Review: El Estudiante (The Student)

by Lucy in Baires, contributing blogger

The Student is Roque Espinosa (played by Esteban Lamothe), a young guy from the countryside that comes to Buenos Aires to pursue university studies for the third time. It is not long until he realises that nothing interests him. He shows no vocation and wanders the crowded university halls to make friends and meet girls. One of them, Paula, an associate professor, introduces him to the hotbed of University politics.

The turning point is when he meets Alberto Acevedo, an old retired politician. Next to him, Roque learns politics codes and works with and behind students’ leaders. He feels he’s finally found his calling but not everything is what it seems.

Santiago Mitre, a young promising director, only 30, wrote and directed El Estudiante. It is not his ‘opera prima’ but his name is known for being one of the four directors of El Amor (2004) and one of the co-screenwriters behind Trapero’s movies such as Leonera and Carancho (2010).

The film gives the viewer a facinating look at University politics, which while very insular, has captivated audiences all over the world, including the Special Jury Prize at BAFICI, ADF Prize for Best Photography, FEISAL (Argentine film critics) prize and it is not over yet, as it appeared in the 2011 Locarno International Film Festival and Toronto.

Mitre asked for INCAA (the Argentine Film Board) for funding and was denied hence he had to modify the strategy of shooting unable to afford the costs of reproducing the overcrowded university’s environments. The irony turns up: while the film is entirely fictional and a convincing cast of young actors follow the script, the movie was filmed in the halls of the Faculty of Social Sciences with real students and the Students Centre’s help.

Review: “Vaquero” a Post-Modern Western

by Amy Ramirez, contributing blogger

Vaquero (cowboy):  A masculine archetype that probably exists in every culture that has ever been exposed to John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, or has known firsthand the creeping solitude and imminent danger of navigating through a vast blob of “no man” land on an icy desert night. Well, Juan Minujin’s “Vaquero” is nothing like that. The John Wayne and Clint Eastwood heroes are exchanged for a passive-aggressive Porteño (Buenos Aires) actor that spends an hour and half contemplating the icy dessert of his innermost thoughts.  Sounds like a fun flick? Surprise, surprise, it is actually very entertaining, keeping you on the edge of your seat!

Check out the trailer, with English subtitles:

Told entirely through the perspective of the protagonist, the entire film is a slightly discomforting yet intensely alluring narration of his sporadic thoughts being constantly interrupted by the characters that surround our fallen hero. Despite your inevitable disdain for Julian Lamar (Minujin) you can’t help but empathize with him.

Lamar, the 33 year old actor, is desperately looking to advance his career in show business. He seeks to get his foot in a world he does not feel a part of, so he finagles his way into an audition for a western by a famous Hollywood director. Plot is a big part of this story, so I don’t want to reveal much because it’s worth the anticipation.  The clear, fast-paced story line picks up in the middle of something and ends in the middle of something else, making the 87 minute film feels like a quick excerpt.

“Vaquero” is Juan Minujin’s directorial debut. Mainly a theatre actor, he has had the lead roles in Victor Gonzalez’s “El Cielo Elegido,” and Anahi Bernini’s “Un Año Sin Amor.”  Director of photography, Lucio Bonelli, close-ups and purpose-oriented shaky cam do a great job at capturing Julian’s anxiousness and awkward intensity.

We hope to see more films by Minujin, both as an actor and a director.

http://www.vaquerolapelicula.com.ar/

A Gaucho’s Tale: Vengeance and Virtue in Aballay, el hombre sin miedo

by Adam Davis, contributing blogger

Aballay, el hombre sin miedo, the latest film from director Fernando Spiner, is a classic Western with a modern look on revenge. Replete with stagecoaches, gunfights on horseback, and lingering shots of cacti-covered hills, the film is evocative of a long lost era in both the history of man and the history of cinema.  Aballay is not simply a gratuitous shoot ’em up, as one might stereotype the Western genre. Instead, it delves into the psychology of revenge and atonement to provide a deeper look into the violence and grit that the genre is known for. (And it also shows off Tucumán Province as the ideal Western location–Empanada Westerns, anyone?)

The movie begins when a group of rogue gauchos attack a stagecoach carrying a young boy and his father. They unceremoniously murder the father while the boy, Julián, looks on hiding from underneath a seat. When one of the gauchos, Aballay (Pablo Cedrón), discovers Julián hiding, he stares knowingly at the boy for a minute before something inside him compels him to leave young Julián alone.

Review: “El Dedo” Gets a Thumbs Up

by Adam Davis, contributing blogger

For a film ostensibly about a finger, “El Dedo,” the latest release from director Sergio Teubal, certainly displays a lot of heart. (Watch trailer with English subtitles below)

The movie begins when the acting leader of a rural Argentine village, Don Hidalgo (Gabriel Goity), announces that, with the birth of the village’s 501st resident, they have officially become a town. As such, Hidalgo exclaims, they can now elect a mayor. Though Hidalgo considers himself the obvious choice, Baldomero (Martín Seefeld), the pensive older brother of local shopkeeper Florencio (Fabián Vena), is considered a prime candidate by many of the town’s residents. That is, until Baldomero shows up dead.

Florencio decides to keep his brother’s finger, the one seen tapping away so methodically in the trailer, in a jar at the front of his store as a memento. But when strange things start happening in town, not even Florencio is prepared for the effect that Baldomero’s finger will have on the townspeople and the election.

Free Outdoors Cinema in Palermo: Walk or Drive-In

by Fer Murjica, contributing blogger

Starting at January 7th and for six weeks, in Buenos Aires you will find from rock concerts in Parque Roca, to artificial beaches in Playas de la Ciudad. And all of this, free of charge.
Under this premise, the city also offers national productions shown in a drive-in cinema located right in El Rosedal, the rose garden located in the middle of the huge park known as “Los Bosques de Palermo” .

Since January the 8th until February the 6th you will be able to drive and park in your car (or walk in) in front of a giant screen (18 x 13 mts) located in one of the most beautiful places in the city.

Ventana Sur Wrap Up

Poster for a film that took Ventana Sur by storm!

by Rob Sykes, contributing blogger

What do you get if you let the organizers of Cannes and Argentina’s INCAA throw a few rough cuts, multiple international distributors, and other industry insiders into a room with a giant window? Well if that ‘window’ happens to be Ventana Sur, you set the wheels in motion on a whole lot of deals to sell and distribute films around the world, and raise expectations for great things to come from Latin American cinema in the coming year!

There were some notable success stories for Argentinean production houses in particular at this, the second annual Ventana Sur exposition. For example Cine El Calefon from Córdoba saw its realist, aspirational drama “Yatasto” secure world-wide distribution rights with Figa Films. Director Hermes Paralluelo’s documentary style piece having already penned distribution deals in Spain, and its native Argentina.

Placing Argentinean firms on the other side of the coin, Buenos Aires based sales agents Americine are reportedly in the midst of negotiations to represent several Latin American productions. These include Mexican emigration story “Acorazado”, which gained a great deal of support at the Morelia Festival earlier this year, and another Argentinean production in the shape of the Córdoba (once again!) set comedy “El Dedo” from director Segio Teubal. With rumours abound that they were also negotiating world-wide sales for Hernan Belon’s “Sofia”, and Nemesio Juarez’s political drama “Revolution is an Eternal Dream”, it was an altogether busy week for Americine. Meanwhile Distribution Co. also of Argentina, secured distribution rights for the U.S produced, Sundance Winner,  “Winter’s Bone”.

Venezuela’s Oscar hopeful “Brother” was seen flirting with, and attracting many an interested browser during its days in the window. This hotly tipped social issue soccer drama is perhaps a distant cousin of San Telmo productions’’ own recent soccer based documentary! Ventana Sur saw “Brother” sold to Cineplex for Colombia and Central America, with other Latin American distribution deals expected to follow.

For four days then, the window was full and the browsers and perspective buyers were plenty. Foreign distribution deals were agreed, and sales agents picked up the exciting new productions they came for. All we as cinema fans have to do, is sit back and wait for more powerful, Latin American cinema to jump out through the window, and onto our screens in 2011!

Mar Del Plata Film Festival, and the winner is…..

by Rob Sykes, contributing blogger

Still from Octubre, winner at Mar del Plata Film Festival

It was a week-long gorge on cutting edge cinema from around the globe at the 2010 Mar del Plata International Film Festival. Whilst opinions were no doubt banded around, divided and reconciled at various times during the week, the real prizes were handed out at Sunday’s glitzy closing ceremony.

Jerzy Skolimowski’s, Essential Killing scooped the best film award. The Polish political thriller also brought home the best actor award for Vincent Gallo’s leading role. Continuing in Eastern Europe, Alexei Fedorchenko claimed the best director gong for Silent Souls, the same film seeing Denis Osokin awarded for his script.

Closer to home, the Vega brothers (Daniel and Diego), took home best Latin American film for their Peruvian, Venezuelan and Spanish backed Octubre, set during Lima’s ‘Lord of Miracles’ celebrations. Argentinean director Lucas Blanco also received a special mention in the same category for his film Amor en Transito, whilst in the shorts section, Gabriel Gauchet was rewarded for his work on Efecto Domino. Meanwhile in the national category, Tamae Garateguy took the prize for her look at Villa (slum) life in Pompeya, and León Tannchen took the shorts prize for Pies.

“Sin Retorno” Does Well at the Box Office Bringing themes of Injustice to the Big Screen

by contributing writer, Tracey Chandler

The recently released film, “Sin Retorno,” directed by first time director Miguel Cohan and written by Miguel and Ana Cohan, presents the viewer with a number of thrilling moral dilemmas based around a traffic accident and a false accusation. These themes have resonated with the Argentine audience, as the corrupt justice system is front-page news, and it has been the most widely watched Argentine film since it’s release. No surprise: it is from the same producers behind Oscar winner “The Secret in Their Eyes”.

When watching the movie it is an interesting exercise to put yourself in the position of the parents of Matías (played by Martín Slipak) and to decide whether you would take your child to the police in such a situation, knowing that it would probably result in his incarceration for manslaughter.

Director of “El Rati Horror Show” Receives Death Threats

by contributing writer, Tracey Chandler

“El Rati Horror Show,” showing in Buenos Aires cinemas at present, is an Argentine directed documentary of a special kind which forced the director, Enrique Piñeyro, and his family to leave Argentina after receiving death threats regarding the content of the documentary.

There are two reasons to go and see this movie.

The first reason lies in the fact that the contents of the movie should be supported. The legal corruption that took place during the trial of Fernando Ariel Carrera, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the road deaths of three pedestrians after being pursued by police looking for a similar car to that of Carrera’s, is exposed in the documentary. “El Rati Horrror Show” aims to highlight that the pieces of the puzzle in Carrera’s trial, which took place in Argentina in 2007, do not fit together. The movie claims that Carrera is innocent, the victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his conviction was used to cover up police incompetence.

The second reason to see “El Rati Horror Show” is because the way in which the documentary presents the fact and communicates the puzzling facts about the incident and the trial itself is very creative. Piñeyro, who is present throughout the documentary, narrating his own thought process concerning the trial from start to finish, communicates these thoughts and thus shares them with the audience by talking with colleagues and a collection of puppets which represent the judges responsible for the sentence that was passed.

The documentary also makes good use of some highly technical equipment to replay events and reconstruct key moments from the past in order to highlight probability, possibility and everything that would have been impossible too. Models, videos, sound experiments and more fill “El Rati Horror Show” with some wonderfully illustrated moments that help to suggest the disparities between what truly occurred and what was said to have occurred during the trial.

Review: “El baile de la Victoria,” Fairytale or Nightmare?

by contributing writer, Tracey Chandler

New international co-production between Argentina and Spain features Oscar-winner Ricardo Darín

To see “El baile de la Victoria,” (The Victory Dance) the most recent film directed by Fernando Trueba, may well make one think that this Spanish director has decided not to include the excessive sentimentality that the novel by Antonio Skármeta proposes and that instead he has decided to concentrate on creating a film full of exaggerated and unbelievable implausibility.

However, what a wonderfully powerful journey it takes you on if you are willing to ignore the high improbabilities. Indeed some of the scenes are so powerfully shot that the audience is tossed between fairytale and nightmare without restraint.

“El baile de la Victoria” is a tribute to love and friendship and is also a story of vengeance. The film takes place in Chile which has recently survived the Pinochet dictatorship when an amnesty was reached for those prisoners who had not committed crimes of murder.

Ángel (Abel Ayala) is a petty, pocket-thief, very sensitive and unconsciously idealistic. He tries to wipe from his memory the trauma of the abuses that he suffered in prison from the same big-time robber who it is thought actually committed the crime that Ángel was put into prison for.

The famous bank thief Nicolás Vergara Grey (polite and upstanding as ever, Ricardo Darín) benefits from the same amnesty as Ángel and both are granted freedom at the same time. In contrast to Ángel, Nicolás only thinks in returning to his former simple life alongside his wife (Ariadna Gil) and his son.