LatinBeat 2006 September 8 – 24 Presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and sponsored by Ángel Collado Schwarz with the support of the Consulate General and Promotion Center of Argentina in New York, INCAA from Argentina, and the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York. With additional support by HSBC Bank USA, N.A. Marketing support by El Museo del Barrio. Special thanks to Telemundo 47 for media support.
Presenting 26 films from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela, Latinbeat opens with El Aura, the latest film by recently deceased (Argentine) director Fabián Bielinsky (Nine Queens). The series features a salute to director Alfonso Cuarón that includes, among others, his best-known works Y tu mamá también, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, as well as a sidebar celebrating 40 years of the Brazilian music and cultural movement known as Tropicália. All films in LatinBeat are New York premieres in their original language with English subtitles.
The past decade has witnessed a very welcome resurgence throughout Latin America, not only from traditional producers as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico but also from a host of lesser-known national cinemas. The ferment noted within the cinema is of course but a reflection of the political and social changes taking place across the region, as Latin Americans search for new answers and ideas after having gone through and pushed aside a host of orthodoxies ranging from romantic revolution to free -market capitalism. The emphasis of many of the films and filmmakers in the program has moved away from discussions of society to explorations of the individual.
Salute to Alfonso Cuarón Presented by HSBC Bank USA, N.A. Since his international debut with Sólo con tu pareja / Love in the Time of Hysteria (enjoying its U.S. premiere here at LatinBeat, before kicking off a theatrical run in New York), Alfonso Cuarón has become one of the quintessential contemporary filmmakers, equally at home making a multimillion-dollar Hollywood genre film (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) as he is offering one of the sharpest and funniest portraits of his native Mexico (Y tu mamá también). Cuarón’s protagonists are travelers, characters who leave their home turfs and then come to realize that, well, they’re not in Kansas anymore. That sense of displacement never really leaves them, even when they’ve seemingly returned home, and it’s what makes all of Cuarón’s work, whether set in Victorian England or in the Mexican campo, feel so bracingly contemporary. We’re delighted to present as part of this year’s program a salute to this remarkable director, and honored that Alfonso Cuarón will be on hand September 16 & 17 to introduce and discuss his work.
-1--2-
Celebrating 40 Years of Tropicália In the mid-60s, a tendency emerged across the arts in Brazil that glorified the sensual, the primitive and the irreverent — a kind of tacit opposition to the “Order and Progress” slogan that adorned the Brazilian flag (and was the watchword for the military dictatorship) — and which could be found in everything from much of the era’s finest Brazilian pop music to the theater of José Celso and on to the “underground” films of Julio Bressane, Rogerio Sganzerla and a host of others. Tropicália took its name from an installation created by Brazilian artist, Hélio Oiticica, in 1967 and subsequently became the title of one of the most celebrated albums in Brazilian music history, featuring Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa and Os Mutantes. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Tropicália, we present four documentaries that explore the art and artists that made the impact of Tropicália so far-reaching and long-lasting. Gil, now Brazil's Minister of Culture, declared after his appointment: "I am a Tropicálist."
For the second time, LatinBeat will be shown nationally. In association with Emerging Pictures, a selection of films from LatinBeat 2006 will be digitally distributed to theaters around the country contemporaneous with the events at Lincoln Center. For more information go to Emerging Pictures.
LatinBeat 2006 has been curated by Cord Dueppe, Marcela Goglio and Inés Aslan.
Special thanks to Frida Torresblanco of Esperanto Filmoj, Emily Woodburne of IFC Films, Jorge Magaña Molina at the Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (IMCINE) and Daniela Elbahara, LatinBeat Programming Assistant.
For a listing of the films in the series go to Program Overview.
Click on
Calendar to view the schedule, film descriptions and to purchase tickets online.
