WEEKLY SCHEDULE     E-NEWS    MONTHLY CALENDAR    BUY TICKETS    THEATER HOURS & LOCATION

Recent Films from Latin America: Latinbeat 2004

Sponsored by CONILL

Sept 17 - 29, 2004

left: Kamchatka

Latinbeat 2004 is presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and sponsored by Conill with the support of the Consulate of Argentina in New York, the Instituto Cervantes in New York and the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York. Special thanks go to Anhel Collado-Schwarz.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center's fifth edition of Latinbeat presents many U.S. premieres of outstanding recent cinema from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatamala, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. All films are New York premieres in their original language with English subtitles.

With additional support by HSBC Bank USA, N.A.. Special thanks to Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (Argentina) and Dirección General de Asuntos Culturales de la Cancillería Argentina. Marketing support by El Museo del Barrio. Media partners Telemundo Channel 47 and WNBC New York Channel 4. The Gershwin Hotel is the preferred hotel for Latinbeat 2004. Translation services donated by Roberto Abalo, El Taller Latinoamericano.

Special thanks to Donna Dickman at Focus Features. Thanks go to Jorge Magaña at the Mexican Film Institute (Imcine), Miguel Cohan (Arena Films), Cis Bierinckx, Luciano Monteagudo (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente), Ernesto Herrman (Buena Onda Films), Claudia Büschel (O2 Filmes), Alejandra Guevara (Altavista Films), Neil Friedman (Menemsha Films) and Massimo Saidel (Latido Films).

The "buzz" that dominated at this year's Cannes Film Festival was the strong presence of Latin American cinema. Each section of that film festival featured at least one major new work from Latin America, films that were among the most eagerly awaited premieres. In the U.S., the growing success of Latin American film is also overwhelmingly evident. The 20 films from 9 countries in this year's Latinbeat are as varied as Latin America itself. They range from madcap comedy/parody ( SO FAR AWAY, Cuba; SABADO, Chile) to political thrillers (WHISKY, ROMEO, ZULU, Argentina; WHAT THE EYE DOESN'T SEE, Peru), from a ground-breaking TV mini-series (CITY OF MEN, Brazil) to astounding, beautiful documentaries (TANGO, A STRANGE TURN, Argentina; PULQUE SONG, Mexico; PORTER, Peru). While Latinbeat 2004 features award-winning films from well established national industries like Argentina and Mexico (ANA AND THE OTHERS, PIN BOY, LOVE HURTS), we are especially happy to show works from countries rarely represented in the Latin American film landscape (WHAT SEBASTIAN DREAMT, Guatemala; OFFSIDES, Ecuador; JOURNEY TO THE SEA, Uruguay). Please join us for this year's edition of Latinbeat - a true celebration of the diversity of Latin American cinema!

As a special sidebar of this festival, we are presenting a retrospective of the work of Argentine director Marcelo Piñeyro. Argentina has enjoyed the most remarkable comeback of all in the current Latin American film renaissance, and Piñeyro is that artist whose work marks the transition between the new and old Argentine cinemas. His 1992 TANGO FEROZ brought to the screen for the first time the lives, hopes and fears of Argentine youth in the tumultuous 60s and 70s, and served as a beacon for many films to come. Each of his films is impeccably crafted, and Piñeyro has also been behind some of the finest performances of actors ranging from Hector Alterio and Cecilia Roth to Eduardo Noriega and Leonardo Sbaraglia. With his most recent film, KAMCHATKA - having its New York premiere here at Latinbeat - Piñeyro has reached an even more impressive level of artistry, creating a tremendously intimate yet resonant portrait of a family caught up in the early weeks of a military take-over.

Latinbeat 2004 has been curated by Cord Dueppe, Marcela Goglio and Inés Aslan.

Additional LatinBeat screenings at El Museo del Barrio

MARCELO PIÑEYRO RETROSPECTIVE
ASHES OF PARADISE / CENIZAS DEL PARAISO
Marcelo Piñeyro, Argentina, 1997; 125m
Piñeyro's taut psychological thriller is based once again on a screenplay co-written with Aida Bortnik (The Official Story). Two bodies are discovered: that of a prominent judge, and that of a young woman with whom the judge may have been involved. When Beatriz Teller, the judge assigned to the case, begins to investigate, she finds no lack of possible suspects: Each of the judge's three sons claims to have murdered the woman. Teller's probing uncovers an extraordinarily complex network of relationships, leading perhaps even to a cover-up at the highest levels of authority. The excellent cast features Hector Alterio, Cecilia Roth and Leticia Brédice. ASHES was Argentina's foreign language Oscar® submission in 1997.
Please be aware that there is damage on the last reel of this print. This is the best print available.
Fri Sept 17: 1:30; Sat Sept 18: 3 (Q & A)

MACHUCA
U.S. PREMIERE
Andrés Wood, Chile/Spain/U.K/France, 2004; 120m
Set against the fall of the socialist Allende government and the installation of the military junta in 1973 Chile, this delicate coming-of-age tale sees two very different boys - one, Pedro Machuca (Ariel Mateluna), from the privileged suburbs; the other, Gonzalo Infante (Matias Quer), a slum-dweller from a shantytown - become classmates and grow closer, until eventually their friendship is threatened by the intractable forces of revolution - and the rather more complex allure of their beautiful classmate Silvana (the shining Manuela Martelli, last seen in B-Happy). A poignant and accomplished film, acute to both the joyous immediacy of childhood and the bitter disappointments of adult life, with remarkable performances. An official selection of the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
Fri Sept 17: 4; Sat Sept 18: 9; Sun Sept 19: 1:30

LOVE HURTS / AMARTE DUELE NY PREMIERE
Fernando SariÑAna, Mexico, 2002; 104m
Teenagers Renata and Ulises search for love and freedom amid class divides, prejudice, peer pressure and urban violence in this moving Romeo-and-Juliet story set in the shopping malls, working-class barrios and wealthy neighborhoods of Mexico City. Skateboards, graffiti art and a gritty rock en español soundtrack propel this bittersweet love story starring Martha Higareda and Luis Fernando Peña (De la calle) as teenagers who use hopes and dreams to imagine a better world. Also starring Ximena Sariñana (Todo el poder), Andrea Damián and Armando Hernández. The soundtrack features music by Fey, Elefante, Genitallica, Diabolo and Pulpo. The Audience Choice winner at the 2004 Chicago Latino Film Festival and 2004 San Diego Latino Film Festival, this new film by the director of Todo el poder was also nominated for three Ariel Awards (the Mexican Oscar) in 2003.
Fri Sept 17: 9:30; Mon Sept 20: 4:50
Wed Sept 22: 6:15

SO FAR AWAY / AUNQUE ESTÉS LEJOS
NY PREMIERE
Juan Carlos TabÍO, Cuba/Spain, 2003; 100m
Mirtha Ibarra (Strawberry and Chocolate, Guantanamera) plays Cuban producer Mercedes. She is having problems seeing eye-to-eye with a Spanish actor and possible co-producer, Alberto (Antonio Valero). She idealizes her countrymen, while he believes the stereotype that they are oversexed beings with innate musical ability. Luckily, Mercedes's Cuban friend Pedro (Barbaro Marin), a screenwriter desperate to sell a script, creates a story out of elements of Mercedes's and Alberto's lives. A highly entertaining film-within-a-film with well-placed elements of Cuban humor, SO FAR AWAY explores the relations between Cubans and Spaniards while dealing with various issues - emigration, problems of identity and the dangers of oversimplifying reality.
Sat Sept 18: 1; Mon Sept 20: 1; Tue Sept 21: 4

MARCELO PIÑEYRO RETROSPECTIVE
KAMCHATKA N.Y. PREMIERE
Courtesy Menemsha Films
Marcelo Piñeyro, Argentina, 2002; 103m
Argentina's foreign-language Oscar® submission last year, KAMCHATKA is a heart-rending, beautifully shot drama set during Argentina's dirty war in 1976. Life during that time is described by a 10-year-old boy who sees the immediate effects of the dictatorship on his family. His parents, a lawyer (Ricardo Darin) and scientist (Cecilia Roth), do their best to protect their two sons by leaving Buenos Aires and living clandestinely in the countryside. They change their identities and sleep with one eye open, always waiting. Roth gives a tragic performance as a woman determined to keep her family together in the face of a brutal dictatorship, while Darin forcefully shows the head of a household trying to save his family without losing his sense of justice. A beautiful study of a family and a country fighting to stay together.
Sat Sept 18: 6 (Q & A); Sun Sept 19: 6:30 (Q & A)

OFFSIDES / FUERA DE JUEGO NY PREMIERE
Victor Manuel Arregui, Ecuador, 2003; 87m
In the wake of his country's social, economic and financial collapse, and its effects on his family, Juan (Manolo Santillán) feels as though he's got just one way out. Tired of his situation, Juan stages a heist in an attempt to achieve his dream: to leave his country and try his luck on another continent. But what if that big heist goes wrong? The first feature for former director of photography and documentary and commercial filmmaker Arregui, the film was a standout at last year's San Sebastian Film Festival.
Sun Sept 19: 4:15; Mon Sept 20: 9:30

TANGO, A STRANGE TURN / TANGO, UN GIRO EXTRAÑO U.S. PREMIERE
Mercedes Garcia Guevara, Argentina, 2004; 87m
A group of new-generation musicians who dare to renew old formulas prove that tango is more than well and alive in Buenos Aires. Featuring remarkably talented artists such as La Chicana, Fernando Otero and Las Muñecas, among others who sing, play and dance 21 songs, Tango, a Strange Turn recounts the transformation of the worldwide popular dance-music form. From the traditional tango songs of Carlos Gardel,through Astor Piazzolla's rearticulation of the genre, to the current hip trends of tango today, the film depicts with refined visual sensibility and conceptual clarity the complex, always evolving culture that creates it, as well as the astounding beauty of the true city that never sleeps - hypnotic Buenos Aires - and its nocturnal protagonists.
Sun Sept 19: 9; Mon Sept 20: 3; Thurs Sept 23: 9:30

WHAT THE EYE DOESN'T SEE / OJOS QUE NO VEN
Francisco J. Lombardi, Peru, 2003; 149m
Acclaimed filmmaker Francisco J. Lombardi (Tinta Roja; Don't Tell Anyone) delivers his most ambitious project to date with the political psychodrama WHAT THE EYE DOESN'T SEE. Set in the final days of Alberto Fujimori's presidency in Peru, the film explores the corruption plaguing many Latin American governments as seen through the eyes of everyday people. WHAT THE EYE DOESN'T SEE focuses on the scandal caused by the release of hidden camera recordings of presidential advisor Vladimiro Montesinos blackmailing high-level government officials -which eventually led to the end of Fujimori's presidency. But rather than re-create true stories, Lombardi uses a colorful array of fictional characters to show the ramifications of dishonest government on individual lives. Lombardi received this year's Human Rights Watch International Film Festival Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement Award. Tue Sept 21: 1; Wed Sept 22: 8:30

MARCELO PIÑEYRO RETROSPECTIVE
BURNT MONEY / PLATA QUEMADA
Marcelo Piñeyro, Argentina, 2000; 125m
For his fourth film Marcelo Piñeyro has made a striking adaptation of a highly acclaimed crime novel by Ricardo Piglia. Two misfits meet in the bathroom of a Buenos Aires train station, and from that moment on Nene (Leonardo Sbaraglia) and Angel (Eduardo Noriega) are inseparable - both as lovers and, soon, as criminal partners. Dubbed "the Twins" by the police and the tabloids, they scratch out a living trawling through the mid-60s Buenos Aires underworld, until a botched heist forces them to go into hiding and then to escape to Uruguay. Cut off from their roots and connections, convinced they've been betrayed and are under surveillance, the Twins' world begins to close in on them, testing their love and finally their sanity. Part thriller, part homoerotic love story, BURNT MONEY is a steamy, high-octane crime drama and love story that is visually stunning and sensuous.
Wed Sept 22: 1; Sun Sept 26: 9:30

WHISKY, ROMEO, ZULU U.S. PREMIERE
Enrique Piñeyro, Argentina, 2004; 105m
"WHISKY, ROMEO, ZULU is already rumored to be one of the most expensive films ever produced in Argentina, and it looks it. The widescreen, steadicam-intensive images have the well-lit sheen of mainstream Hollywood cinema. It suggests what a Michael Bay production might look like if Bay finally wised up and made a movie that meant something to him." - Scott Foundras, Fipresci

"Airplane accidents always exert a morbid fascination - even more so in WHISKY, ROMEO, ZULU, where former pilot and whistleblower Enrique Piñeyro expertly recounts a crash in full behind-the-scenes detail in his double role as director and main actor (playing himself). The use of desaturated color and clearly focused 35mm lensing gives the film a stylish look, while the editing keeps it rolling briskly down the tarmac. Beautifully shot and narrated, this re-created docudrama has the feel of a fictional story, and non-Argentinean viewers unfamiliar with the Lapa plane crash of August 1999 may be fooled until end credits roll. A courageous critique of the state of civil aviation after deregulation, WHISKY, ROMEO, ZULU is a rather chilling reminder that cut-rate fares do not always a safe journey make." - Deborah Young, Variety
Wed Sept 22: 3:30; Fri Sept 24: 9:15; Sun Sept 26: 7

MARCELO PIÑEYRO RETROSPECTIVE
WILD HORSES / CABALLOS SALVAJES
Marcelo Piñeyro, Argentina, 1995; 122m
From Buenos Aires to Patagonia, WILD HORSES gallops along at breakneck speed, maneuvering twists of plot with agility and turns of character with grace. Directed by Marcelo Piñeyro and adapted from a script by Aida Bortnik, best known in the U.S. for The Official Story, this is a road film that celebrates sudden radical change, unlikely friendships, motion and the startling Argentine landscape. In showing how the media creates popular heroes, WILD HORSES is a shrewd and deft satire, but its understanding of the human heart brings an audience to tears. A selection of the 1995 San Sebastian Film Festival, the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, and the 1996 ND/NF Festival.
Thurs Sept 23: 1; Tue Sept 28: 9

CITY OF MEN / CIDADE DOS HOMENS
U.S. PREMIERE
Fernando Meirelles, Cesar Charlone, Katia Lund and Regina Case, Brazil, 2003; 125m
After the international success of Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund's City of God, Brazil's biggest channel, TV Globo, commissioned a four-part miniseries called CITY OF MEN. Shot on location in Doña Marta, a favela near Botafogo, each 30-minute episode uses the same actors and examines the same themes as in City of God. The series follows the lives of Acerola and Laranjinha (Douglas Silva and Darlan Cunha) who contend with the trials of life in the notorious Rio slum. Lund directed two episodes and Meirelles one. We are very proud to be able to show the first season of CITY OF MEN which was a huge success in Brazil.
Thurs Sept 23: 3:30; Sat Sept 25: 9 Mon Sept 27: 6:30

PULQUE SONG / LA CANCIÓN DEL PULQUE
NY PREMIERE
Everardo González, Mexico, 2003; 60m
One of 2003's biggest local hits in Mexico, PULQUE SONG is a portrait of daily life in La Pirata, a local pulque bar. It is also a love song to ranchero music and the barrio (the canciones populares, or folk songs, that make up its score are astounding). Beautifully shot, the film offers intimate and revealing cultural, social and political insights. The pulquerias are places where history is concentrated and confused, where time takes on surreal dimensions under the effects of this fermented beverage. "In order to make PULQUE SONG, González gained incredible access to the lives and communal spirit in one of the vanishing pulquerias (only sixty remaining out of thousands), bars that serve only the highly alcoholic white drink drawn from the also vanishing maguey cactus. The director covers all bases in this astonishing film. Several of the drunken, toothless men tell their personal tales, as does one old lady from the neighboring woman's department." - Howard Feinstein preceded by
PORTER / SÓLO UN CARGADOR
Juan Alejandro Ramirez, Peru, 2003; 20m
"PORTER is a heartbreakingly beautiful meditation about the life, hopes and dreams of a fictional Peruvian porter named Chuqui Orozco. The film is a series of visually stunning scenes primarily taken from the streets in Cuzco and the footpaths through the Andes Mountains to Machu Picchu. This amazing scenery is merely a backdrop for a collection of close-ups of anonymous real-life porters at work, through the city streets and up the perilous paths of the Andes, all the while using a first person narrative of Chuqui Orozco's innermost feelings. Juan Alejandro Ramirez has built a work of art in this poetic journey of his concept of a self-loathing porter. This short film won many awards and was included in the 2004 New Directors/New Films festival." - Diedre Kilgore
Thurs Sept 23: 6:15; Sat Sept 25: 3
Wed Sept 29: 5

SATURDAY / SÁBADO U.S. PREMIERE
Matías Bize, Chile, 2003; 63m
Antonia is pregnant, and Victor, who slept with her, is getting married in a few hours to Blanca. Incensed, and looking like a black angel of revenge, Antonia searches out her rival, already in her white wedding robes, to confront her with this fact. Her neighbour Gabriel, a film student, has agreed to record everything on video. When Blanca learns, in front of the camera, that her future husband has betrayed her well and proper, she hires Gabriel at short notice as a cameraman for a wedding video of a quite different kind. In this breathlessly rapid parody of cinema verité, the camera changes its perspective many times, following Blanca as she moves around town and comes to terms with her new, unexpected life.
Thurs Sept 23: 8; Fri Sept 24: 3:30; Sat Sept 25: 5

WHAT SEBASTIÁN DREAMT / LO QUE SOÑÓ SEBASTIÁN
NY PREMIERE
Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Guatemala, 2003; 93m
Dedicated to late author and composer Paul Bowles (and featuring some of his compositions on the soundtrack), Guatemalan novelist Rodrigo Rey Rosa's WHAT SEBASTIÁN DREAMT has much in common with that author's best-known tales. Based on Rey Rosa's own novel, the film includes the rain forest of Guatamala as a character in his darkly beautiful tale. It tells the story of young Spaniard Sebastián (Andoni Gracia), who, inspired by the jungle landscape, moves into the Guatemalan rainforest. Sebastian bars local hunters from his property, earning the ire of the Calajs, a family of macho poachers. "Murder, malaria, archaeological-relic forgery and the ill-considered visit of a careless French woman (Juliette Deschamps) build a sense of fatalistic intrigue balanced between violence and hallucination." - Dennis Harvey, Variety
A selection of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.
Fri Sept 24: 5; Sun Sept 26: 5

TANGO FEROZ, THE LEGEND OF TANGUITO
TANGO FEROZ, LA LEYENDA DE TANGUITO
Marcelo Piñeyro, Argentina, 1992; 125m
Against the backdrop of Buenos Aires at the end of the tumultuous 60s, TANGO FEROZ tells the story of a group of romantic and idealistic young people who live as if every minute was the last one of their lives. Inspired by the legend of the tragic life of José Alberto Iglesias "Tanguito," one of the founders of the Argentine rock movement and symbol of a generation that dared to dream of a world without frontiers, TANGO FEROZ is the story of love between Tango and Mariana, a young philosophy student who, out of a strong desire for freedom, chooses to escape from a comfortable, boring and predictable future. Together Tango and Mariana go in search of a world worth living, where the most important values are love, solidarity and friendship.
Fri Sept 24: 1; Mon Sept 27: 9

PIN BOY / PARAPALOS U.S. PREMIERE
Ana Poliak, Argentina, 2004; 90m
The winner of the top jury prize in this year's Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente, Ana Poliak's third feature is a rarity among rarities - a thoroughly honest movie about work. A kid from the provinces (Adrián Suárez) who's come to the outskirts of Buenos Aires to live with his cousin finds a job as a "parapalos," or pin boy, in one of the last manually operated bowling alleys in the city (make that the world). Adrián at work, Adrián at home: That's the movie. And what a movie it is - so wondrously quiet and contemplative; so minimal in form, yet so rich in observation; so impossibly delicate. And finally, so poetic - unassumingly so. Poliak's images and sounds are completely taken from the immediate environment - the echo within the bowling alley, the wooden pins stacked and restacked on the floor, and the faces and voices of the old men, the lifers, who give Adrián an impromptu education. From deep within its small framework, PIN BOY looks out at the expanse of life, a life of possibility ahead for Adrián and a life of hardened experience behind for Daniel, Turco and El Nippur, his co-workers at the alley with whom he shares a fleeting camaraderie. A film of quiet force and handmade beauty. - Kent Jones
Fri Sept 24: 7; Sun Sept 26: 1; Mon Sept 27: 4:30

JOURNEY TO THE SEA / EL VIAJE HACIA EL MAR
NY PREMIERE
Guillermo Casanova, Uruguay, 2003; 80m
A Sunday morning in 1963; a small Uruguayan town. The street sweeper, the grave digger, the lottery salesman and his dog, Aquino, are waiting for Rodríguez and his old truck. They are taking a trip to see the ocean for the first time. The foreman and an unknown man decide to come along. As the journey through Uruguay's green rolling hills unfolds, the six colorful characters reveal their particular idiosyncracies while talking, singing and sharing their hopes and dreams. "Based on a celebrated short story, this gentle road movie is full of warmth and charm." - Miami Film Festival
Sat Sept 25: 1; Wed Sept 29: 7

ANA AND THE OTHERS / ANA Y LOS OTROS
NY PREMIERE
Celina Murga, Argentina, 2003; 80m
Celina Murga's ANA AND THE OTHERS is at once of a piece with the current wave of reality-based moviemaking coming out of post-crash Argentina and wholly distinct. Murga's excitingly clear-eyed debut recalls the tale-based filmmaking of Eric Rohmer, where the big picture is inferred from the little details. A twenty-something woman named Ana (Camila Toker) returns to her hometown of Paraná during Christmas vacation. She visits old friends, many of them now married, and slowly edges her way toward reconnecting with her old boyfriend. As Ana walks the empty streets of Paraná, goes to a Christmas party or plays with her friends' kids, she's observing the world, figuring out her place within it, silently sizing up the way things are vs. the way she wants them to be. Murga has a wonderful eye, and an unusual trust in the camera's ability to track her heroine's emotional and philosophical progress along the way, without resorting to tricked-up encounters or melodramatic happenstance. ANA AND THE OTHERS is quietly remarkable in many ways, not least for devoting so much care to the framing of questions without any immediate answers. - Kent Jones Sat Sept 25: 7; Sun Sept 26: 3:10
Wed Sept 29: 8:45



Additional screenings at El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street, NYC, (212) 831-7272, www.elmuseo.org

Teatro Heckscher of El Museo del Barrio

Admission: $7 adults, $5 students, seniors and members of El Museo, Film Society, Instituto Cervantes, Mexican Cultural Institute and El Taller Latinoamericano.
Special combo ticket: $10 for any 2 films.

Saturday, October 9
1:30 City of Men / Cidade dos homens (Cuba)
4:00 Saturday / Sábado (Chile)
5:30 Offsides / Fuera de juego (Ecuador)

WALTER READE HOME