TIFF 2011 / PSIFF 2012: MISS BALA / MISS BULLET (2011)

As one of Variety's "10 Directors to Watch", there's no denying that Gerardo Naranjo's chops are significantly maturing with each venture. Naranjo's crime thriller Miss Bala maximizes explosive action by way of impressive long shots, for example; but, as Adam Nayman has cogently summarized in Cinema Scope's (now legendary) pre-festival coverage for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF): "Miss Bala undoubtedly has a point to make: that the drug war, if you hadn't heard, is bad news. Throw in the fact that so much in Miss Bala feels like a demonstration of its maker's virtuosity, and you have a film that, while superficially totally of a piece—it's shapely, as they say, and filled with visual and dramatic rhymes—leaves a viewer feeling at odds. Naranjo's craft is to be admired, and, at least theoretically, so is his commitment to social critique. I worry, though, where those things—and the inevitable critical and possible commercial success of Miss Bala—might take him."

The film itself is something of a fractured fairy tale, which means of course that there's no happy ending or resolution to Naranjo's brutal portrait of corruption and culpability in the Mexican drug wars. Any woman catering to a fairy tale in this volatile environment is ... well ... a pendeja and deserves what she wishes for, which explains why Lars Von Trier has nothing on Gerardo Naranjo, who puts his lead actress Stephanie Sigman through one torturous trial after the other. It's to her character Laura's credit that she survives at all, which is nothing short of miraculous, if largely unbelievable and bordering on the ludicrous. In fact, her escape from one bad situation is a mere pretext to guide her into an even worse situation: from the frying pan into the fire and then onto the top broiling rack of a gas oven. I couldn't escape the feeling—as Nayman has hinted above—that Naranjo's exploration of the rampant violence in Mexico is less social commentary than thinly-guised and glamorized brutality. Is this really what audiences want to see in Mexican movies? Obviously so, since Miss Bala has now arrived in the Awards Buzz sidebar at the 23rd edition of the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) as Mexico's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards®. Clearly, box office is expressing its prurient "watch-her-burn" interests?

At MUBI, Dave Hudson has vigilantly rounded up the enthused reviews from Cannes where Miss Bala premiered in the Un Certain Regard section. MUBI's Cannes coverage includes festival dispatches from Marie-Pierre Duhamel and Daniel Kasman and a video "questionnaire" conducted by Kasman and Ryland Walker Knight. Hudson then monitored the film's dampening critical reception at TIFF and the New York Film Festival.

I caught the North American premiere of Miss Bala in TIFF's Contemporary World Cinema sidebar where it was introduced by its Canana producers Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna with director Naranjo and actress Sigman in attendance. Further—as it was the 10-year anniversary of 9/11—Miss Bala was preceded by a TIFF-produced short that recalled the role of the festival in ameliorating the shock at the time. Bernal recalled, "Ten years ago we were presenting a film here. The first time that we worked together. For those of you who don't remember, we had just won an award in Venice for Y Tu Mama Tambien. That was exactly 10 years ago. And as we know, stuff happened and the show had to be canceled on the 11th; but, we presented it on the 12th and it was a huge relief for everyone who was there in the cinema. We perhaps had one of the best and the most emotive projections of that movie. So we're incredibly happy to be here once again in Toronto presenting on September 11 as well a film that's relevant to our situation right now."

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.

* * *

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.

MEXICAN CINEMA—Backyard (El Traspatio, 2009)

"The voice of the woman is a reflection of her condition on Earth. Air echoes in a chest that is smaller, vibrates vocal cords that are smaller and that produce a higher, thinner sound. It requires twice the energy, twice the intensity of a man's voice to be heard. This is why I learned to shout for those who couldn't ... and to cry so many times for and with so many women, girls and boys whose voices and whose lives have been crushed by the impunity of our state and our nation."—Esther Chavez.

As detailed in the press book for Carlos Carerra's most recent feature Backyard (El Traspatio), the film's narrative is based on actual events that took place in 1996 in Ciudad Juárez: a Mexican border city sustained by American-owned factories, or maquiladoras, that sprang up on the Mexican side of the border after the NAFTA agreement went into effect. "1996 was the year when people on both sides of the border began to grow accustomed to the fact that every month or every week in Juárez, a young woman would turn up dead. The screenplay was written in the year 2001 as the murders continued: three or four bodies appeared like clockwork every month, while the author [Sabina Berman] was writing her screenplay in the local Holiday Inn. Backyard was filmed on location in 2008, when each week murdered women continued to appear—in keeping with what is now a local Juárez custom."

As Diana Sanchez specified in her program capsule for the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival (where Backyard saw its international premiere in the Contemporary World Cinema sidebar): "This ongoing tragedy remains a painful stain on Mexican history and has been the subject of numerous films, articles and books", including the 2006 Jennifer Lopez vehicle Bordertown and Lourdes Portillo's 2001 documentary Señorita extraviada (Missing Young Woman), in which Portillo sought to give voice to the many victims and to understand how these awful crimes could take place. In her onstage interview with Variety critic John Anderson at the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival, Portillo detailed the death threats she received after making Señorita extraviada and the debilitating effect it had on her.

Similar threats were levied at the cast and crew of Backyard, as outlined in Guy Adam's report to The Independent: "Last year, the makers of … El Traspatio (The Backyard) reported that an actress from Ciudad Juárez, where they were shooting, had found a slaughtered lamb on her doorstep, with a death threat pinned to it. She was replaced, for her own safety. Several other crew members on the film, about local drug murders, reported receiving sinister anonymous phone calls." Carrera's crew shot their film surrounded by two bands of armed men. One of these rings was formed by agents from the government Division of Investigation Specializing in Organized Crime (SIEDO), the other by soldiers with rifles. Two police commanders assigned to security duty were slain and a third had to flee in fear of her life. Although the governments of Juárez and Mexico ultimately decided to provide protection to Carrera and his film crew, they first tried to dissuade Carrera from the project, hoping he would instead shoot a romantic comedy in Cancun; but, Carrera and Berman remained committed to the subject of femicide in Juárez. As reported by Tracy Wilkinson to the Los Angeles Times, "Local government officials do not come off well in the film, having often preferred to downplay the murders of easily replaced female factory workers in order to prop up business interests."

Perhaps best known for El crimen del Padre Amaro (2002), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Carlos Carrera is expected to attend Backyard's screening at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF), where it has been included in PSIFF's Modern Masters sidebar. Backyard is likewise Mexico's entry this year in the Academy Awards® foreign-language film category.

As Diana Sanchez has written: "Presented as a fiction, Carrera's film is all the more moving given that the events he recounts are based on true stories and touch upon the various theories that have been put forward as to the cause of the murders. Hypotheses range from a serial killer, to drug cartels, to the more abstract pains of globalization, and it is easy to see how any of these factors could be at work in this Mexican town, which is a backyard to El Paso, Texas. Through his film, Carrera is able to denounce culprits who have never been brought to justice. However, the most devastating truth he illuminates is that these murders continue to happen because they have become commonplace. Today, some men kill women in Ciudad Juárez simply because they can."

The topic of femicide is unquestionably important and Backyard aims its statistics of sex-related murders from other Mexican cities and other South American countries with stern verve, pointedly wrapping up with sobering statistics from New York City where 3,200 murders of women remain unsolved. A worldwide issue, femicide is clearly not exclusive to Juárez; yet—though conceding the necessity of keeping the issue in public focus to counter its statistical frequency—I have mixed feelings about Backyard. Though it has high production values, with a strong turn by Ana de la Reguera in the lead role of Police Captain Blanca Bravo, I have substantive concerns with Berman's script which—though it informs through dramatization—offers questionable solutions, primarily through a revenge scenario towards film's end that has been both applauded and deplored by audiences. Though Berman has defended her scriptural choice as morally unambiguous, it remains excessively dramatic and—oddly enough—counterproductive. As Marilyn Ferdinand opines at Ferdy on Films, the dramatic violence of the subject scene provides the audience cathartic relief from their frustration but possibly sends them home "without really taking the message of the film to heart." In this instance, cathartic release falls far short of viable solutions. It's too easy to kill the killer and be done with it. Not to say that Berman should pretend she has solutions, but at the same time she shouldn't really defuse their absence through compounded violence. Acknowledging that the wall of indifference and denial in Mexican society is a horrible problem, there's a defeatist edge to Berman's vision: "We can't solve it," she said to the L.A. Times, "let's change the subject." I'm not criticizing her defeatism. I think it's a healthy and honest response. I'm not so sure, however, about her dramatized solutions which offer false remedy.

Ferdinand does a solid job of synopsizing Berman's narrative and endorsing the "important message of this grave film", even as she stages a cogent complaint that despite Carrera's disclaimer that Backyard is not intended as "entertainment" certain "touches—particularly the attractive lady detective in the Law & Order mold—are right out of the Hollywood play book." Ferdinand's concern that reviews that read and critique Backyard as a thriller "underplay or ignore its message—a rather chilling commentary on how even the most hideous violence against women has so completely infiltrated the entertainment industry." Again, no solutions appear ready to present themselves. For now, a sober eye on the information is in order.

Cross-published on Twitch.

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.