MEXICAN CINEMA—Alamar (To the Sea, 2009)

Straight off, Adam Nayman deserves some kind of commission for convincing a small squadron of film journalists to catch Pedro González-Rubio's sophomore feature Alamar (To the Sea, 2009) at its last public screening at the Isabel Bader. Boasting its world premiere in TIFF’s Visions sidebar, Alamar was already part of my scheduled coverage of this year’s Latin American fare, but it’s always heartening to share a viewing experience with such accomplished journalists as Andrew Tracy, Danny Kasman, Fernando Croce, Darren Hughes, Girish Shambu, Richard Porton and Dan Sallitt. Talk about fraternity! Though I didn’t quite agree with Nayman (or Danny Kasman at The Auteurs) that Alamar was the "find of the festival"—for me that honor fell to Oscar Ruiz Navia's El Vuelco del Cangrejo (Crab Trap, 2009)—I could certainly understand their shared enthusiasm for Alamar's pellucid simplicity. "Pedro González-Rubio," Kasman writes, "has found a documentary subject and turned it into a lovely, modest, and sweet fiction of the real world." In a word, the film is beautiful, with stunning aquamarine cinematography contributed by Alexis Zabé (Silent Light, Lake Tahoe).

Mexican Jorge (Jorge Machado) and Italian Roberta (Roberta Palombini) have fallen in love and given birth to Natan (Natan Machado Palombini), now five years old; but, their relationship can’t endure their contrasting temperaments so Roberta has decided to return to Italy with the boy, but not before allowing him the chance to spend quality time with his father and grandfather Matraca (Nestor Marin). Jorge seizes the opportunity to take Natan to Chinchorro, Quintana Roo, home to the second-largest coral reef on the planet and one of the few places in the Mexican Caribbean with an intact ecosystem. Living simply in a wooden palafite (a shack constructed on stakes) in front of the quay, little Natan eases into a fisherman’s life, acclimating to the natural world alongside his father and worldly-wise grandfather. Linaje (lineage) and a sense of knowing one's origins becomes a father’s parting (and lasting) gift to his son.

So what is it that makes this spare tale so resoundingly resonant? Is it that Alamar achieves fiction without narrative intervention? During the Q&A following the screening, González-Rubio was asked the inevitable question: is Alamar a feature film or a documentary film? He responded quite honestly, "I think of it as just a film." Circumventing strict categories, and suffering no delimitations, Alamar forges its own waters. As filmmaking, it recalls Antonio Machado's poetic assertion that there are no paths at sea, only wakes.

In a serendipitous bit of elucidation, Mark Peranson provided advance copies of the Fall 2009 issue of Cinema Scope to press attending TIFF and—perusing same on the flight home to San Francisco—I was quite delighted with Robert Koehler’s essay "Agrarian Utopias/Dystopias", which more than aptly captures the spirit of Alamar in its exploration of "the new nonfiction" or "the cinema of in-between-ness." Koehler writes of a "zone of a cinema free of, or perhaps more precisely in between hardened fact and invented fiction" that "permits all manners of wild possibilities", especially with regard to nuanced observations "specifically applied to subjects about humans working on the surface of the earth." Koehler's essay addresses the suspicion posed during the Q&A that Alamar was neither fact nor fiction: "This deliberately contradictory nature is a fundamental part of these films' essence. If any finding is made at all, it is that the categories are finally quite pointless."

Indeed. How could it be otherwise? How else could the poignancy of a film like Alamar be so evocatively articulated? The profound sadness at the heart of the separation between father and son, between a boy and his native country, echoes the "overwhelming sadness at the process of collapse and the end of things, alongside the unspoken drama of human beings stuck in a cycle with no escape." Marriages collapse, families fall apart, lineages are disrupted, and only memory can soothe distance and rupture; the memory, perhaps, of a befriended cattle egret who flies into the film—and into the lives of its "characters"—as if to remind that one need go no further than an observation of the natural world to find a story that will last a lifetime; a story whose heart is perhaps not fiction but unadorned observed truth.

10/25/09 UPDATE: Alamar swept the audience and jury prizes at the recent Morelia Film Festival. Produced by Mexico’s Mantarraya Productions and Xcalakarma Films, Mantarraya will handle Mexican distribution for Alamar, with France’s MK2 as the film’s international sales agent.

01/03/10 UPDATE: In his Senses of Cinema Toronto dispatch, Dan Sallitt agrees with me that—though Pedro González-Rubio's documentary hybrid Alamar "generated a surprising amount of critical buzz during the last days of TIFF"—he "somewhat preferred another Toronto premiere with a wilderness coastal setting, Oscar Ruiz Navia's El Vuelco del Cangrejo (Crab Trap)."

Sallitt writes that Alamar's story—"slight to begin with"—"almost vanishes behind the didactic mission of the project, as the son's learning experience is entirely coincident with ours. The film has considerable travelogue appeal, and the beautiful natural light and waterscapes of the Chinchorro region create an idyllic atmosphere. But director Pedro González-Rubio's documentary-style hovering camera doesn't do very much to organize the experience; and the issues accompanying the father-son relationship are too suppressed even to be called latent."

Cross-published on Twitch.

HOLA MEXICO FILM FESTIVAL 2010—The Evening Class Interview With Samuel Douek

Though the touring Hola Mexico Film Festival (HMFF) was woefully under-attended during its San Francisco stint at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema, it nonetheless provided a welcome program of both arthouse and popular films representing Mexico's cinematic output in the past year or so. The festival received some assistance from the Mexican Consulate, and near-to-negligible support from Landmark's publicist Steve Indig (an e-mail blast in the middle of the festival? A "you're on your own" attitude? C'mon, Steve!). Hopefully next year HMFF will hire a publicist and not rely exclusively on either the Mexican Consulate or Landmark to generate buzz on the event and, hopefully, they time the festival to not run the day after the San Francisco International wraps, by which time even the most resilient cinephiles are exhausted. I know I was. I would hate to think that—in a community that boasts such a large Latino demographic—support for HMFF will not increase in the years to come.

HMFF is continuing its national tour, currently screening in Miami at the Tower Theater through May 16, next in Chicago at Landmark's Century Centre Cinemas (May 20-25), then Washington, D.C. at Landmark's E Street Cinemas (May 27-June 1), wrapping up in New York at the Quad Cinema (June 2-June 6). Keep abreast of developments at HMFF's Facebook page.

As Festival Director Samuel Douek states in his introduction to HMFF's souvenir program: "Film has always been an important part of [Mexico's] culture and heritage, but we are now beginning to form a new chapter in Mexico's film history. More than 80 films have been produced this last year in Mexico, the government is giving filmmakers incentives, and numerous private production companies are emerging. Even more exciting, film festivals around the world are continuing to award Mexican films and the new wave of brilliant talent is beginning to emerge. Some would call this the modern day Golden Age of Mexican Cinema."

The proof's in the pudding. No less than a few days before HMFF launched at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema, Alamar—Pedro González-Rubio's sophomore feature—won the New Directors Award at the 53rd edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival. Alamar was just one of the excellent films hand-picked by Douek for his festival.

Australia's strategic concept of touring festivals that spotlight national cinemas and the communities imagined as their respective audiences have been interestingly discussed by Adrian Martin and Dina Iordanova in the recently-published Film Festival Yearbook 2: Film Festivals and Imagined Communities. At her site DinaView, Iordanova has offered up their exchange. How this strategy applies in the United States is just one of the many topics touched upon in my conversation with HMFF Director Samuel Douek.

Samuel Douek is a man who appreciates film, international travel and—above all—his heritage. Combining his three favorite things, Douek founded HMFF in 2006 with the goal of exposing the international community to the creativity, ingenuity and charm of Mexican culture through film. Douek was raised in Mexico City and at age 23 moved to Sydney, Australia where he received a Marketing degree from Mcquarie University in 2002 and a Masters degree in Event Management from UTS. Once in Sydney, Douek began to visit local festivals in the Sydney area and noticed the lack of Mexican influence in cinema. From that point on, he became inspired to create an international Mexican film festival and HMFF was eventually born. Douek's festival brings misunderstood Mexican culture to educate the entire world, one film at a time. His diverse but well-edited selection of 20+ films allows viewers to experience the unique walks of life that characterize Mexican identity and culture. Over the past four years, the festival has extended its reach to the United States, providing an opportunity for American citizens to experience the beauty, creativity and talent in Mexican film. Currently, Douek splits his time between Australia and Mexico, while also taking advantage of travel opportunities that send him across the globe. Inbetween afternoon screenings, we sat down to talk.

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Michael Guillén: Samuel, what motivated you to create a traveling film festival of Mexican cinema?

Samuel Douek: I didn't know I was doing a traveling film festival at the beginning. I was just following the trend in Australia, which was that all these different film festivals were organized to be ready to travel. They would screen in Sydney, then the next week they would be in Melbourne, then Brisbane, then Adelaide, then to Perth. Two or three of these festivals would run in those cities. For example, they would buy the rights for all these Italian films and screen them. Then the Goethe Institut did the same in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane. And then there was a Spanish Film Festival and a French Film Festival and all of them used the same strategy. I decided I wanted to do a Mexican Film Festival using the same idea.

My first year (2006) I did it only in Sydney and Melbourne and we did really well so the year afterwards we added Brisbane and Perth. In our fourth year, last year, we went to six cities: Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra and Perth.

During the second year of my festival, I came to the U.S. on holiday. I saw that there wasn't a Mexican Film Festival at all: not in New York, not in L.A., not anywhere! I thought about doing the same festival I was doing in cities in Australia, only here in cities in the U.S. Although it's not the same because in Australia the festival has the same sponsors everywhere. In the U.S. every city has its own sponsors.

Guillén: Who is sponsoring you in San Francisco?

Douek: La Kalle 105.7-100.7 FM, Estéreo Sol 98.9-99.1 FM, and Recuerdo 100.3 FM [all under the aegis of Univision 14], Telefutura, and Associated Trucking, Inc. Mexicana, Dos Equis, Cine Latino and Labodigital are our national sponsors.

Also, in Australia HMFF plays in the same chain of cinemas, whereas in the U.S. I work with Landmark, the independent Quad Cinema in New York, the independent Tower Theater in Miami, and the Arclight Cinema in L.A. So it's different in every city with marketing. The U.S. is much bigger and it's harder to do everything. The news spreads faster in Australia. If there's news in Sydney, it will go everywhere; if there's news in Melourne, as well—it's a 22-million people country—whereas in the U.S., if things are going on in L.A., people in San Francisco won't know. Same with New York. Every city is their own, so marketing is much more difficult than I thought it was going to be at the beginning when I was trying to replicate in the U.S.A. what I was doing in Australia.

Guillén: In Australia, what's your estimate of the Latino population? Are they coming to see your festival? Who comprises your audience?

Douek: It's 70% Australian, 30% Latino. Sometimes there's more, sometimes there's less. Mexico is seen as unique and "exotic" in Australia.

Guillén: Ah, that explains why in your press release you bill HMFF as "Your Escape to Exotic Mexico"?

Douek: In Australia they really enjoy watching Mexican stuff because they don't have that much. HMFF has built a great audience there. It works very well for us.

Guillén: At last year's Toronto International Film Festival I had the opportunity to talk to Diana Sanchez who programs most of their Latino films. After acknowledging that Toronto does not have a sizeable enough Latino demographic to target, she indicated to me that she programs films more with a non-Latino audience in mind, aware that many of these are films that Latinos themselves wouldn't go see because they're more arthouse than genre and don't have enough charge. Do you find that to be true?

Douek: A hundred percent. There are amazing Mexican films that go out into the film festival circuit and win awards all around the world but—when they open in the cinemas in Mexico—Mexicans won't go out to see them. That's due to a lot of things. A film like Silent Light by Carlos Reygadas wins awards everywhere in the world, but then he could hardly sell it in Mexico.

Guillén: He told me he initially had difficulty selling the U.S. distribution rights for $10,000.

Douek: So it's not something that just happens in Mexico. A Romanian film that wins top honors at the Cannes Film Festival doesn't know if they'll go home and make a lot of money. Usually those films—though talented and amazing, breaking through with cinematic achievements—don't translate into financial success, and vice versa. Some films like El Estudiante (The Student, 2009) or Arráncame la vida (Tear This Heart Out, 2008) that make millions of dollars in Mexican box office wouldn't go to any festivals around the world because they don't translate. Film festivals are more about the art part of cinema, whereas the box office is more about the commercial side. In saying that, HMFF is a portrait of Mexican cinema and we bring films like El Estudiante and Amor En Fin (Love On A Wknd, 2009), which are both commercial, but then we also bring films like Vaho (Becloud, 2009) or Norteado (Northless, 2009), which are more artistic. At the end, we're just trying to bring cinema that's well-produced with good sound, good acting.

Guillén: I understand that you scout for most of your films at the Guadalajara Film Festival?

Douek: That's where I've started to try and build the core of my festival for the last few years; but, this last year there weren't many good films there.

Guillén: Do you scout at the Morelia Film Festival?

Douek: I haven't been there because it's very close to the time that I'm in Australia launching the new HMFF. It's too problematic to go for a week to Morelia and then back to Australia. But this year I'm really looking forward to going to Morelia because now I think it's the festival to go to. The bulk of great Mexican films this year—Vaho, Norteado, Alamar and La Mitad Del Mundo (The Half of the World, 2009)—all came from the Morelia Film Festival. From Guadalajara this year, I only have Bala Mordida (Bitten Bullet, 2009) and Oveja Negra (Black Sheep, 2009).

Guillén: Since it narrows down to a matter of personal taste, what is it that you're looking for when you scout for films at these festivals? And how do you go about negotiating and securing these films for HMFF?

Douek: What I'm looking for is, as I said, films that are well-produced, that have something unique, that tell a story, that have something to say—not necessarily about Mexico—but a story. I want to see films that are edited well, that have good sound and lighting, and that have good acting: all in all, well done. Unfortunately, a lot of Mexican films are still being made under bad conditions. It's unbelievable that these badly-made films are being made simply because there's the production money to make them. I also look for variety in my program. I want a film like El Estudiante—which is a charming family-oriented film—and then a film like Alamar, a film festival favorite that has won awards all around the world.

To negotiate for the films, if I know the directors I will contact them. If not, I will contact the producers, the distribution company or IMCINE. By now, any film that's Mexican I have a way to get to.

Guillén: What do you offer your filmmakers? Why should they participate with HMFF?

Douek: We offer them the opportunity to screen their films in other countries. There are a lot of Mexican films that would never come to the U.S. if HMFF didn't bring them.

Guillén: I am personally grateful to HMFF for that.

Douek: Thank you. So that's one thing we offer. We also promote each film individually the best we can. At each city where HMFF plays, we invite the filmmakers to travel with us. [Laughs.] Imagine a huge touring bus with about 20 bunk beds so that the 12 filmmakers could travel with me for one month from city to city. Imagine me driving the bus with all the 35mm cannisters loaded underneath! That would be interesting to do ... once!

Guillén: Speaking of the spectacular dimension of HMFF, I'm aware that Alejandro Gerber Bicecci (Vaho) is the only director attending the San Francisco festival; but, there were several of your directors in attendance in Los Angeles?

Douek: We had a lot of talent, about 15 people. We had an opening night red carpet event for all the Hollywood media and received national coverage from Univision and Telemundo.

Guillén: Will there be talent at the remaining venues on the HMFF tour?

Douek: We always, at least, try to bring the director of the opening night film and one or two more, if possible. The important distinction is that HMFF is a festival but not a festival in the usual sense. In another way, we want to establish ourselves as a week of Mexican films in each city. For one week people can come and know that every time they go to the cinema they're going to see Mexican movies.

Guillén: I mentioned to you that one of the factors I feel is working against you this go-round is the fact that HMFF opened one day after the San Francisco International finished. What determined the timing of HMFF in San Francisco?

Douek: This year, in particular, there is the World Cup coming up on June 11 so we finish up in New York on June 6. Working back from that date, we set up the festival dates by working backwards every week. Unfortunately, San Francisco's dates were very close to the San Francisco International Film Festival. We didn't do that on purpose. Originally we were going to open in L.A., then go to Miami and then San Francisco and on to Washington D.C., but that became a bit of a logistic nightmare. Next year we would love to tour in June.

* * *

Here is is the promotional video for HMFF USA 2010, made by Jason Archer. Archer has worked with Radiohead, Molotov and on such films as A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life.



Cross-published on Twitch.

HOLA MEXICO FILM FESTIVAL 2010—San Francisco Lineup

In recent years Mexican cinema has had a tough row to hoe in the Bay Area. First, Cine Accion went anemic and died a slow, ignoble death. Then the International Latino Film Festival (ILFF) stepped in (only to overextend itself into oblivion). As Michael Hawley reported at film-415, a dedicated and committed group of left over volunteers from ILFF organized last November's brief run of the San Francisco Latino Film Festival and hopes are that they will return again this year come September. But other than for the random DVD projection at Galeria de la Raza or the Mission Cultural Center, Mexican cinema has had to content itself with its token Bay Area festival appearances, most recently the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF), which screened three films from Mexico in their 53rd edition: Presumed Guilty, Alamar and Northless. That's a respectable sampling given the fact that Mexican cinema competes for those SFIFF slots with the national cinemas of other Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Cuba at this year's edition alone).

Picking up the slack where our local festivals have not is the Hola Mexico Film Festival (HMFF), which—in its second year touring the U.S.—has included San Francisco among its roster of cities. And just in time, as 2010 brings about a monumental occasion for Mexico: the centennial of the Mexican Revolution and the bicentennial of the Independence movement.

Founded in 2006 by Samuel Douek with the express goal of exposing the international community to the creativity, ingenuity and charm of Mexican culture through film, Douek has organized a diverse but well-edited selection of films which allow viewers to experience the unique walks of life that characterize Mexican identity and culture and which exposes Mexican directors, producers and actors to the mainstream US market. At this stage, HMFF is the largest tribute to Mexican film in the world.

The Films

Alamar / To the Sea
DIR. Pedro González-Rubio (Mexico 2009, 75min, 35mm)

One of two entries in the current HMFF lineup that have just recently screened at SFIFF53, HMFF affords the opportunity to view González-Rubio's sophomore feature Alamar for those who missed it at the San Francisco International. I caught the film at its world premiere at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival and wrote it up then. It's been picked up as Film Movement's July subscription film.

Bala Mordida / Bitten Bullet
DIR. Diego Muñoz Vega (Mexico 2009, 112min, 35mm)
Cast: Damián Alcázar, Dagoberto Gama, Octavio Castro

Mauro Hernandez is a young cop who believes he can make a difference. But when he gets caught in the middle of a drug deal that involves his commander, things start to fall apart. Now Mauro has to decide whether he'll become part of the system or if he has the courage to fight back. In one of the best performances by Damián Alcázar (La Ley de Herodes, El Crimen Del Padre Amaro), first time director Diego Muñoz Vega tells a chilling story that depicts how the police functions on a day by day basis.

As Dennis West writes for Cineaste: "Diego Muñoz Vega's ponderous and truculent police drama Bala mordida ... sketches such an unrelenting vision of ingrained corruption in the Mexico City police force that a foreigner may be left wondering just how that nation's levels of bureaucracy function and co-exist. Here we have one government agency, the Mexican National Film Institute (Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografia), a co-producer of this major feature film, using its funding to relentlessly criticize another government agency, a municipal police force. Both entities live in each other's shadow in the same city."

Perpetuum Mobile
DIR. Nicolás Pereda (Mexico/Canada/France 2009, 86min, 35mm)
Cast: Gabino Rodriguez, Teresa Sanchez

Gabino, a 24-year-old man, works as a moving-truck driver in Mexico City. He lives with his mother, Teresa, with whom he has a distant relationship. She wishes Gabino was more like Miguel, her other son, who she believes has a decent job and a good lifestyle. Miguel, however, doesn't care much about his family and never visits them.

As Neil Young dispatched from the San Sebastian Film Festival, Perpetuum Mobile "proved unexpectedly hilarious to many, though some were left bemused, baffled or bored by the quotidian verisimilitude of Pereda's approach. Every film festival has no shortage of these 33 1/3 r.p.m. enterprises among its selections these days, but the lo-fi, video-shot Perpetuum Mobile is executed with an unfussy panache that proves weirdly compelling—and, after the credits have rolled—hauntingly resonant." Dispatching to Twitch from the Guadalajara International Film Festival—where Perpetuum Mobile won Best Mexican Feature—Todd Brown wrote: "Anyone with a bit of Latin can explain to you the joke built in to the title of Mexican slacker drama Perpetuum Mobile. Because, despite what the title may imply, this is a film in which nothing ever happens. And that's kind of the point."

El Estudiante / The Student
DIR. Roberto Girault Facha (Mexico 2009, 98min, 35mm)
Cast: Jorge Lavat, Siouzana Melikian, Pablo Cruz Guerrero

Set against the colorful atmosphere of Guanajuato, this comedy captures the adventure of Chano, a retired 70-year-old man who decides—after mixed recommendations from his family—to enroll in college. His presence impacts on his classmates and breaches the generational gap. Chano gives his college classmates advice, and in the process learns a few lessons along the way.

Tres piezas de amor en un fin de semana / Love On A Wknd
DIR. Salvador Aguirre (Mexico 2009, 90min, 35mm)
Cast: Adriana Barraza, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Paola Núñez

Three social classes. Three different worlds. Three love pieces during a weekend prior to the most controversial presidential election in Mexico. Intimate stories of couples that did not change history. Starring Daniel Giménez Cacho (Arrancame La Vida) and Oscar®-nominated actress Adriana Barraza (Babel).

Vaho / Becloud
DIR. Alejandro Gerber Bicecci (Mexico 2009, 117min, 35mm)

Becloud is the story of Andrés, José and Felipe, three young boys facing post-adolescent limbo. The memory of a man's lynching—indirectly caused by them during their childhood—brings them together and at the same time separates them. The story takes place in Iztapalapa, a humble and forgotten area, lavish in its fervent demonstrations of faith but, undoubtedly, the most arid place in Mexico City.

As reported earlier on The Evening Class, Becloud was selected for the Global Lens 2010 series and—based upon that association—is being featured as HMFF's opening night film and toasted at HMFF's Opening Night Fiesta at Mexico DF with live music and cocktails (tickets for the film and fiesta are $25). Director Alejandro Gerber Bicecci will be in attendance to introduce the film and for a post-screening Q&A.

As Andrew Schenker writes at The Village Voice: "Bicecci's sophisticated flashback structure makes palpable the sense of buried guilt running through generations."

Naco Es Chido / Kitch Is Cool
DIR. Sergio Arau (Mexico 2009, 90min, HDCAM)
Cast: Yareli Arizmendi, Sergio Arau, Francisco Barrios, Armando Vega Gil

Directed by Sergio Arau (A Day Without A Mexican), Naco Es Chido is a rock comedy. In 1988, members of the famous Mexican rock band Botellita de Jerez disappeared along with the new record after a fist fight in a taxi cab. The story evolves 20 years later when the famous missing recordings are found in a junk yard. This incites the investigation to search for members of the band and the discovery of the plot that caused the disintegration of the group and that threatens them yet again.

Sucedio En Un Dia / It Happens In One Day
DIR. Julián Hernández, Gustavo Loza, Daniel Gruener, Mariana Chenillo, Issa López, Ignacio Ortiz Cruz, Alejandro Lozano, Beto Gómez (Mexico 2010, 102min, HDCAM)
Cast: Dolores Heredia, Irene Azuela, Dagoberto Gama, Adriana Barraza, Joaquín Cosio

Eight talented and experienced directors have 24 hrs to shoot and edit a short film in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Not your typical short film program, Sucedio En Un Dia, also known as Rally Malayerba PRO, show us a mix of short films that promise to make you laugh and cry.

La Mitad Del Mundo / The Half of The World
DIR. Jaime Ruiz Ibáñez (Mexico 2009, 92min, 35mm)
Cast: Hansel Ramirez, Paulina Gaitan, Ignacio Guadalupe, Fernando Becerril

Mingo is a young, shy and innocent young man with a mild mental retardation. He is a romantic and a kind of poet. After an unusual sexual awakening, he gets involved with an older woman who introduces him to the highest pleasures and introduces him to some of her friends, she makes a lover out of him; although he surrenders to such temptations, Mingo is secretly in love with a girl that lives near him. Soon enough his adventures become common knowledge and that awakens his mother's worries.

Norteado / Northless
DIR. Rigoberto Perezcano (Mexico 2009, 95min, 35mm)

For those who missed Norteado at this year's San Francisco International, HMFF provides a second opportunity. Andrés travels from Oaxaca to Tijuana to cross the US border. Things don't result as planned and he has to stay in Tijuana where he starts working in a grocery store; there, he meets Elia, Cata and Asensio. What Andres finds in Tijuana makes him think about what he's about to do and become aware of what he's leaving behind. Norteado talks about the illusion that the United States represents for those who decide to cross the border searching for a better life.

As Jay Weissberg details at Variety: "Rigoberto Perezcano's understated, warm, non-exploitative take on a young man's failed crossings, and the temporary life he has in Tijuana, reps an impressive debut and heralds a much-needed new voice." At the Village Voice, Melissa Anderson concurs that Perezcano's "deceptively modest first feature is expansive enough to focus not only on the frustrations (and perils) of wanting to be elsewhere but also on the pleasures, however fleeting, to be found in transitional spaces." And as synopsized at the LA Weekly: "With a mostly unadorned, documentary-like (but beautifully photographed) style that allows for the dignity of broken souls to rise above a harsh environment, Perezcano nudges his talented actors toward moments of quietly powerful clarity, without histrionics or predictably fated ends. What's left is a sobering, charming and ultimately moving depiction of the geographical and emotional spaces that exist between places left behind and the ones we're in a hurry to get to."

Northless has garnered several awards at the Rotterdam, San Sebastián, Thessaloniki, and Marrakech film festivals, including the FIPRESCI prize at the Bratislava International Film Festival.

Oveja Negra / Black Sheep
DIR. Humberto Hinojosa Ozcariz (Mexico 2009, 85min, 35mm)

Two friends that work on a ranch herding sheep are fed up with their mistreatment by their boss. They come up with a plan to steal the sheep and sell them at the Mexican-American border. Jeronimo, the boss's son, will do anything in his power to catch them and not let them get away with anything that someday will rightfully be his.

Dispatching to Cineaste from the Guadalajara International Film Festival, Dennis West writes: "The best Mexican fiction feature I came upon was the young screenwriter-director Humberto Hinojosa Oscariz’s rural drama Black Sheep, set deep in the contemporary—and violence-prone—Mexican countryside. Many of the elements of this narrative hark back to musty Mexican melodramas and ranch comedies from the 1940s: the brutal and authoritarian hacendado (big landowner); his pampered son, a Mexican macho, who as a matter of course runs amuck; the thoroughly exploited peons who everlastingly toil on the ranch; and, of course, the inevitable class conflict in its many manifestations—from rustled sheep to affairs of the heart. Perhaps Hinojosa Oscariz's principal achievement is to creatively mix comedy and tragedy in order to make these characters well rounded yet unpredictable, and, even, human. The village priest, for instance, is not some sort of predictable stereotype. He routinely purloins funds destined for the poor to straightforwardly satisfy his selfish and all-too-human desire to buy himself the very latest model TV. In an unusual turn of events as far as the awarding of prizes at international film festivals goes, Black Sheep captured both the FIPRESCI Prize for the best Mexican opera prima and also the Prize of the Public. Seldom do the general admission ticket holders and the supposedly sophisticated international critics make identical artistic decisions."

Los Que Se Quedan / Those Who Remain
DIR. Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman (Mexico 2009, 96min, 35mm)

Those Who Remain is a film about the families of those who have crossed the border to the United States in search of better opportunities. A film that explores the melancholy, memories and identity of the families of those who have crossed the border. A film about absence, about the families whose lives are defined by the voids emigration has created.

Winner of the Mayahuel Award at the 2009 Guadalajara Film Festival and the Best Documentary Awards at the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival and the 2009 Biarritz International Festival of Latin American Cinema.

Los Herederos / The Inheritors
DIR. Eugenio Polgovsky (Mexico 2009, DVCAM)

At an early age children begin to work in the Mexican countryside. The Inheritors is a portrait of their lives and their daily struggle for survival. These children work farming, sculpting, and laboring in a myriad of other activities. They have inherited tools and techniques from their ancestors, but they have also inherited their day-by-day hardship. Generations pass, and child workers remain captive in a cycle of inherited poverty.

Winner of the Silver Ariel for Best Editing and Best Feature Length Documentary at the 2009 Ariel Awards and winner of Best Documentary at the 2009 Lima Latin American Film Festival. At The Hollywood Reporter, Neil Young characterizes The Inheritors as an awareness-raising "indictment" of child labor practices in modern rural Mexico.

Sexo, Pudor & Lágrimas / Sex, Shame & Tears
DIR. Antonio Cerrano (Mexico 1999, 109min, 35mm)
Cast: Demián Bichir, Susana Zabaleta, Cecilia Suárez

Winner of six major festival awards, this Mexican blockbuster is an outrageous comedy that explores the battle of the sexes-and the exes! Sex-deprived Ana is nearly out of her mind with longing, until her wild ex-boyfriend, Thomas, shows up to visit Ana and her husband. Filled with outrageous humor and penetrating drama, Sexo, Pudor & Lágrimas is tantalizing from start to finish!

Asesino En Serio / Murder Seriously
DIR. Antonio Urrutia (Mexico/Spain 2002, 84min, 35mm)
Cast: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Jesús Ochoa

A Mexican entry into the "hip crime" genre popularized by Quentin Tarantino. Detective Martinez has been assigned to investigate a series of very unusual murders. It appears to the detective that a serial killer has been eliminating women by pleasuring them to death. Asesino En Serio is a sexy crime thriller with a heavily comic slant.

Hola Mexico Film Festival Schedule

HMFF will be venued at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinemas from May 6 through May 11, 2010. Be sure to check out HMFF on Facebook.

Thursday, May 6
7:30 PM Becloud

Friday, May 7
1:00 PM Perpetuum Mobile
3:00 PM Kitch Is Cool
5:00 PM Northless
7:00 PM Alamar
9:00 PM Half of the World

Saturday, May 8
1:00 PM Black Sheep
3:00 PM Becloud
5:30 PM Love On a Wknd
7:20 PM Bitten Bullet
9:30 PM Sex, Shame & Tears

Sunday, May 9
1:00 PM The Student
3:00 PM The Inheritors
5:00 PM Those Who Remain
7:00 PM It Happens In One Day
9:00 PM Murder Seriously

Monday, May 10
1:00 PM Love On A Wknd
3:00 PM Northless
5:30 PM Half Of the World
7:30 PM Perpetuum Mobile
9:30 PM Black Sheep

Tuesday, May 11
1:00 PM Murder Seriously
3:00 PM Bitten Bullet
5:15 PM Kitch Is Cool
7:40 PM The Student
9:30 PM Those Who Remain

Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema
One Embarcadero Center, Promenade Level
San Francisco, CA
415-267-4893

Cross-published on Twitch.

FIRST PERSON RURAL: THE NEW NONFICTION—Lisandro Alonso On La Libertad

"Film must provide audiences the opportunity to discover questions."—Lisandro Alonso.

When I interviewed programmer Diana Sanchez at the 2010 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), she admitted—within the parameters of curatorial taste—her fascination with the appearance of a new genre she was noticing in such films as Pedro González-Rubio's sophomore feature Alamar (To the Sea, 2009), Oscar Ruiz Navia's debut feature Crab Trap (El Vuelco del Cangrejo, 2009), and the films of Lisandro Alonso, José Luis Guerín, and Miguel Gomes; a genre that she described as "a mix of documentary and fiction with a real sense of play between these two forms."

The Pacific Film Archive (PFA) celebrates the appearance and critical popularity of this new documentary-fiction hybrid with their upcoming series "First Person Plural: The New Nonfiction." Jason Sanders observes in his program notes: "In the past decade a new breed of filmmaking has emerged, not quite documentary, fiction, or experimental, but a combination of—or liberation from—all three genres. Lisandro Alonso's La libertad (2001) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Blissfully Yours (2002) heralded the beginning of this movement, which, while ranging across years, filmmakers, and continents, still shares several elements: quiet, observational long takes; direct-sound recording; and a 'narrative' that unfolds like a documentary, seemingly just 'happened upon' while the camera was rolling, which is sometimes true, but often false. Tellingly, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash, makers of Sweetgrass (2010), refer to themselves not as 'directors,' but 'recordists'; the concept that reality is merely being recorded, not 'directed,' is key (as is, of course, creating the illusion of this). Most of all, these films share an embrace of a cinema of and for the senses, a way to document and prioritize the natural world through both sight and sound. A pastoral cinema, true, but one that investigates humanity's complicated relationship, or lack thereof, to its environment. This series is largely drawn from the 2010 Flaherty Film Seminar, which considered how film explores work and the agrarian ideal.

"The influences are many: the avant-garde landscape portraits of James Benning; the ethnographic details of Jean Rouch; the contemplative fictions of Pedro Costa, Albert Serra, Lav Diaz, and others. For these sensory recordings of the rural landscape, however, categories like documentary, ethnography, fiction, and avant-garde seem not only outdated, but ultimately worthless. It is the image, the senses, and what viewers find on the screen, and in themselves, that matters."

The series kicks off this coming weekend with Lisandro Alonso's 2001 feature La Libertad, and I felt now would be a good time to revisit my notes taken from Alonso's presentation of the film at the Northwest Film Forum's 2009 retrospective "At the Edge of the World"

* * *

La Libertad (Freedom, 2001) screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, and scored nominations and wins on the film festival circuit, including the FIPRESCI prize. The son of a cattle rancher and disinclined to carry on with the family business, Alonso was a 25-year-old recent graduate of the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires when he made La Libertad; "outside of Buenos Aires but within Argentina." Alonso met the film's protagonist Misael Saavedra on his father's ranch. Misael, logger by trade, epitomized non-urban youth for Alonso; his reaction to the then-popular trend in Argentine cinema to revel in urban narratives. Perhaps it was Alonso's rural background that granted him familiarity with Misael's incommunication?

Alonso spent eight months in the Argentine Pampas with Misael. It was a difficult cohabitation because they had little in common to talk about; but, slowly, they developed a trust. Once he gained Misael's trust, Alonso proposed making the film. Fueled by his anger that his film proposals were not being considered by the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, Alonso took on La Libertad independently. The shoot consisted of 10 days with a 12-person crew. The film remained "in the box" for eight months because neither friends nor family liked it. He was frustrated. But then—unexpectedly—La Libertad became a festival darling.

Alonso's method of filming consists of long takes (usually four minutes) which he restructures in the editing room, making minor manipulations to create—as he puts it—"strange expressions of natural everyday things." The result is—as the Harvard Film Archive program capsule

James Quandt observed in his insightful essay "Ride Lonesome": "So matter-of-fact and uninflected is the film's recording of Misael's daily routines (faithfully re-created from weeks of Alonso's close observation of the man's actual life and edited so that several sequences seem to adhere as real-time) that describes—"a poetic meditation on labor and landscape."La Libertad has been hailed as the apotheosis of Bazinian realism."

Quandt further tracked that at Cannes "the film elicited inevitable claims that the boundary between fiction and documentary had been blurred, collapsed, or straddled." Alonso, however, argues that La Libertad is not a documentary, though he grants audiences the sovereignty to think however they want about the film. He stresses his concern is more with the point of view of the audience than his own.

The issue of labor chafes against the film's title. "La Libertad subtly questions the 'freedom' and identity alternately gained and lost by the daily burden of hard labor," the Harvard program capsule concludes. At Slant, Ed Gonzalez notes that "the film's long takes and the cyclical, labored nature of the man's daily grind force the spectator to question the nature of freedom." At Parallax View, Jay Kuehner comments: "Clearly, here was a director who had denuded his cinema down to its sheerest essentials, and what remained was a nominally minimal but ultimately voluptuous portrait of a beautifully forlorn landscape inhabited rather efficiently by a man and his work. Nature, and civilization. The banal, and the mythic. The story was not new—who hasn't worked an arduous day's labor at some time? But the grammar with which it was told was. Radically so." At Elusive Lucidity [broken link], Zach Campbell wonders whether the title is ironic: "Is the protagonist, Misael, free in the nature of his labor and solitude, or is he burdened by its necessity?" "The irony," Robert Koehler concludes at Film Journey, "is that there's nothing absolutely Argentine about La libertad. Its freedom is a freedom from nationality, time-space, narrative laws, camera laws and the expectations that audiences instinctively impose on themselves. But pay attention to the actual translation of the Spanish title: 'Liberty'—a harder, more profound word than 'freedom,' a word pointing to a greater leap, a commitment to an ideal, an identifier for an equation that even describes its opposition—oppression. Liberty is harder-won. Liberty is that thing that the films that really matter aspire to. This one just has the balls to take it as its own name."

In the film's final "quietly confrontational" sequence, Misael munches on roasted armadillo and then stares directly at the audience "as if"—Ed Gonzalez suggests at Slant—"daring us to question or challenge the integrity of his way of life", or what Sean Axmaker describes as "the integrity of the quotidian." "As if" becomes a convenient way to extrapolate Alonso's otherwise notoriously withheld motivations. Alonso admits that by encouraging Misael to look directly into the camera, he deconstructed documentary expectations and created a direct relationship with the audience. Alonso simply told Misael to "act" as if were looking at someone who was eating across a table from him.

The film's original ending had Misael laughing outloud while looking into the camera—achieved by Alonso unexpectedly dropping his pants; but—persuaded by the Cannes Festival to (as Quandt puts it) "remove this Brechtian breach"—Alonso settled for the somber, more atmospheric ending.

Many critics of the film have suggested it would have sufficed better as a short; but, aware that no one recovers costs on a short film, Alonso chose to make a feature in hopes he might recover some of his family's investment. His father was the film's producer.

When La Libertad premiered at Cannes, one of the critics from Cahiers du Cinema complained that Alonso treated his non-actor Misael like he was a monkey. "I'm sorry to tell you, but he's wrong about how I direct my actors," Alonso asserted defensively. "I'm not trying to make any money from the films. I'm not trying to use them." He knows he's working with non-actors and has to develop specific approaches with them. He can't ask them to behave like professional actors. Nonetheless the question of Alonso's artistic sincerity clouded the film's Cannes reception. As Jay Kuehner summarized at Parallax View: "The question persisted whether Alonso's film was, to reduce the argument, an act of abstract humanism. Was it possible that esteemed auteurs held a kind of deep faith in their wounded protagonists yet had little regard in reality for their more immediate brethren?"

Cross-published on Twitch.

SFIFF53 2010—Michael Hawley's Line-Up Preview, Pt. Two

Peering at the SFIFF53 films from non-French speaking Europe, I'm especially glad to see a pair of German entries. Maren Ade's Everyone Else won a Silver Bear at last year's Berlin Film Festival and follows the dissolution of a young couple on holiday in Sardinia. The film would have been a natural for our now-defunct Berlin & Beyond festival, and I'm assuming it didn't make the recent German Gems program because SFIFF already snagged it. If you've read the reviews and also caught Ade's debut The Forest for the Trees at SFIFF five years ago, you know this is going to be special. The other film is Turkish/German director Fatih Akin's Soul Kitchen, which is said to be quite different from his previous works like Head On and The Edge of Heaven. This one's a comic look at the efforts to save a failing family restaurant and stars my two favorite German actors, Moritz Bleibtreu and Birol Ünel.

I caught Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues hyper-stylized transsexual melodrama To Die Like a Man at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and loved it. Many loathed it. If you dug his previous works (O Fantasma, Two Drifters aka Odete) you sure don't want to miss this. In his review for the New York Film Festival, critic J. Hoberman called it "the kind of film Pedro Almodóvar should be making." Also Portuguese, at least in title and setting is Eugène Green's The Portuguese Nun. I'm totally unfamiliar with the work of this U.S.-born French director who seems to be known for his formalist approach to filmmaking. Ostensibly, the film is about a French actress making a film about a 17th century nun in Lisbon, with Green portraying the director. Variety gave it a scathing review, but I'm planning to give it a chance.

The big Italian film this year is Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton as the unhappy wife of a Milanese industrialist. It's been compared to the works of Luchino Visconti. Uncoincidentally, the lone SFIFF screening of I Am Love takes place immediately after a restored print revival of Visconti's Senso at the Castro Theater on Sunday, May 2. If you're unable to make the showing, I Am Love opens at a Landmark Theater on July 2. The other Italian film I'm anticipating is Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel's La Pivellina, in which a group of circus performers find and keep an abandoned child. Also of interest from Italy is Giorgio Diritti's WWII massacre movie The Man Who Will Come, which won both Grand Jury and Audience Prizes at last year's Rome Film Festival

From elsewhere in Europe we have Serbian director Vladimir Perisic's Ordinary People, a multi-fest prizewinner and (Bruno) Dumont-ian parable of ethnic cleansing and the human potential for brutality. At an opposite extreme lies Nina Hedenius' Way of Nature, a near-silent meditation on life at a remote Swedish farm. According to some reports I've read, the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia might be the next international hotbed of inspired filmmaking. SFIFF53 has programmed one title that keeps popping up, Rusudan Pirveli's Susa, a neo-realist tale of a 12-year-old bootleg-vodka delivery boy. Also from Georgia is the documentary Russian Lessons, which examines the 2008 Georgia-Russia armed conflict.

2009 was a quiet year on the Latin American filmmaking front, with virtually none of the region's major directors releasing new films. I'd hoped to find the Mexican omnibus film Revolución in the line-up, but perhaps it's too soon after the film's January premiere at Berlin. That reasoning wouldn't apply, however, to the absence of Claudia Llosa's sublime The Milk of Sorrow, which won Berlin's top prize in 2009 and was one of the five Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. One wonders, did the programming team really deem this film unworthy of our fest or were other factors involved? Oh well, I'm darn glad I saw it at Palm Springs.

Headlining what Latin American cinema we do have at SFIFF53 is surely Brazilian director Walter Salles' receiving the Founders Directing Award, along with screenings of his 2008 Linha de Passe and also a new work-in-progress. Also from Brazil come the narrative feature The Famous and the Dead and the musical documentary Simonal: No One Knows How Tough It Was, about the "spectacular rise and infamous fall of the undisputed king of Brazilian popular music." From Colombia there's Ciro Guerra's The Wind Journeys, in which a man and teenage boy set off on a roadless road-trip to return a cursed accordion. I've watched this on screener and it's visually stunning. Usually we get a bunch of titles from Argentina in the festival, but this year there's only one. The Peddler documents the work of Daniel Burmeister, a traveling septuagenarian filmmaker who uses local amateur talent to create genre movies. Rounding out the South American roster is You Think You're the Prettiest, But You Are the Sluttiest, a Chilean comedy about the pitfalls of being young, horny and male.

While we may not have gotten Revolución, there are three other Mexican films in the SFIFF53 line-up, two of which I've previewed and heartily recommend. Roberto Hernandez and Geoffrey Smith's documentary Presumed Guilty is an exposé of the Mexican criminal justice systems that follows one young man's efforts to reverse a homicide conviction. In Rigoberto Perezcano's meditative feature Northless, a young man's determination to cross into El Norte gets waylaid by the female proprietor of a Tijuana grocery store. The film I haven't seen is Pedro González-Rubio's docu-fiction hybrid Alamar, in which a half-Mayan boy spends a final summer with his father and grandfather along the Caribbean coast. The film has won a slew of festival awards, most recently a Tiger at Rotterdam, and I'm saving it for a big-screen festival experience (the underwater cinematography is by Alexis Zabé, who also shot Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light and Fernando Eimbcke's Lake Tahoe).

OMFG! was the reaction I had to seeing two particular Asian titles in the line-up—and I'm using "Asian" here in its broadest geographical sense. In 2006 I was blown away by The Forsaken Land, a film by Sri Lankan director Vimukthi Jayasundara for which he won Cannes' Camera d'or for best first feature. I've had fingers and toes crossed that his new film Between Two Worlds would show up at our 3rd i South Asian Film Festival next fall, but I'm just as ecstatic to see it at the SF International. The other title that got a rise out of me is Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof's The White Meadows. Rasoulof directed the phenomenal Iron Island, which the fest screened in 2006. I won't even attempt to synopsize what these two allegorical films are "about". Just read the program capsules and prepare yourself for an other-worldly cinematic experience. A million thanks to the programmers for securing these. (Mohammad Rasoulof, by the way, was arrested and imprisoned in Tehran along with director Jafar Panahi on March 1 and released 17 days later).

There are a handful of other Asian films I'm looking forward to. In 2006, Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang made a big splash with Last Life in the Universe. His two follow-up films took a critical beating and never made it to our neck of the woods. Now he's made Nymph, which garnered mixed to favorable reviews, and I'm really pleased to have the chance to see it. One of the highlights of the 2005 SFIFF was a sidebar devoted to New Malaysian Cinema. One of the directors feted that year was Woo Ming-jin, and his new film called Woman on Fire Looks for Water has come our way. It's described as an "utterly gorgeous meditation on yearning and regret set amid a small fishing village." I caught Hirokazu Kore-eda's Air Doll, a wistful social comedy about a blow-up sex doll come to life, at Palm Springs. It's an inevitable disappointment coming on the heels of the director's undisputed masterpiece Still Walking, but is well worth seeing for the lead performance by bug-eyed South Korean star Bae Doo-Na (The Host, Linda Linda Linda). There are two more Iranian films I might catch if time allows. Nader Takmil Homayoun's Tehroun is a crime thriller set in Tehran's slums, while Babak Jalali's Frontier Blues is an absurdist portrait of life along Iran's northern frontier. Anyone with a penchant for star-studded Chinese historical epics probably won't want to miss Bodygyards and Assassins and Empire of Silver.

Finally, we have some films that don't fit in any of these geographic categories. The top prize winner at last year's Venice Film Festival was Samuel Maoz' Lebanon, a film set entirely inside an Israeli tank during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. SFIFF53 also has this year's Grand Jury Prize winner from Sundance, Debra Granik's Winter's Bone. Set in a poor rural Ozark community, a 17-year-old girl must find her meth-cooking father to keep from losing the family home. Ted Kotcheff's 1971 once-considered-lost Australian exploitation shocker Wake in Fright (Outback) has been restored and revived with the hope of appalling a new generation of moviegoers. 2008's Baghead finally sold me on the talents of the directing Duplass Brothers and the festival will be screening their latest Cyrus, starring Marisa Tomei and John C. Reilly. Another (truly) American indie film that's sounds promising is Tanya Hamilton's Night Catches Us, the story of an ex-Black Panther returning home to Philadelphia in the year of the bicentennial. Finally, it you're as freaked out about Colony Collapse Disorder as I am, you won't want to miss Ross McDonnell and Carter Gunn's documentary Colony.

Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.