PSIFF 2014: LATINBEAT

The concept of the national cinema and its symbiotic relationship with the programming of an international film festival is seamlessly administered in the 25th edition of the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF). Although this edition's national spotlight focuses on Canadian cinema, PSIFF continues to advance films from Spain, Mexico, Central America, and South America. Incorporated into its various sidebars, this selection of 23 Spanish (and Portuguese)-language titles unofficially constitutes a spotlight of its own, representing films from eight countries: seven from Spain, six from Mexico, and the remainder from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay. What follows is a blend of PSIFF capsules and critical overview.

Anina (dir. Alfredo Soderguit, Uruguay, 2013)—Soderguit based his animated film on a popular children's book by Sergio López Suárez, which he illustrated. He went against the current trend of slick, digital, 3D animation—instead employing a sweetly handcrafted, pencil-and-watercolor visual style. Audience award winner at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (where it was described as having "the homemade flavor of a warm and happy afternoon tea on a rainy day," Anina was chosen as Uruguay's official Best Foreign Language Film submission for the 86th Academy Awards®. Official site. IMDb. Wikipedia.

At Indiewire, Carlos Aguilar concurs that Anina is "a ray of light" coming directly from South America "to reignite the flame of traditional animation." He praises: "Few animated films can convey a classic tale with a message about family and friendship packed with intelligent humor … Soderguit's film is lively, witty, and full of heart […] Destined to become a classic."

Costa de Morte / Coast of Death (Lois Patiño, Spain, 2013)—Winner of the Best Emerging Director at the Locarno Film Festival, Lois Patiño directed, shot and edited this debut feature, an experimental documentary billed by PSIFF as a gorgeous and magical film about the people, land and sea that make up this special place in the far northwest region of Galicia, Spain. Costa de Morte has already sold out both of its scheduled screenings. Official site. IMDb.

At Nonfics, Daniel Walber describes Costa da Morte as "a starkly beautiful documentary about nature's troubled relationship with mankind, set on the rough coast of Northeastern Spain. Director Lois Patiño transcends the typical fare of this genre with an inspired device that splits the audience's perspective between the landscape and its people." Walber observes that the "governing style of the film, present[s] the inhabitants of Galicia as tiny figures surrounded by the towering beauty of their environment" but that Patiño allows the audience to hear what these Galicians are saying, no matter how distant. "With this device," Walber concludes, "Patiño can play with the relationship between Galicia and the Galicians. …The people are in the landscape and the landscape is in the people, and Costa da Morte is a beautifully crafted exploration of this simultaneity. And while it enmeshes itself in the particular topography of Galicia, it's hard to imagine a place that wouldn't have some relationship with this same natural dialog."

Wakolda / The German Doctor (Lucía Puenzo, Argentina, 2013)—Director Lucía Puenzo won a berth in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival for this, her third film, which she adapted from her own speculative novel. The film was selected as the Argentine entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards®. Àlex Brendemühl is quietly terrifying in the lead role as the infamous Nazi war criminal Joseph Mengele who takes a genetic interest in the undersized daughter of his innkeeper host. Cinematographer Nicolás Puenzo takes full advantage of evocative landscapes and the unique, Alpine character of the remote town of Bariloche. Official site. IMDb. Wikipedia. Facebook [Spanish].

Winner of nine awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Argentina, including Best Director, The Hollywood Reporter's Deborah Young characterizes Wakolda as "a chilling, original tale" and "a creepy story with a lot of morbid fascination, set off by the captivating young Florencia Bado in her first screen role." At Screen International, Mark Adams notes: "Puenzo's fascination with the period and the Argentinean government opening its doors to many Nazi is evident as she impressively crafts an atmosphere of secrecy and mistrust in amongst the German-speaking community, some of whom clearly have deep, dark secrets." At Filmmaker, Chuck Tryon furthers: "Wakolda uses one family's experience to explore Argentina's complicated past, in which many families and communities were complicit with hiding Nazi war criminals like Mengele." Extended critical commentary has been gathered by David Hudson at Fandor's Keyframe Daily.

Gloria (Sebastián Lelio, Chile, 2013)—Sebastián Lelio's Gloria is a touchingly detailed and intimate look at a divorced, middle-aged Chilean woman's quest to navigate the dating world and find romance. Lelio finds gentle humor in Gloria's awkward maneuvers in a mundane dance bar, and the story takes a sharp turn when she gets involved with Rodolfo, a wealthy older man. His affection helps her in the process of letting go of her grown-up children, who are becoming increasingly distant. But Rodolfo's unhealthy relationship with his own adult daughters becomes a burden on their budding relationship. Winner of multiple awards at the Berlin Film Festival, Gloria features an unforgettable performance by Paulina García, who conveys the strength and vulnerability of a woman who's not afraid to give of herself. It's a refreshingly raw and candid look into the heart of the kind of compelling character that's too often overlooked in mainstream films. The film was selected as Chile's official Best Foreign Language Film submission for the 86th Academy Awards®. IMDb. Wikipedia. Facebook [Spanish].

At Variety, Jay Weissberg describes Gloria as "pitch perfect", "terrifically written", "perceptive" and "unerringly sympathetic." He offers two keen observations. He aligns the film's use of Tom Jobim's classic "Aguas de Marco (Waters of March)" with the film's essential rejection of sentimentalism. Just as "Aguas de Marco" descends in its rhythms to locate core emotions, it satisfyingly honors that promise. "Lelio's thoroughgoing understanding of music's function, how it consoles but most of all elides with mood," Weissberg asserts, "is matched by his sensitivity to Gloria's search." In further praise of the director, Weissberg writes: "Ever since his debut with The Sacred Family, Lelio has been exploring what he's referred to as 'family as a sacred trap,' and he remains just as concerned with this dynamic of obligation and restraint, and the individual's sense of self within that necessary constriction." David Rooney's bottom line at The Hollywood Reporter: "Funny, melancholy and ultimately uplifting, Sebastián Lelio's enormously satisfying spell inside the head and heart of a middle-aged woman never puts a foot wrong." At The Flickering Wall, Jorge Mourinha suggests: "Most modern Latin American cinema seems to carry within it the memory and seed of the region's political turmoil throughout the second half of the 20th century, waiting to be unleashed whether directly or metaphorically—and Gloria is produced by Pablo Larraín, whose own work as a director has been rooted in Chile's recent and tragic history." David Hudson has gathered much more at Fandor's Keyframe Daily.

A Ras Del Cielo / Grazing the Sky (Horacio Alcalá, Spain, 2013)—Grazing the Sky takes a revealing look at the incredible physical exploits of circus acrobats, and finds compelling stories of men and women confronting adversity—including the real risk of severe, debilitating injury. The price of life in the limelight includes years of study and practice, an iron discipline, an ongoing commitment to learning new skills, and constant travel far from home.

Director Horacio Alcalá follows eight different acrobats from all over the world, intercutting interviews with artfully staged footage of his subjects performing breathtaking feats with poise and grace. Alcalá—who has been involved with the circus arts for seven years, including with Cirque du Soleil—travelled to 11 different countries over the course of five years to capture these stories. He finds a new reality where aspiring circus performers can learn their craft in specialized schools rather than through family apprenticeships. The trapeze becomes a metaphor for life ambitions, given contrast and poignancy by the ever-present risk of a fall. Vimeo trailer. Official site.

Heli (Amat Escalante, Mexico, 2013)—Amat Escalante, winner of the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, has hammered out a gripping, brutal film about a well-meaning, naïve, impoverished family visited by shocking, ugly violence; more collateral damage in the devastating drug trade. IMDb. Wikipedia.

I defer to David Hudson's comprehensive aggregation of critical commentary at Fandor's Keyframe Daily. Also at Fandor, Anna Tatarska's interview with Escalante.

Ignasi M. (Ventura Pons, Spain, 2013)—A window into the heart, mind and psyche of museum expert Ignasi Millet, Pons' documentary reveals a refreshingly fearless and thoughtful character and a bubbling source of wisdom, humor and self-acceptance with a clear-eyed and joyful approach to life. IMDb.

La Jaula De Oro / The Gilded Cage aka The Golden Dream (Diego Quemada-Diéz, Mexico, 2013)—In his ambitious debut feature, director Quemada-Diéz brings a gritty, near-documentary realism and social conscience to a story about the excitement and horror young Central American migrants regularly face. Quemada-Diéz—a camera assistant to Ken Loach on films like Carla's Song and Land and Freedom—captures his characters' youthful sense of adventure as they pursue a dream that may not be all that it seems. The remarkable cast of untrained actors won a special prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. Official site. The Evening Class video of the Q&A session at the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM). Official site. IMDb. Wikipedia.

David Hudson does the honors of gathering up the critical response for Fandor's Keyframe Daily.

Tercera Llamada / Last Call (Mexico, Francisco Franco, 2013)—Winner of multiple prizes, including the audience award, at the Guadalajara International Film Festival, Last Call is the kind of character-driven comedy that recalls the early films of Almodóvar. Anchored by a captivating performance by Karina Gidi as the director of a Mexican theater company, the hilarious cast features a range of top-level Mexican actors, including rising star Irene Azuela (Miss Bala) and the legendary Silvia Pinal, who worked with Buñuel on classics like Viridiana and Exterminating Angel. Official site. IMDb. Facebook [Spanish].

At The Hollywood Reporter, Jonathan Holland's bottom line: "The performances are bigger than the movie itself in this sprightly, slick homage to the high-strung world of grease paint and pancake."

Vivir es fácil con los ojos cerrados / Living is easy with eyes closed (David Trueba, Spain, 2013)—"Living is easy with eyes closed," from Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever", evokes both the spirit of the '60s and the mood of this film, which is both a lively review of a sad past and a positive road movie set during a time in Spanish history when dreams seemed impossible. IMDb.

"This small gem," Stephen Farber writes at The Hollywood Reporter, "offers a lovely evocation of Spain as well as a touching tribute to an unforgettable moment in time when the Beatles seemed to offer brand new possibilities, the idea that strawberry fields might indeed go on forever." At Screen Daily, Fionnuala Halligan adds: "David Trueba's film uses [John Lennon's] 1966 visit to Spain, when he shot a film in Almeria, considered leaving The Beatles, and started composing the song, as a backdrop to a tender, comedic, coming-of-age story which bristles with poignant references to the lingering effects of Spain's dictatorship." At The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw comments: "It is an era at once more innocent than the present—and yet much more guilty. Franco-era Spain emerges from the movie as a parochial, reactionary, bullying place where young people had their spirit crushed."

Sólo Con Tu Pareja / Love in the Time of Hysteria (Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico, 1991)—A highlight of PSIFF's 1992 New Directors Showcase, this giddy bedroom farce was the first film by the director / writer who went on to make Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and this year's huge worldwide hit, Gravity. It returns to PSIFF as part of their 25th Anniversary sidebar. IMDb. Wikipedia.

El Árbol Magnetico / The Magnetic Tree (Isabel Ayguavives, Spain, 2013)—Winner of awards at the Valdivia International Film Festival and Madridimagen, The Magnetic Tree is Isabel de Ayguavives' debut feature film after her success with a series of shorts that played at major festivals worldwide. She brings a heartfelt, personal touch to a film that captures the specific textures of family interactions, and she finds patterns of dialogue that reveal emotional subtexts even as they strain to avoid them. IMDb.

"Lively and intimate," Jonathan Holland writes at The Hollywood Reporter, "it's a film made by someone whose interest in and compassion for her people is deep and forgiving."

El Mudo / The Mute (Daniel Vega, Peru, 2013)—A standout of the Locarno Film Festival, where lead actor Fernando Bacilio was named Best Actor, The Mute takes a wise and humorous look at endemic corruption. Directors Daniel and Diego Vega employ a playful aesthetic, in which precise framing and deadpan editing heighten a wonderfully dry comedic sensibility. They show how a justice system that lacks perspective and compassion is as much out of balance as the rudderless society it attempts to regulate. Official site. IMDb. Wikipedia.

At Fandor's Keyframe Daily, David Hudson has rounded up reviews for El Mudo from both the Locarno and Toronto film festivals.

Purgatorio: Viaje al Corazon de la Frontera / Purgatorio (Rodrigo Reyes, Mexico, 2013)—In this fresh look at the harsh realities of the border between the USA and Mexico, director Rodrigo Reyes chooses not to editorialize; instead he gives a voice to the people who live in a kind of purgatory in the shadow of the fence. He talks to Mexicans who dream of crossing over and others who have lost all hope. He talks to an American pastor who leaves water for migrants in the desert, a Minuteman who works to stop them, and a coroner who's left to deal with often-unidentifiable bodies. Reyes and DP Justin Chin find a stark poetry in the physical form of the fence itself, and powerful images of its influence on nearby communities (principally in the vicinity of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts). Official site. IMDb.

At Variety, Andrew Barker writes: "A searing, horrifying, at times starkly beautiful documentary. Brilliantly photographed, this is a strikingly assured work [...] offering an impressionistic ground-level view of the simmering humanitarian crisis occurring just outside, and often within, American borders." At Slant, Oscar Moralde warns against the film's visceral brutality but offers: "The imagery that the film deploys is striking, especially in the way that it constructs la frontera as a postlapsarian space, where idyllic apolitical nature has been obliterated and replaced by a pulsing psychic wound. The borderlands are depicted as wastes in which both oppressive government authority and anarchic violence suffuse the landscape, and that perhaps the fears and anxieties that so energized the narratives of the western haven't disappeared, but simply crystallized and mutated along a dividing line." At Plume Noir, Fred Thom advises straight off: "One thing you should know before watching Rodrigo Reyes' documentary is that it isn't an objective work. Rather this is a meditative piece designed to make us experience the filmmaker's personal feelings about the Mexican border."

Mujer Conejo / Rabbit Woman (Verónica Chen, Argentina, 2013)—Award-winning director Verónica Chen boldly mixes animated sequences with live action, bringing an element of magical realism to this taut thriller. She gives her film a vivid sense of place, casting light onto the rarely seen Chinese subculture in Buenos Aires, and deftly weaves in a subplot about human trafficking. Newcomer Haien Qiu turns in a forceful, layered performance as Ana, a beautiful but tough civil servant who's disconnected from her heritage and paralyzed by ambivalence in her romantic relationship. Official site. IMDb.

Flores Raras / Reaching for the Moon (Bruno Barreto, Brazil, 2013)—Winner of audience awards at the Outfest and Frameline film festivals, Reaching for the Moon is driven by commanding, intensely emotional performances from Miranda Otto and telenovela superstar Glória Pires, sensitive direction from acclaimed Brazilian director Bruno Barreto, and lovely photography of Rio's lush countryside. Official site. IMDb. Wikipedia. Facebook.

Writes Guy Lodge at Variety: "The very private American poet Elizabeth Bishop was famously opposed to the confessional style favored by her peers: 'Art just isn't worth that much,' she once wrote to her friend Robert Lowell. It's not damning, then, to say she'd have been mortified by Bruno Barreto's intimate, affecting, somewhat lumpily paced biopic, which focuses chiefly on Bishop's 15-year lesbian relationship with headstrong Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares. Boasting intelligent performances by Miranda Otto and Glória Pires as the chalk-and-cheese lovers, attractively mounted pic could please older upscale auds, while also working the more genteel end of the LGBT fest circuit." Deborah Young's bottom line for The Hollywood Reporter: "An exotic love story becomes an empowering portrait of two highly gifted women who defy social convention." Conceding that the strength of Reaching For the Moon is in the strong—and very different—performances from Miranda Otto and Glória Pires, Mark Adams at Screen Daily nonetheless finds Reaching a "resolutely melodramatic film that feels engagingly old-fashioned as it revels in its lesbian love-triangle storyline." At Slant, Diego Costa pulls no punches: "Sociologist Gilberto Vasconcellos once wrote that Brazil is a country of illiterate folk where 'what isn't television has no cultural value.' One single network, Globo, monopolizes most of the country's TV programming and film production. The fact that Globo's idea of high quality involves blatantly imitating American TV and film's most familiar clichés might explain why so much of Brazilian cinema feels so soullessly glossy. This is true for Reaching for the Moon, which Globo co-produced. The mimicry of a Brazilian fantasy of what constitutes a perfectly crafted American movie, neutered of all experimentation, reduces Bishop's story to one-dimensional subject matter in the service of another project: appropriating the most orthodox way of making movies in the hopes of selling it back to the Americans as Oscar bait."

Roa (Andrés Baiz, Colombia, 2013)—This lovingly crafted period piece opened the most recent Cartagena Film Festival and PSIFF is hosting its U.S. premiere. It weaves a skillful tapestry of historical fact and creative speculation; the film's re-creation of 1940s Bogotà is both stylish and precise. Roa delves into one of the great unsolved mysteries of Colombian history—the assassination of populist leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948. The film centers on Juan Roa Sierra, the presumptive murderer. Mauricio Puente, a virtual unknown, turns in a spectacularly layered and authentic performance in the challenging lead role, conveying the complex psychology behind his character's madness. IMDb. Facebook [Spanish].

Raíz / Root (Matías Rojas Valencia, Chile, 2013)—Premiering at the prestigious San Sebastián International Film Festival and going on to take a top award at Valdivia, Root is an assured debut feature from writer-director Matías Rojas Valencia that is boasting its North American premiere at PSIFF. Valencia seamlessly incorporates documentary elements to give a human face to the problematic issue of Chile's impoverished indigenous people and draws impressive performances from actors and non-actors alike, achieving a powerful dramatic impact with a restrained style. Facebook [Spanish].

Mar adentro / The Sea Inside (Alejandro Amenábar, Spain, 2004)—Winner of PSIFF's 2005 Audience Award and that year's Oscar® for best Foreign Language Film, this gorgeously evocative tale of a man who fought a 30-year battle for his right to end his own life brought equal acclaim for its magnificent central performance by Javier Bardem. Featured in PSIFF's 25-year anniversary sidebar. IMDb. Wikipedia.

Las Búsquedas / The Searches (José Luis Valle, Mexico, 2013)—The North American premiere of The Searches is the second feature from director José Luis Valle, whose debut Workers premiered at the 2013 Berlinale and won Best Mexican Feature at Guadalajara. For The Searches, Valle assembled a cast of top Mexican stars including Arcélia Ramirez, Gabino Rodríguez and Gustavo Sánchez Parra. With a lovely visual economy (and an economy of means—incredibly, the film was shot in a mere seven days with a four-person crew), Valle brings to the screen some of the most intriguing and touching scenes of any film this year. IMDb.

El Verano de los Peces Voladores / The Summer of Flying Fish (Marcela Said, Chile, 2013)—Director Marcela Said, already an accomplished documentarian, won a berth in the prestigious Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes for this, her first narrative feature. With bold, wide-angle compositions she eloquently conveys the relationship of her characters to the land. Her restrained script, co-written with Julio Rojas, conveys in subtext the subtleties of modern economic colonialism and the complicated relationship between the Mapuche and the wealthy white landowners—then builds to a chilling finale. Official site. IMDb. Wikipedia.

At The Hollywood Reporter, Stephen Dalton—despite finding this drama "atmospheric"—criticizes: "The story is shot through with class and racial friction, but falls short of the angry social polemic or politically charged horror movie hinted at in its pressure-cooker mood and creepy backwoods setting. …After building up a powerful sense of creeping dread and imminent disaster, The Summer of Flying Fish never quite galvanizes itself into a concrete narrative. Instead it settles into a series of impressionistic tableaux, leaving viewers to infer rather too much from thinly sketched characters and obscure motivations. This is disappointing as Said and her cinematographer Inti Briones clearly share a strong visual eye and a subtle mastery of unsettling mood."

Tatuagem / Tattoo (Hilton Lacerda, Brazil, 2013)—The Brazilian military dictatorship lasted more than 20 years, from 1964 to 1985, and withstood several waves of youthful rebellion, usually by cracking down hard on any cultural movement that threatened to get out of hand (in 1969, for example, singer-songwriters Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso were imprisoned and subsequently went into exile). By the mid 1970s it was possible for an anarchist theatre group to exist and put on subversive, gay, avant-garde cabaret shows, just so long as it stayed underground and criticism of the military remained implicit. …Hilton Lacerda's debut [in its North American premiere] is both a colorful time capsule and a potent drama that has earned comparisons to the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Winner of the FIPRESCI and Special Jury prizes at the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, along with Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor honors. Also winner of Best Film, Best Actor and Best Music at the Gramado Film Festival. Official site. IMDb.

15 años y un día / 15 Years and One Day (Gracia Querejeta, Spain, 2013)—PSIFF hosts the U.S. premiere of Spain's official submission to the Foreign Language category of the Academy Awards®. Directed with great sensitivity, the film boasts a stellar cast including the always wonderful Maribel Verdú, and Arón Piper who gives a breakout performance in the lead role. 15 Years and One Day is dedicated to the director's father, the great film producer Elias Querejeta, who died last June. Official site. IMDb. Wikipedia.

LISTS: My 10 Favorite Conversations For 2013

Any kind of love transforms over time, especially a love for film. Several elements of that transformation have become clear to me within this past year. I've let go all pretensions of being a film critic, particularly a front line reviewer, as the acumen required for such a task exceeds the irresponsible disregard I prefer as a committed film enthusiast. Silence remains the best critique I have for a film (and I have been silent on oh so many films this year), whereas finding a poetic phrase to capture the pleasurable experience of a film fulfills my spectatorial, if not critical, intent. Critic, enthusiast; one a kind of tough love, and the other an embrace of sorts. I maintain that all reactions, written as well as possible, contribute just what they are to just what this is. Perhaps not more but notably not less.

So just what is this everchanging medium? This so-called seventh art? At a holiday dinner the other night I expressed the lack of pleasure I feel in watching so many of the films that are coming out commercially, released wave after wave in purposeful barrage. I walk out of theaters dazzled, titillated, shocked, and confronted by technical efficiency and wizardry, stunned by effects that render my imagination more and more passive, desirous of performers that become increasingly buffed up and botoxed year after year, appreciative of a narrative twist in the tale here and there. And yet by the time I reach the front door of the theater, whatever catharsis has been manufactured dissipates. Sometimes I don't even make it past the lobby before it's gone. I'm left with a nagging feeling of not having been satisfied by the in-cinema experience, so I'll go home to my streaming services—Netflix, Vudu, Hulu Plus, Warner Brothers Archive—and find some effort from the '70s and '80s to satisfy my lingering hunger.

Were the films better made back then? Were the stories more interesting? Were the actors braver in their performance choices? Or is my pleasure simply that I don't have to do anything about watching an older film? Is that it? Is the pleasure that I don't have to argue the merits of a theatrical release with a 1000 other bloggers who want to be the first to foist their opinion, but whose foisted opinions remind me of those attacking antibodies that wrapped themselves around Raquel Welch to smother her in Fantastic Voyage (1966)? Do too many opinions too fast kill the movies we love? Probably not. Does critical consensus calcify our choices? Probably not. Still, I continue to resist year-end lists of the best and worst, only because they are neither, and because they are boring for circulating the same five films ad nauseum. Reduction as a process of achieving the best has long struck me as an overrated alchemical collusion with the studios. I'd rather abandon the best and pursue my favorites in an ever expansive pursuit. Part of my enthusiasm for film insists upon giving props to those projects that won't make it within 20 feet of the duly annointed, like those back-up singers who negotiate stardom (one of my favorite, most pleasurable films of the year, incidentally). For me, escaping consensus is more interesting because, face it, I was never one of the popular kids, their concerns were never mine, and probably never will be.

So whereas the hundreds of movies that come out each year resemble a catch of fish released on the deck of a trawler, a kind of Leviathan horror, with critics keening like seagulls after a bit of blood and gut, I turn and catch my footing to face the personalities that populate this ongoing haul. Because that's where I am truly fascinated. The people behind film—who make them, write them, edit them, star in them, create effects and music and light, who distribute them, program them, beat the drum about them, and stand in line for them—this is, for me, my favorite part of the whole fishing expedition. "Fishing for a good time," says the old Tom Waits tune, "starts with throwing in your line" and that's how I feel each time I approach someone for a conversation. Because that's another distinction that has become clear to me over time. I'm not interested in interviews anymore; but, I pursue conversations. Here are ten of my favorites from 2013.

* * *

Anita Monga. Shifting away from the San Francisco Bay Area brought into focus all the City meant to me in the three decades I lived there, particularly those early years when I answered the beacon sent out over the States to come to the City to create and become myself. Diversions seemed more important than goals back in the mid-'70s, and they were easily found at the multitude of repertory theaters cast around each of San Francisco's neighborhoods. What can I say? I took these movie theaters totally for granted until they started disappearing one by one, such that now I am keenly aware of having participated in something that no longer exists, sentimental and nostalgic by default, and eager to capture that history before it recedes much further. Likewise, inspired by the Film Festival Yearbook publication on archival film festivals, I felt compelled to investigate the transmigration of repertory programming into archival film festivals within San Francisco's cinematic landscape.

As with any thriving cultural scene, there were key players, Anita Monga being foremost among them. I had been wanting to sit down to converse with Anita for a long time but she's been fairly evasive over the years. Thus, I was delighted that Karen Larsen arranged our conversation to discuss the Silent Film Festival's "Silent Winter" program. And am even more delighted, after the fact, to congratulate Anita for being inducted this year into the San Francisco Film Society's "Essential SF" roster of honorees. Well-deserved and long overdue.

My favorite quote of Anita's from our conversation: "My approach was to put together the most interesting programs and plumb the kind of history of films for ones that I felt people needed to see to be—I never thought of this as an educational process, but—there are films that people need to see. Everyone needs to see Citizen Kane. To be a well-rounded human being, and to understand Western culture, you need to see certain films, as well as read certain books. So I guess that was my approach. I don't mean to sound like I was thinking didactically at the time; but, definitely for me it was a process of sharing films with people."

Elliot Lavine. Is there a year that goes by where a conversation with Elliot Lavine is not one of my favorite conversations of the year? This gregarious raconteur has kept me entertained over a cup of coffee hours at a time. Eager to include him in my research on repertory programming and archival film festivals, and to discuss his most recent pre-Code program at the Roxie Theater--"Hollywood Before the Code: Deeper, Darker, Nastier!!"--Elliot and I met at Valencia's Four Barrel. My thanks to Susie Gerhard and Fandor's Keyframe for promoting our conversation.

My favorite quote of Elliot's: "In terms of the archival festival and its obligation to its audience, it's a strong obligation. Yet it's not a fundamentally necessary obligation. I'm of the belief that people should be willing to discover these films. They shouldn't necessarily be led to them, as if to say, 'This is good for you and you must come to take notes and study it and think about it and discuss it with your friends afterwards.' I would rather avoid that. Even though I teach film classes, what I try to impress upon my students is, 'Let your eyes do the work for you. Don't worry about meaning and subtext until later after you've had a chance to absorb your experience of the film. Some of these films will have no meaning for you whatsoever. And some of the least suspecting films are going to change your lives. Some little B-movie from 1939 is going to make you reappraise everything you've thought about art, whereas you're going to sit through some acknowledged classic and fall asleep.' So I would rather not be put in the position of educating audiences about film."

Joel Shepard. Champion of the thriving film scene in the Philippines, Joel Shepard has brought the best from that country two years running and with a third edition on the horizon. Ever interested in national cinemas, I welcomed the opportunity to talk to Joel about his latest programming coup.

My favorite quote of Joel's: "I've always been a little bit uncomfortable with the term 'curator', which seems to me to be a term that comes more from the visual arts of the museum and gallery worlds. I've never been sure exactly how it fits in to film. To be honest, it's always struck me as a little pretentious."

Rola Nashef. I had several excellent conversations at the second annual International Film Festival in Panama: most notably, with the festival's fêted guest Geraldine Chaplin; Ben Lewin, director of The Sessions; and Rodrigo H. Vila and Fabian Matus for Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America. Those have all been pitched and are awaiting publication; but, one of my favorite conversations was with first-time filmmaker Rola Nashef who brought Detroit Unleaded to Panama and, in the process, became a friend. Charming, hilarious, and a bright brave spirit, I transcribed our conversation to time with the film's L.A. premiere.

My favorite quote of Rola's: "I've been receiving emails from young Arab American women who have only seen the trailer and tell me, 'I can't believe this movie exists.' I know that when I was growing up, I never saw anyone that looked like me, or any family that looked like mine, or representation of any of the issues I was dealing with, and—if they were—the representations were completely racist. It was a twofold phenomenon: we were either completely missing or completely bombarded with negative and racist imagery. So where was everybody inbetween? My absolute 'favorite' is the apologetic explanation for terrorist images. 'No, no, no, we're perfect. We are pious and religious and perfect people.' That's boring! Nobody's perfect."

Ted Hope. His short-lived term as Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society nonetheless produced one of my favorite events of the year: the A2E (Artist to Entrepeneur) Direct Distribution Lab, held during the 56th edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival.  I'm grateful to Bill Proctor for setting up this conversation and to Susie Gerhard for promoting the piece on Fandor's Keyframe.

My favorite quote of Ted's: "The important thing for creative people to recognize is that the business of filmmaking is one of relationship with their community. Previously, we saw our business as that work product, generally the feature film, not the relationship of it. As a result, we reinvented the wheel time and time again. We built up the same audience each time that we did it, whether it was our own films, or films of a similar nature. We did not maintain—or even give room to participate—for folks from the outside world; but, the goal I think is that ultimately communities take responsibility for the things that they want. What that means is we move from being a passive consumer culture to an active participatory culture where part of being a community is also being a patron of the things that you care about, whether it's in the film space or any other cultural / societal / social enterprise. We have to make the things that we want happen. We can't wait for them to arrive. The beauty of the era we're living in is that we actually now have the tools, the connectability, to actually make what we want happen. If you want this movie that you love to be seen in Thailand, your enthusiasm and passion with a little bit of effort can make that happen. That bridge that you built now can be reinforced and used by a whole bunch of folks. Soon those friends of yours in Thailand are seeing a flow of the movies they were denied before."

Rama Burshstein and Hadas Yaron. I met with both Rama Burshstein and Hadas Yaron in San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel during the 56th edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival where Burshstein's film Fill the Void was featured in the festival's New Directors sidebar. Fill the Void was an intimate glimpse into an unfamiliar culture, which remains one of the main reasons I watch film. My thanks to Karen Larsen for facilitating our conversation.

My favorite quote of Rama's: "I'll speak freely, having sex with someone is about that specific time you're having sex with someone. But having sex is a lifetime thing. Sometimes it's nothing and it doesn't work. Sometimes it's beautiful. The way it works doesn't necessarily have to be beautiful and then it doesn't work. Sometimes it doesn't work in the beginning and it becomes beautiful. When you commit, it's not about now. That commitment is to the road, and that road has so many things that nobody's leaving. Nobody's going. Nobody's wondering, 'Oh, will he call me tomorrow after we've had bad sex?' No. You have bad sex and then you work on it until you have good sex. Commitment revives love, but not in just a romantic way. Commitment doesn't let love go. You work at it. You understand it. You make it better. Imagine you're stranded on an island until the day you die and no one is ever going to rescue you, and you're there with someone. It doesn't matter who that someone is. They will be lover and friend for your life, you and him, that's it. Even the genders don't really matter—you could be homosexual: a man with a man, a woman with a woman—or a man with a woman, but that's the person you have to work with. And it will work, right? Because that's the power of commitment. But I can understand the fear of commitment."

Ulrich Seidl. My conversation with the fascinating Ulrich Seidl was brought to me by Marcus Hu of Strand Releasing who invited me to speak with Seidl. Nothing confirms my worth as a writer more than having a champion like Marcus who believes in my work, and I am grateful to him for his trust. I was excited by the opportunity because I had long wanted to pursue a line of inquiry with Seidl regarding the painterly in film composition.

My favorite quote of Ulrich's: "My visual style was present from the very beginning with my first film. At the same time, my interest in film developed only after my initial interest in painting and photography. The environment is important to me and that's why it's so present in my films because the environment says a lot about the protagonists moving through it. Over the years I've been able to perfect my tableau images to create a more concise answer to the questions I have about the world. My films are a product of two different elements. The first is so-called documentary film, which remains for me the way you capture things as they happen, but which also allows a lot of room for chance. The other element is a more artificial and artistic element. Much like a painter composing a painting, I am able to make choices about the decoration and the lighting."

Photo: Matthew Wordell

Joel Nagle and Amadeus Serafini. As I like to balance international film making with regional film making, living part-time in Idaho affords the opportunity to discover local projects with national and/or international potential. One of those would be Smoke, a short film directed by Cody Gittings and Stephen Heleker adapted from Alan Heathcock's short story of the same name. The film was shot this summer in Idaho and I am grateful to Heathcock for inviting me to the wrap party to have the chance to converse with the film's two lead actors. Smoke is currently submitting to film festivals and I'm crossing my fingers that the project is recognized and sent on circuit.

A favorite quote from Amadeus: "You have to be able to feel for the character and understand what they're going through to feel it yourself and to recreate it. Then, of course, being in the location or forcing the physicality upon yourself that the character experiences pushes you. It might sound silly to people who aren't in film, but a lot of arbitrary action gets you there. You may not be sad but try to cry. Once you start crying and start thinking about the character and about their back story, you can invent anything you want about their life to get there."

A favorite quote from Joel: "You're always going to have bumps and things that happen; but, what kept me coming back—after I'd walked away from things that had gone a little off—was the passion. Everyone was so genuine and supportive. They felt it. When people don't have that passion, when they don't feel that, and there are mishaps or miscommunications, that's when it gets really discouraging as an actor because you go, 'Wow. There's not even passion.' Passion helps you through miscommunication or rocky times."

Shirley Jones and Ben Mankiewicz. Because of my resistance to the whole publicity machine that surrounds films, an initial conversation I have with someone—as with Shirley Jones and Ben Mankiewicz—might be delayed in the press of events and miss its original (if intended) window. Then it becomes an exercise in finding the next window of opportunity to transcribe and place the piece. I spoke with Shirley and Ben back in April 2011 when Turner Classic Movies (TCM) was promoting their "Road to Hollywood" series in anticipation of the Turner Classic Film Festival. Missing my first window, I then waited, and waited, and suddenly this summer Shirley Jones wrote an autobiography and TCM featured her during its "Summer Under the Stars" program. Aha!! I leapt.

A favorite quote from Shirley: "I was in San Francisco doing my nightclub act with my husband Jack Cassidy when Burt Lancaster called me. He said, 'Hello, is this Shirley Jones?' I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'This is Burt Lancaster' and I said, 'Sure it is' and I hung up. Fortunately, he called back and he said, 'Shirley, this is Burt Lancaster. We're doing the film Elmer Gantry. Go get the Sinclair Lewis novel and read it. I want you for the role of Lulu Bains. I would like you to fly in on your day off and meet with our writer-director Richard Brooks. I'm co-producing with him and I'm playing Elmer Gantry.' He said, 'I think you'd be wonderful in the part.' Well, I ran out and got the novel and read it that day. I couldn't believe he was thinking of me for this role. I was thrilled to pieces, you know? Because, as I said, being a singer, I was never thought of as an actress and my career was virtually over at that point."

Ninetto Davoli. When Jonathan Marlow asked me if I would be willing to talk to Ninetto Davoli during the Pier Paolo Pasolini retrospective in the Bay Area, I said yes as a favor to him because Jonathan has long been one of my champions and one of my best friends. But I didn't know anything about Davoli and I had watched very few Pasolini films. But, as ever, Jonathan steered me right. Preparing for this conversation was one of the most pleasurable cinephilic experiences ever as I massaged Pasolini's work and culled out the resonant value of his relationship with Ninetto Davoli. Pasolini swiftly rose in my appreciation as I found his films beautiful. And Ninetto's vivacity and charm provided a wonderful morning in the Italian Cultural Institute. My thanks to Marlow, Fandor, Keyframe, Karen Larsen, and Amelia Antonucci of the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco for offering me this gift.

A favorite quote of Ninetto's: "Pasolini was not a cheerful person. Quite the opposite. He was, for instance, very shy. When he met me, it was like meeting himself as a younger person, as a boy. He saw in me the joy that he would have liked to have had, but hadn't had. He saw the cheerful boy that he would have wanted to be but now could no longer be. He suffered a lot as a child. He was the son of a school teacher and a colonel in the Army. He had a conflicted relationship with his father Carlo and this traumatized him; it stayed with him. His father had a commanding air. He was authoritarian, strict and austere. It was from his mother Susanna that he received tenderness, understanding and compassion. She was all that he loved. He adored her his entire life. In meeting me, he encountered the joy of living."

FICM 2013—EDUARDO DE LA VEGA ALFARO TRIBUTE TO ARTURO DE CÓRDOVA

So little has been written about Mexican actor Arturo de Córdova, and even less is available in English in the United States. Thus, it is with great pride that I publish Eduardo de la Vega Alfaro's tribute essay to the actor written for the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM) program catalog (pp. 136-143), which this year honored the actor with a multi-film retrospective, most in newly-struck 35mm prints, and a couple on 16mm from private collectors (most notably Quentin Tarantino). My thanks to Alfaro and FICM for their permission to provide this comprehensive survey to a broader audience.  Production stills courtesy of the UNAM Film Archive.

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The film we usually associate with the figure of Arturo de Córdova is Él, which was made in 1952. However, the actor's artistic career that we celebrate this year in FICM has a depth and duration with few rivals in the history of Mexican cinema. For nearly four decades, his voice, first on radio and then on the screen, his elegant figure, his dramatic intensity and his sense of irony against the pretensions of the Mexican bourgeoisie made him a dominant presence in some of the best films from the Golden Age of Mexican cinema.

From November 24, 1952, to January 27 of the following year, the careers of Luis Buñuel and Arturo de Córdova coincided for the first and only time during the filming of Él, without a doubt one of the Mexican masterpieces of the extraordinary Calanda-born filmmaker, who was [a] landmark figure of the revolutionary and influential surrealist movement headed by André Breton. An impeccable and lucid adaptation of the novel of the same name by Mercedes Pinto, originally published in Uruguay in 1926, Él would be defined (and defended) by its author as one of his favorite works ("Perhaps it is the film in which I've put more of myself. There is something of me in the protagonist," he said years later). More than a few critics and specialists of Buñuelian art have highlighted its great merits and strengths (among them that of being one of the highest expressions of explicit and strictly Sadean cinema) despite the fact that the film is considered a typical melodrama like many made at that time to attract the vast public that liked the genre. As far as we were able to investigate, it was never quite clear what was the cause of which—after the insurgence of his prestige thanks to making Los Olvidados (The Forgotten Ones, 1950) and later two more films for the company Óscar Dancigers (La hija del engaño, 1951, and Robinson Crusoe, 1952) and others for Sergio Kogan (Susana, 1950; Una Mujer Sin Amor, 1951; and El Bruto, 1952) and Manuel Altolaguirre (Subida Al Cielo, 1951)—Buñuel decided to undertake the film version of the novel by Pinto. And there is no reliable proof of why he called on Arturo de Córdova to take the leading role. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that the Yucatan-born actor was called on because just at that moment his successful career was in full swing (in line with the industrial development of Mexican cinema) and that his figure was inextricably associated with that of the "heartthrob", "tormented" by all kinds of passions, which the director took advantage of to perfection to establish an ironic, inter-textual game with the long tradition of melodramatic cinema cultivated in Latin America. The case is that de Córdova, directed by Luis Buñuel, would achieve one of his most notable performances and confirm his reputation as an "international star" as Él would draw the attention of audiences across Europe.

But how did Arturo de Córdova—whose real name was Arturo García Rodríguez—rise to stardom? Born on May 7, 1907, in Mérida, Yucatán, the future actor grew up in a wealthy family made up of Francisco García, his wife Carmen Rodríguez and their children. The family's status would allow Arturo to study in the United States, Argentina (where he was a student at the famed Colegio Jesuita "Del Salvador") and Switzerland (where he took several classes at the Calvin Institute) and obtain a good education. He developed a keen interest in learning languages, which would be key for the eventual internationalization of film.

After traveling through several countries in Europe, in 1928 he returned to Argentina to finish his studies at Colegio Internacional de los Olivos (apparently at that time he took on the Spanish accent characteristic of that country) and began to work as a correspondent for United Press Agency, where he became assistant director of the office in Santiago de Chile. Determined to get a job as a journalist in the United States and to study at the prestigious Columbia University, in 1932 he stopped off in Mérida on the way and he met Enna Arana, whom he married on August 23, 1933, motivating him to stay and live in his hometown and get work there as a radio announcer and sports reporter. His desire to get ahead led him to move with his wife to Mexico City (where his four children, Arturo, Alonso, Enna and María de Lourdes were born) to work as a radio announcer at XEW, a broadcasting company where he worked with famous colleagues, such as Alonso Sordo Noriega, Ricardo López Méndez, Manuel Bernal and Pedro de Lille, who, according to some sources, suggested that he take the name that he would later be known by. At this time Mexican film production was taking off thanks to the advent of the inventions that allowed sound and image to be integrated. Consequently, there was a dire need for handsome men with good voices.

One of the 23 Mexican feature films made in 1935, Celos was financed by Producciones Mier and written and directed by the Russian immigrant Arcady Boytler, who already had a long career in theater and film in Europe, South America and the United States, and who achieved fame as a director of the remarkable and successful melodrama La Mujer del Puerto. The film needed a solid actor for the role of an attractive young man who threatens the marriage of a doctor, played by Fernando Soler. In agreement with Boytler, the producer Felipe Mier hired the already successful announcer Arturo de Córdova for that role and with this began one of the most outstanding film careers in Spanish-language cinema in the Spanish-speaking world. Inspired by the Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy and by a story of the same name by Mijael Artzivachec, Boytler's work attempted to compare, on its own ground, with Hollywood products like Jealousy (1929) by Jean de Limur, and Jealousy (1934) by Roy Williams Neil. In spite of its notorious defects in various areas, Boytler's film proved to be a prodigy on a visual level (thanks to sublime photography by Alex Phillips) and has been considered, and rightly so, the most remote national antecedent of Él. Pointed out by critics as a novice actor, de Córdova was able to represent very well, for the first time, the figure of an impeccable and neat man—according to his mother, this was one of the things that he had most sought to be since childhood.

Although it became clear that de Córdova did not like the atmosphere of the cinema and in fact resumed his work as a radio announcer, in 1936 he appeared as the male protagonist in Cielito Lindo, a folkloric melodrama set during the Mexican Revolution that, directed by Roberto O'Quigley, formed (together with two other films shot in that same year, Allá En Rancho Grande, by Fernando de Fuentes, and ¡Ora Ponciano!, by Gabriel Soria), the trio of films that contributed to a greater or lesser extent to the enormous commercial impact of Mexican cinema in the markets and imagination of the Spanish-speaking world, which in turn led to an exponential growth in the sector of national film production. As the plot of the film required, de Córdova was forced to sing a song. Without abandoning completely his work as an announcer (his haughty voice was the main character in the radio series Las Aventuras de Carlos Lacroix, very popular at the time), the development of the productive sector allowed de Córdova to represent various forms of masculine charm in ¡Esos Hombres! / Malditos Sean Los Hombres (Rolando Aguilar, 1936) and in Ave Sin Rumbo, La Paloma and La Zandunga, all three of which were filmed in 1937 by Roberto O'Quigley, Miguel Contreras and Fernando de Fuentes, respectively. In the last one, a folkloric comedy reminiscent of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, de Córdova became the partner of Lupe Vélez, from San Luis Potosí, one of the Latina stars forged by the colossal film machinery of Hollywood, which would give him a solid footing to begin to look for opportunities in foreign films.

During 1938, Arturo de Córdova acted in five of the 58 features produced by the national cinema: Refugiados en Madrid, by Alejandro Galindo; Hombres de Mar, by Chano Urueta; Mientras México Duerme, by Galindo; La Bestia Negra, by Gabriel Soria, and La Casa Del Ogro, by Fernando de Fuentes. In addition, by the end of the same year, the actor was added to the cast of Los Hijos Mandan (El Caudal de Los Hijos), made by the above-mentioned Gabriel Soria, which would be one of the last Hispanic films (i.e., spoken in Spanish) made in Hollywood. If all of those films contributed to de Córdova acquiring experience as a performer of characters who pass through a variety of genres, the case of Mientras México Duerme came to represent one of the first major incursions of Latin American cinema into the sordid world of organized crime, which plagued the city in dizzying expansion and would give it the category of a classic. For its part, de Córdova's performance in the film was celebrated even by the great poet and then demanding film critic Xavier Villaurrutia, who said (in the magazine Hoy, November 5, 1938) that "The discrete actor now has a better walked and defined field to display his physognomic game, to express various moods [...] And the truth is that he reaches, in important moments, expressions that he doesn't have anything to envy foreign actors, better trained and better directed, in general, than ours."

Between 1939 and 1959, the artistic career of Arturo de Córdova reached its period of greatest splendor. During that time, he participated in 73 films, including 22 that he made abroad and worked as the narrator of the documentary El Charro Inmortal (Rafael E. Portas, 1955). This period of splendor can be subdivided, in turn, in several ways, but in this case we prefer that the nationality of the films serves as our guide.

An exception is made with Él, ,which we have already referred to. Of the works of de Córdova during this period in Mexican cinema's history, we emphasize, because of their high quality, aesthetic rigor or ambition of authorship: La Noche de Los Mayas (1939), ¡Que Viene Mi Marido! (1939) and El Conde de Montecristo (1941), all three by Chano Urueta; ¡Ay, Qué Tiempos, Señor Don Simón (1941), Crepúsculo (1943) and La Ausente (1951), by Julio Bracho; La Selva De Fuego (1945), by Fernando de Fuentes; La Diosa Arrodillada (1947), En La Palma De Tu Mano (1950), El Rebozo de Soledad (1952), Las Tres Perfectas Casadas (1952) and Miércoles de Ceniza (1958), by Roberto Gavaldón; El Hombre Sin Rostro (1950) by Juan Bustillo Oro; Cuando Levanta La Niebla (1952) and Reportaje (1953), both by Emilio Fernández; Un Extraño En la Escalera (1954) and Feliz Año, Amor Mío (1955), by Tulio Demichelli, and El Esqueleto de La Señora Morales (Rogelio A. González, 1959).

Written by the famed Yucatecan poet Antonio Mediz Bolio, with the collaboration of Chano Urueta, Alfredo B. Crevenna and Archibaldo Burns, La Noche de las Mayas boasted the wonderful photography of Gabriel Figueroa and exquisite music by Silvestre Revueltas to recycle an ancestral legend in which Arturo de Córdova played with aplomb a handsome young indigenous man immersed in romantic and racial conflicts—a clear expression of the policy of protecting ethnic races decreed by the government of Lázaro Cárdenas. In ¡Que Viene Mi Marido!, de Córdova is well suited for an intentionally exaggerated and grotesque plot that also relied on Figueroa's photography and Revueltas' music. For his part, in the sumptuous but failed version of the great novel by Alejandro Dumas of the same name (which in turn marked the beginning of the systematic looting of universal literature by national cinema, taking advantage of the chaotic situation caused by the Second World War), the Merida-born actor played Edmundo Dantés, parsimonious and somewhat rigid, but with a good presence on screen at the moment of wanting to give this character some credible traits.

In the magnificent film of Porfirio Díaz nostalgia, ¡Ay, Qué Tiempos, Señor Don Simón!—the first film by Julio Bracho, one of the great builders of modern Mexican theater—Arturo de Córdova is easy-going and malicious. His successful interpretation of a charming soldier opposite the funny figure of Joaquín Pardavé is regarded as one of the factors that contributed to the enormous box-office success of a musical comedy that, without exaggeration, can be placed at the level of the French and Italian films made during the same time. For the much more ambitious Crepúsculo, inspired by a true story, our actor showed his great potential to embody characters tormented by physical and psychological degradation, as a way of ironizing the purpose of the early decadence of the Mexican bourgeoisie. Developed in expressionist atmospheres and Hollywood film noir (another masterful photographic work of Alex Phillips), the story and baroque style of the film is structured like a spiral that leads inexorably to the annihilation of the main character. And although too much of a tribute to Rebecca (1940), one of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpieces, La Ausente ratified the avant-garde leanings of Bracho (evident in recurrent use of sophisticated camera movements) and the solid performance of de Córdova, now as a petit bourgeois beset by doubt and a guilt complex due to the untimely death of his wife.

Despite fully assuming the conventions proposed by films such as the very successful Doña Bárbara (Fernando de Fuentes, 1943) and Canaima (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1945), both inspired by the literature of Venezuelan Rómulo Gallegos, La Selva de Fuego transcends its period and genre by the sober and careful direction of de Fuentes, the functional photography of Augustín Martinez Solares, the performances of the leading couple (Dolores del Río in the role of an exuberant woman and abstract symbol of beauty who awakens the instincts of a group of chiclero workers, and Arturo de Córdova, whose misogyny at the beginning becomes a devouring passion, tragically frustrated by adverse destiny), and the splendid villains played my Miguel Inclán, Gilberto González, Manuel Dondé and José Torvay.

At least from a formal point of view, the five Mexican films in which Arturo de Córdova worked to the strict orders of Roberto "the Ogre" Gavaldón (another film in which both collaborated, The Adventures of Casanova, belongs to another rank and nationality despite having been made in our country), are all succulent masterpieces filmed during the best period of the career of the great filmmaker from Chihuahua. In La Diosa Arrodillada like in En La Palma De Tu Mano and Las Tres Perfectas Casadas, de Córdova embodied strictly urban characters with marked bourgeois aspirations, but who ended up dominated (or devoured) by their frenetic eroticism and criminal impulses that are inherent in the ambition for money.

At the same time, En La Palma De Tu Mano marks an apex in Latin American film noir and is a worthy example of the pure style of the author and the immense capabilities of his cameraman, again the great Alex Phillips. In contrast, the honest doctor in El Rebozo de Soledad (shot in the Tierra Caliente region of the state of Michoacán) and the apparently aseptic priest who stars in Miércoles de Ceniza (developed at the time of the Cristero rebellion and with splendid initial scenes filmed in Pátzcuaro and its surroundings—majestic photography by Agustín Martínez Solares) are rather emblematic figures that require another type of interpretation. However, both films suffered the weight of the complex expressiveness of de Córdova, who in all the films directed by Gavaldón had the good fortune of sharing roles with other great figures of the Mexican star system of that era, such as María Félix, Leticia Palma, Carmen Montejo, Pedro Armendáriz, Stella Inda, Laura Hidalgo, Miroslava Stern, José María Linares Rivas and Victor Junco.

According to the author's confession, the truculent and sophisticated story of El Hombre Sin Rostro, an undervalued film as none other, was designed to be interpreted by Arturo de Córdova. By then, the actor had already become the stereotype of the psychotic mind, moved by uncontrollable forces from the unconscious, a subject so dear to the studies of Sigmund Freud. But our great expressionist creator and outstanding Vasconcellist soldier Juan Bustillo Oro knew how to surround the protagonist with a sinister and overly comfortable atmosphere that was not far from the rigor reached by the aesthetics of Robert Wiene, Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau. For that reason, the film is a complete lesson in psychologistic cinema in the best sense the term can possess, i.e., that it favors the in-depth study of individual behavior.

The figure and the work of Arturo de Córdova also fit into the world of Emilio Fernández, but it was not by chance that this occurred in two films a little removed from the themes that characterized the film of someone who was considered to be the Mexican director par excellence. Urban and modern melodrama with a psychotic protagonist, Cuando Levanta La Niebla retained much of the "claw" of its author, which allowed de Córdova to show off all of his acting abilities. This last one was also present in the few moments in which the great actor appeared in Reportaje, a film that brought together much of the "star firmament" of the Mexican film industry with the purpose of raising funds for an altruistic foundation.

In the excellent and sumptuous melodramas Un Extraño En la Escalera and Feliz Año, Amor Mío, directed by the Argentine Tulio Demichelli for producer Gregorio Walerstein, the sober and solid work of de Córdova served to prop up the respective careers of its leading female protagonists, Silvia Pinal and Marga López.

Finally, the strange case of El Esqueleto de La Señora Morales, a bold and blunt adaptation by Luis Alcoriza about a macabre story designed by the Welsh writer Arthur Machen, ended, in a very high tone, the best and most prolific period in de Córdova's career. A perfect mix of satire and purified recreation of a petit-bourgeois world in sharp decadence, the masterpiece of Rogelio A. González seems to have been produced so that his male protagonist would put into it all his experience in order to create a character who above all serves to throw chemically pure poison onto the conservative Mexican mentality in which, practically since its very origin, our film industry has been sustained.

Of the 14 Mexican films that Arturo de Córdova participated in between 1961 and 1970, including his works as the narrator in Los Hermanos del Hierro (Ismael Rodríguez, 1961), Así Era Pedro Infante (Ismael Rodríguez, 1963), La Recta Final (Carlos Enrique Taboada, 1964), among others, only El Gángster (Luis Alcoriza, 1964) stands out. That was because of its declared (although not totally achieved) paradoxical sense and for its candidly entertaining character—features that allowed its lead actor to show his great comic vein, which many other directors did not exploit to the fullest.

Parallel to his career in Mexican cinema, Arturo de Córdova also worked on many foreign productions. Of the 24 films that shaped his transnational career (more or less the same number of films made by Pedro Armendáriz at the margin of the Mexican film industry), seven were funded by U.S. companies from Hollywood, six were Argentine, another six were made on locations and in studios in Spain and with money from that country, two more were filmed thanks to the main sponsorship of Brazilian companies and one had Venezuelan-Argentine investment. Those that may be regarded as the most outstanding works for their own sake and for the remarkable work of de Córdova are: ¿Por Quién Doblan Las Campanas? (For Whom the Bell Tolls, Sam Wood, 1943), a sober adaptation of the novel by Ernest Hemingway; El Pirata y la Dama (Frenchman's Creek, Mitchel Leisen, 1944), a very romantic work barely disguised as an adventure film; Casanova Aventurero (Adventures of Casanova, Roberto Gavaldón, 1947), which was a good satire of the mythology created around the famous lover, artist and scientist from Venice; New Orleans (Arthur Lubin, 1947), a musical comedy that preserved on screen the appearances of Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and other great jazz performers; Dios Se Lo Pague (Luis César Amadori, 1948), a sordid urban melodrama that was a huge success in the majority of Latin American markets; La Balandra Isabel Llegó Esta Tarde (Carlos Hugh Christensen, 1949), an intense erotic-passionate drama which was intended though it did not succeed to lead the way to develop a film industry in Venezuela; and Los Peces Rojos (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1955), a stylized crime melodrama filmed in Spain.

Our honored star won the Ariel Award for Best Actor three times for his performances in En La Palma De Tu Mano, Las Tres Perfectas Casadas and Feliz Año, Amor Mío, and was nominated for the same recognition for his remarkable performances in La Selva de Fuego, Medianoche (Tito Davison, 1948), El Hombre Sin Rostro and Mi Esposa y La Otra (Alfredo B. Crevenna, 1951). These awards are further proof of his great ability as an actor, but barely offer an idea of all his virtues and of his impact on the public that consecrated him as an idol.

On November 3, it will be 40 years since the death of one of the most prominent representatives of the "star system" from the classic period of Mexican cinema. In the 11th edition of FICM, we remember this date with a sample of some of his best and most dazzling appearances on the screen, which in turn constitutes the first tribute that an international film festival has paid to the figure of enormous artistic dimensions that was and remains to be Arturo de Córdova.