LACLA History: 2004

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Latin American Cinemateca of Los Angeles (LACLA) and the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) are collaborating to present the three-day "Fic/Cine—Latin American Fiction into Film" series Oct. 1-3 at CalArt’s RedCat Theater at the Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

The series features six award-winning films from Mexico, Chile, and Argentina that span the 20th century’s wide assortment of styles and genres. The films will be screened with subtitles and include introductions by well-respected film scholars as well as Q&A sessions following the screenings.

Latin American cinema has had a long-standing love affair with literature, and some of its outstanding achievements have involved a close collaboration between writers and film directors. This series honors and showcases six of these spectacular literary collaborations that have rarely, if ever, been screened in Los Angeles.

Through the Fiction into Film series, LACLA and CalArts hope to stimulate a cultural dialogue about the artistic merits of Latin American cinema and showcase the works of various Latino filmmakers from three diverse and distinct Latin American countries during Hispanic Heritage Month.

When: October 1, 2 & 3, 2004
Where: RedCat Theater, 631 West 2nd Street (Walt Disney Concert Hall complex)
Ticket Information: Tickets are $8.00 each. For reservations please visit www.redcat.org
Download the FLYER (pdf) in English or Spanish.

Friday, October 1, 2004

Film Introduction: Steve Anker, Dean, CalArts School of Film/Video
Dirección/Director: Raúl Ruiz
Guión/Script: Raúl Ruiz

Based on a melodramatic play by Alejandro Sieveking about the scheming of a group of lower middle class characters (including a brother who prostitutes his sister), Ruiz's first completed film was influenced by Nouvelle Vague models of decentered narrative and John Cassavetes' Shadows. An important theme is the everyday violence and moral cynicism typical of an alienated urban class who are neither proletarian nor part of Chile's Europeanized bourgeoisie. The film's temporal ambiguity, seeking to represent the suspended tempo of Chilean life, looks forward to Ruiz's later more stylized and cerebral projects. Español

Saturday, October 2, 2004

Film Introduction: Alejandro Pelayo, Cultural Attaché, Mexican Consulate
Dirección/Director: Busi Cortés
Guión/Script: Busi Cortés según el cuento "El viudo Roman" de Rosario Castellanos

Former journalist Busi Cortés' adaptation of Mexican writer Rosario Castellano's 1964 short story "El viudo Román" is a bold act of revision that, much like Matilde Landeta's La negra Angustias, replaces a bleak, disturbing tale with a narrative that begins to imagine the possibility of healing and redemption. This story elaborates a family history by spanning three generations of women, commenting on the social history of Mexico since the revolutionary years. Español

Film Introduction: Alejandro Pelayo, Cultural Attaché, Mexican Consulate
Dirección/Director: Arturo Ripstein
Guión/Script: Alicia Garcíadiego según un cuento de Juan Rulfo

Arturo Ripstein's career spans three generations of filmmaking. His filmography includes 26 feature-length films to date and a score of short and medium-length projects, in narrative, experimental, and documentary genres. Ripstein's films irreverently work against the conventions of classic Mexican melodramas, focusing on desperately needy, vulnerable, jealous, ambitious, and self-destructive characters trapped in dysfunctional families and in impossible and doomed love. Since his first film Tiempo de morir (1965), Ripstein has collaborated with other leading Latin American literary "boom" and "post-boom" novelists and poets. This film is based on Juan Rulfo's short story "El gallo de oro." Español

Dirección/Director: Adolfo Aristarain
Guión/Script: Adolfo Aristarain según una novela de José Pablo Feinmann

Adolfo Aristarain's masterful adaptation of the thriller by the novelist and political philosopher José Pablo Feinmann tells the story of a gentlemanly, middle-aged hit man a character reminiscent of the laconic tough guys of the French master Jean-Pierre Melville. As the paid assassin's curiosity about his employers and the intended victim slowly gets the best of him, his cool professionalism begins to crumble and he's led to a surprising end. Aristarain effectively uses the gangster genre to portray a society that has lost its moral compass, where corruption is endemic and where anyone can be bought. Español

Sunday, October 3, 2004

Coronación (Chile, 2000)

Film Introduction: Cristina Venegas, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in Film Studies, University of California Santa Barbara
Dirección/Director: Silvio Caiozzi
Guión/Script: Silvio Caiozzi según la novela homónima de José Donoso

This film is Silvio Caiozzi's third film closely linked to the works of José Donoso. It explores themes of sexual obsession, greed and social inequity in a surreal, humorous manner said to evoke the spirit of Buñuel. It follows the life of Don Andrés, the last surviving member of the wealthy Abalos family, who has uselessly dedicated his 58 years to searching for the reasons for existence. When he hires a 17-year old farm girl to care for his senile grandmother, he cannot conceal the dark, shameful desires he feels for her that eventually lead to his psychological downfall as well as that of the mansion. Silvio Caiozzi received Best Director award at the 2001 Cartagena Film Festival. Español

Film Introduction: Maria Elena de las Carreras-Kuntz, Ph.D., Professor, Latin American Cinema, Film History & Asthetics UCLA, Cal State Northridge, Los Angeles City College
Dirección/Director: Héctor Olivera
Guión/Script: Roberto Cossa y Héctor Olivera según la novela homónima de Osvaldo Soriano

Hector Olivera brings the political satire of the late novelist Osvaldo Soriano to the screen in this comic tale of civil strife and factionalism. As one group, claiming loyalty to the strongman Juan Peron, makes war on their former colleagues, another group of Peronistas, the inhumanity and cruelty plummet to ever more depraved levels. A telling allegory for any and all wars, the motley assortment of imbeciles, drunks and sadists proclaim their loyalty to the nation and its heroes as they proceed to torture, murder, and bombard one another with poisons and with excrement. Español

Sponsors

A collaboration with the Los Angeles Conservancy's Last Remaining Seats series. For more information visit the Los Angeles Conservancy web site.

"La otra," a Mexican film directed by Roberto Gavaldón in 1946, starring Dolores del Río in a double role, tells the story of twin sisters María and Magdalena. One is a millionaire and the other is poor; María, the poor sister, murders her twin in order to take her place and live her life. Paradoxically, the murderer "inherits" not just the dead woman's fortune, but also the heavy baggage that goes along with a crime she once committed.

This film, splendidly photographed by Alex Phillips, constitutes the first collaboration between the writer José Revueltas and director Gavaldón. Although a film from the U.S., "Stolen Life," by Curtis Bernhardt, also from 1946 and starring Bette Davis, explores the same theme, the two works stem from distinct literary sources: Gavaldón's film is an adaptation of a short story by Rian James, while Bernhardt's is based on a novel by Karel J. Benes.

In "La otra," Gavaldón's brilliant use of the mirror, so central to the film's staging, underlines the idea of image reversal, both visually and morally. The substitution of one sister for the other occurs not just physically, but psychologically as well. María literally comes to possess not just the identity of her twin sister, but also her soul and her fate. Technical information
––translated by Jen Hofer Español