Following what has increasingly been the tendency in Latin American cinema, this year's series explores a rich variety of cinematic styles, genres and genre crossovers ––from sleek, perfectly calibrated thrillers and dark comedies, to road movies across such vast landscapes as the Mexican border country and the Ecuadorian mountains and coast, to coming-of-age stories and dramas based on real events. Several bold new works experiment with perspective and sometimes defy the norms of conventional narrative structure embody the aesthetic search occurring in the region. Bringing together the personal and the political, these intimate portraits delve into what it's like growing up bicultural or in a world ravaged by political violence. As this year's LatinBeat sidebar, we present Four Breakthroughs from Mexico’s New Cinema, a look at four outstanding films that each broke ground stylistically and thematically.
While this year’s program does include a few household names whose early works we premiered in past years, it primarily showcases the emergence of a young generation with exhilarating new proposals, providing further evidence of the region’s cinematic vitality and constant renewal. The crisp, lush storytelling in the program’s two Central American shorts, Temporal and Pinta the Bird, is a vibrant sample of the nascent cinema in a region we are proud to include this year and hope to showcase more of in the future. Furthermore, an abundance of multi-national co-productions provide ample proof of the resourcefulness of Latin American filmmakers and their success in reinventing the region’s cinematic landscape. As in past years, several filmmakers will be present at Latinbeat’s screenings to discuss their work.
Latin American cinema has come a long way since the first edition of Latinbeat in 1997, and though many of the first-time directors featured in that series have moved on to produce more complex works and the cinemas in their countries have continued to flourish, the germ of excitement and sense of urgency that characterized those early films remains. Latinbeat 2007 features 23 films from 12 Latin American countries, including a strong presence from often underrepresented filmmaking countries like Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay and Ecuador. For the first time, films from Central America will be screened.
Latinbeat 2007 is presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center with the
support of the Consulate General of Argentina, the Consulate General of
Brazil, the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, the General Consulate of
Uruguay and the Consulate General of Peru.
For a listing of the films in LatinBeat 2007 go to Program Overview. For a listing of the films in Four Breakthroughs from Mexico’s New Cinema go to LatinBeat 2007 SideBar.
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Calendar to view the schedule, film descriptions and to purchase tickets online.
