Havana Film Festival New York Ready to Rumble

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Friday, 09 April 2010 05:00

Written by Laura Blum

Jointly presented with Havana, Cuba's International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, the Havana Film Festival New York is close, but no cigar. Subways and skyscrapers just can't match that fallen Habanero elegance as a habitat for Latino cinema. But if Cuba isn't on your itinerary and Manhattan is, you could do worse than to savor a week of Big Apple screenings from and about Latin America and the Caribbean, and about Latinos in the U.S.

HFFNY's 11th fiesta is set to rumble April 16 to 23, 2010, with special events on April 7 at El Museo del Barrio and April 9 at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. More than 40 films fill the calendar, alongside parties and chats.

Opening Night will kick off at the Directors Guild Theatre, with the New York premiere of Los Dioses Rotos / Broken Gods. The maiden feature by Cuban director Ernesto Daranas traces a love triangle within present day Havana's underworld paralleling that of early 20th-century politician and gigolo Alberto Yarini. Actress Silvia Aguila will be on hand to discuss the award-winning film.

Earlier on April 16, the New York premiere of Veronica will take place at the Quad Cinema, HFFNY's main screening venue. The thriller by Brazilian director Maurício Farias narrates the escape of a school teacher and her young pupil after the latter's parents are found slain in the Rio de Janeiro slums.

Closing-night rites begin with a screening of Gigante. Set in Montevideo, Uruguay, Adrián Biniez's drama plumbs a night-shift security guard's obsession with a cleaning woman. The Uruguayan-Argentine co-production, which won the Silver Bear in Berlin, is followed by the U.S. premiere of Eso que Anda. Ian Padrón's documentary trails a recent tour by Los Van Van — Cuba's favorite band for 40 years — which attended by more than 1 million people. Padrón will entertain audience Q&A. Filmgoers should be properly jazzed up to conga at the closing-night party at LQ.

Abiding Festival tradition, each year a renowned Latino filmmaker is graced with a tribute. The 2010 honoree is Cuban writer, director, poet, actor and dramatist Enrique Pineda Barnet. Cosmorama, an early forerunner of today's video art movement, will be screened together with such works as La Anunciación, his most recent film about the reunion of Cuban émigrés to the U.S. and their families back home, and Giselle, celebrating the 90th birthday of prima ballerina Alicia Alonso.

Other films about performance include The Extraordinary Journey of Fernando Bujones, dancer Israel Rodríguez' valentine to his mentor; Mambo City, Bette Wanderman's portrait of Puerto Rican singer Awilda Santiago and Salsa/Latin jazz band Grupo Latin Vibe; and Mundo Alas, about a group of disabled artists on tour with "the Argentine Bob Dylan," León Gieco. Gieco fans will have the chance to talk with him following the film, which he co-directed.

To mark its second decade, HFFNY created the Havana Star Prize to salute the Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay. These new Havana Star prizes will be handed out at the closing-night ceremony at the Directors Guild Theatre.

Among the Festival's most heralded Havana Star contenders is Huacho, winner of the Grand Coral in Havana. The drama by Alejandro Fernández Almendras portrays a family in grappling with poverty in Chile. Here are some of the other titles competing for Havana Star prizes:

Fans of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s classic Memorias del Subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment) might be curious to see its sequel. Memories of Overdevelopment, by maverick filmmaker Miguel Coyula, presses onward with a Cuban intellectual who emigrates to the U.S. and becomes disillusioned with the "developed" world. The film is based on the novel by Edmundo Desnoes.

From veteran Chilean director Miguel Littín comes Dawson Isla 10 (Dawson Island). It recalls the political imprisonment of toppled President Allende’s cabinet after the 1973 coup.

One of several competition entries from Argentina is Historias Extraordinarias (Extraordinary Stories). Mariano Llinás's Borgesian triptych of seemingly unrelated narratives has a running time of four hours. The three stories in Carlos Enderle's Crónicas Chilangas (Chilango Chronicles) are not only entangled, they become more so as the film progresses. This urban comedy set in Mexico City tracks the lives of a retired teacher with a quadriplegic daughter, a young man who fears extraterrestrials and a fleshy woman obsessed with adult movies.

The national cinemas of Colombia, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Peru, Venezuela and the U.S. are also represented on the slate.

As in past editions, HFFNY will join forces with The Metropolitan Museum of Art to present "Latin American Films For Children." Together with the Queens Museum of Art, it will show Fantasma de Buenos Aires, about a 20th-century ghost awakened by mistake in contemporary Buenos Aires. Other educational partners include El Museo del Barrio, The Bronx Museum of the Arts and NYU’s Cantor Center, Tisch School of the Arts and King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center — site of a Latino film industry panel — with the goal of offering free or low-cost screenings, panels, and programs for all ages.

In a special program marking Mexico’s Bicentennial of Independence and Centennial of its Revolution, the Festival will showcase 26 minute-and-a-half shorts from five of the top Mexican animation directors.

For Festival founder and executive director Carole Rosenberg and programming director Diana Vargas, the more than week-long event offers U.S. audiences a rare, if not singular, opportunity to see new and old gems from the more than century-old Latino film industry.  

All foreign language films are subtitled in English. Additional details are available at www.hffny.com.

Havana Film Festival New York
3 East 69th Street
New York, NY 10021
(212) 946-1839

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