Latin American classics

Following the revolution, Sergio, an upper middle-class Cuban from Havana finds himself alone when his wife and the rest of his family flee the island to settle down in Miami. Struggling to adjust to the new situation, to the seclusion and the new class relationships, he continues to live his life, goes through a few pathetic love stories, yet is unable to conceal the background that seems so much at odds with the new order.

In Buenos Aires, a few days before traveling to Spain with his beloved wife Liliana Rovira to visit their son Pedro, the leftist Literature professor Fernando Robles is compulsory retired in the University, and he concludes that it is impossible to live with his pension. The crisis in Argentina does not allow Fernando to get a new job, and his wife decides to sell her family's apartment and move to a small farm near Villa Dolores to reduce their expenses. Fernando comes up with the idea to grow lavender and sell the oil to the perfume industry.

Three different characters in a Havana, that always seems to be like today, must choose between clinging to their self-restricting beliefs, or getting rid of them to live more freely. Ballerina Mariana has recently promised God celibacy, if she gets the main role of "Giselle"; Social-worker Julia always faints after hearing a certain word, like other people do in the streets to different words; and percussionist Elpidio was abandoned by his mother named Cuba quite some time ago and has not yet gotten over the loss. Now he fells in love with an northern activist. BONUS: Als Zugabe gibt's den Bergsteiger-Dokumentarfilm mit Daniel Anker, der in den 1990er Jahren eine neue Route durch die Eiger-Nordwand gelegt hat und sie als Liebhaber des Films «La vida es silbar» nannte. Sie erfreut sich bei jenen, die gerne Klettern, als beliebt.

In this newly restored Bolivian classic, a man remembers his life while on a journey which will help him expiate his sins and which will result in his death. The focus on the story is on a man who has betrayed everyone he knows. He is planning to perform an ancient ritual dance which will end with his life being taken. He journeys from where he was living back to the village where most of the people he wronged still live. As he journeys, carrying his distinctive dance costume, his story is told in flashbacks. Once he gets there, he gets involved in the affairs of the villagers once more.

In Lucía, Humberto Solás has interpreted the theme of the hundred years' struggle in an entirely novel way to create an epic in three separate episodes: each centred around a woman called Lucía, which takes place in a different period of Cuban history, corresponding to the three stages of Colonialism, Neocolonialism and Socialist Revolution. The three episodes also present us with "Lucías" of different social classes. According to Solás: "Women's role always lays bare the contradictions of a period and makes them explicit: Lucía is not a film about women, it's a film about society".

An astonishing creation, Limite is the only feature by the Brazilian director and author Mário Peixoto, made when he was just twenty-two years old. Inspired by a haunting André Kertész photograph on the cover of a French magazine, this avant-garde silent master­piece centers on a man and two women lost at sea, their pasts unfolding through flashbacks propelled by the music of Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and others. An early work of independent Latin American filmmaking, Limite was famously difficult to see for most of the twentieth century. It is a pioneering achievement that continues to captivate with its timeless visual poetry.

El Dorado, a fictional country. Paulo, a poetry-writing intellectual, oscillates between the political extremes. First he devotes himself to the right-wing conservative Diaz, until he sees through the latter’s pseudo-religious fascism. Then he takes the side of Vieira, the populist reformer who wants to free the country of its misery. But Paulo’s true love is for Sara, the communist who works for Vieira. Paulo is forced to realize that both are interested only in power, not in change, and that they are willing to use any means to achieve their end. Disappointed and despairing, he sets off on his own path as a revolutionary, a path on which Sara is no longer able to follow him. He is shot and dies a lonely death, with a gun in his hand, sending a signal for others to take up arms. The lasting relevance of this masterpiece lies in the scene of long agony before Paulo dies. Sara calls out the question to him, “What does your death prove?” And he answers, “The victory of beauty and justice!” Glauber Rocha trusts in culture’s power of survival and connects it with the necessary struggle for social justice.

Rocha's film debut: The fishermen in a village in Bahia on the north coast of Brazil have to rent their net from a trader and give up 90 percent of the catch. What's more, the net owner keeps threatening to take their tools away from them. The black community, like two years later in "Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol", does not rebel; they endure exploitation by the white crook in the belief that one day the gods will help it out of their misery. Firmino, a young man with new ideas who has returned from the city to his village, rebels against fatalism. He cuts the fishermen's net, which belongs to the merchant, in order to persuade them to help themselves. Glauber Rocha, in his first work, draws not only the rhythm of his sequences, but also the essence of his narrative from the sometimes calm and sensual, sometimes excited and inexorable play of sea and earth. By describing the simple life of the slave descendants, he anchors his film in reality. The film resembles a free, unleashed poem and still grips today through the charisma of its images.

The action of the movie takes place in the sertao, the desertified Northeast backlands of Brazil, that is traditionally beyond the rule of law, and that was the site of some of most enduring folklore. The sertao is the region of myth, encapsulated by the historical world of progress symbolized by the highway. The tale employs the cast of folklore characters: the colonel of the ranch; his mistress; the colonel's sidekick; the colonel's enforcer; local bandits (typical of the gangs that grew up in the region either as enforcers or as rural poor abandoned by a patron who lost a local battle); a group of millenialists (similarly, typical of groups of disenfranchised rural poor); the local teacher, a dependent of the colonel. «Antonio das Mortes» is a character at at war with himself.

Notes and Testimonies on Neocolonialism, Violence and Liberation" is one of the symbols of cultural and political resistence in the 60-70s generation. The film is a reflection essay on the socio-political situation of Argentina between 1945 and 1968. It was filmed clandestinely in Cold War times in a Latin America rules by pro-American oligarchies and military dictatorships. The work is a four-hours-long trilogy divided in chapters and united by the themes of dependence and liberation. The first part, Neocolonialism and Violence, was conceived to be broadcasted in all kinds of circuits. The second and third parts, "Act for Liberation" and "Violence and Liberation", make up the first historical chronicle of Peronismo and the workers’ resistentes that followed. His proposal is an open cinema to promote debate and incorporate new sequences of future fights. The Hour of the Furnaces is one of the most awarded films in Argentine cinema: It was forbidden by all dictatorships, gave rise to a parallel circuit of political cinema and it was disseminated in over 70 countries.

The story begins with the death of a model worker, who is buried with his labor card as a badge of honor. However, his widow is told she needs that card to claim the benefits she is entitled. The story then takes several surreal turns, as the family of the dead man try to recover the precious card from the grave.

The Film of the King is a film within a film. Influenced by travel accounts of his time, the Frenchman Orélie Antoine set off for southern Argentina around 1860. Once there, he had himself proclaimed king of Araucania and Patagonia what led to his expulsion from the country by the Argentinian government. More than one hundred years later, Carlos Sorín turns this absurd venture into the story of a film director who wants to make a film abut it and fails in light of certain circumstantial adversities. Out of the film about the adventurer emerges the adventure of a film.

The street urchin Pixote flees the inhumane conditions at a correction facility and returns to life on the streets. He seeks a mother-figure in the aging prostitute Sueli.

Man Facing Southeast is a drama-science fiction film fro Argenina, written and directed by Eliseo Subiela. It was selected as the Argentine entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 60th Academy Awards.

Robert is an insurance employee and has been unhappily married for many years. He dreams of becoming a writer. One day he saves the mysterious Laura from suicide. At first this proves to be a real stroke of luck for him: not only does she provide him with stories from her life, which he can put on paper, she also has everything he needs for his happiness. Robert falls head over heels in love with the beautiful woman, unaware of what this will bring him.