an elegant reflection on layers of history, and ways they are reflected in families and communities. The film was awarded with the Best Documentary prize at the Guadalajara Film Festival and Best Chilean Film at FIDOCS.
All screenings at
VILLAGE EAST CINEMA
189 Second Avenue (at 12th Street), New York City
/ www.villageeastcinema.com
Tickets: $14
For more information visit: www.cinematropical.com.
