Latinbeat Comes of Age

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Saturday, 04 September 2010 19:01

Written by Laura Blum

Never mind the unlucky number; Latinbeat's 13th year of toasting Latin American cinema at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (September 8 to 18, 2010) gives ample cause to clink glasses.
 
Programmed by FSLC’s Marcela Golio and Richard Peña, the slate features 16 films from eight countries. Five of these entries will be staging their U.S. premieres, including Marcelo Piñeyro’s Thursday Widows/Las viudas de los jueves, which opens the festival.

The veteran Argentine director/producer will be on hand to discuss his adaptation of the bestselling crime novel by Claudia Piñeiro, about four families and their deadly dealings in a luxury residence during Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis. Piñeyro is no stranger to Latinbeat. In 2004 he presented a retrospective of five of his films, including Oscar winner Ashes of Paradise/Cenizas del paraiso, Wild Horses/Caballos salvajes and Tango Feroz, The Legend of Tanguito/Tango Feroz, la leyenda de Tanguito.

Other directors returning to the Latinbeat screen for their U.S. premieres are Enrique Piñeyro, whose documentary El Rati Horror Show argues the innocence of a convicted murderer in Argentina, and Matías Meyer, an emerging name in Mexico who will present The Cramp/El calambre. His film follows the introspective quest of a young Frenchman in a drowsy Oaxaca beach town.

Meditative wanderings and transcending the scars of the past are themes that surface across this year’s entries. Many of these plumb the thorny past of their countries of origin.

Take newcomer Renate Costa’s 108/Cuchillo de palo for example. The documentarian returns to her native Paraguay after 21 years to investigate her gay uncle’s death during the Stroessner dictatorship. My Life with Carlos/Mi vida con Carlos also probes history’s dark holes through a nonfiction lens. With Chile as his backdrop, German Berger reconstructs the story of his father, who “disappeared” during the Pinochet regime, and the toll this took on his family.

For the lighter side of legacy, Freedom Fighter/Libertador Morales el Justiciero tracks the adventures of a Simon Bolivar-obsessed motorcycle taxista. The dramatic comedy from Efterpi Charalambidis was Venezuela’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

History also gets a wink in the sidebar Argentine Bicentennial Shorts. Conspicuously, Mexico's big anniversaries -- independence and the Mexican Revolution -- go unmentioned on the program. The Film Society is saving its fireworks for the upcoming New York Film Festival, where a celebration of past, recent and current Mexican films will go off.  

Latinbeat also takes the action off-screen, with two flesh-and-blood events. Latin-O-America, presented with Cinema Tropical, will draw insights from some of New York’s Latino filmmakers-on-the-rise, followed by a reception. And Women Leading the Latinbeat salutes the women filmmakers represented in this year’s lineup. Co-hosted with The International Committee of New York Women in Film and Television, it will feed brunch to ticket holders of the September 12 screening of Sabrina Farji’s Eva y Lola.   

Yet even sans fiestas, Latinbeat screenings tend to sell out. Nearly a third of New York is Latino, and while the series' largely artistic fare might not grab that full headcount, joined with the Walter Reade Theater’s usual arthouse suspects, the minions are once again expected to rally -- making this celebration of Latin cinema among the Film Society’s most popular.
 
So, far from auguring unlucky stars, its 13th annual run should be seen more as a coming-of-age.

The full program is available at http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/latinbeat.html

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