YEAR 2005
12 JULY 2005A Tribute to "Tin Tan"
Calabacitas tiernas (Mexico/1948)
Director: Gilberto Martinez Solares
Anson Ford Amphitheatre
2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East
Hollywood, California 90068
Tel. (box office): 323.461.3673
The Latin American Cinemateca is pleased to present at the Anson Ford Amphitheatre Calabacitas tiernas, one of the best musical comedies of Mexico's Golden Age, starring Germán Valdez, or rather "Tin Tan," the name of his famous and still very modern screen character. Like Mario Moreno, "Cantinflas," or Niní Marshall, "Catita," in Argentina, Germán Valdez belongs to the pantheon of great Latin American comedians of the forties and fifties who brought to the screen a unique comic persona, based on a type of humor that was primarily oral, relied on parody and the portrayal of popular characters, used as a vehicle for amiable social satire.
Mining his experiences as a radio announcer, impersonator and comic actor in touring tent shows, or "carpas," the character of Tin Tan initially embodied the attributes of the pachuco, the Americanized Mexican whose flamboyant fashion statements (baggy pants and long jackets) and use of Spanish and English slang turned him into an object of derision south of the border. Valdez made his film debut in the mid-forties, hitting his stride in Calabacitas tiernas, which marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with director Gilberto Martínez Solares and screenwriter Juan García. Calabacitas tiernas and El rey del barrio, released in 1949, are considered Tin Tan's best films.
In Calabacitas tiernas, Tin Tan's pachuco characteristics and comic routine, rooted in the clash of cultures of the Mexican-U.S. border - much like the music of Lalo Guerrero and Los Lobos - morphed into that of the street-wise pícaro of Mexico City. Tin Tan is a con man, likeable, flirtatious, impudent and remarkably incompetent at making an honest (and dishonest) living. His verbal skills - sprinkled with English phrases and allusions to American popular culture - and daring schemes lead him to impersonate a nightclub impresario. Writing checks left and right, spending the money the real (and bankrupt) producer doesn't have, Tin Tan puts together the hottest musical show in town, toplined by a Brazilian bombshell, a sultry rumba dancer from Cuba and a flamenco child singer from Spain (The "pumpkins" of the title allude to these Hispanic singers and dancers). Tin Tan himself sings and dances his way in and out of trouble - with creditors and these demanding musical ladies - while falling in love with a beautiful and no-nonsense maid, who sees through his deception. Mixing boleros and boogie-woogie, the romantic and the salacious, the protagonist raises the comic temperature with hilarious monologues delivered at breakneck speed, some delivered to his double on a mirror, and sketches aimed at deflating pomposity and middle-class manners. The film plays with Latin American female stereotypes, in a crescendo of lunacy and clichés. Like the ending of El rey del barrio, the world of this pícaro will return to its hinges only after a loving wife, has roped him into the corral of domesticity. For how long? The audience can't help but wonder...
In his observations on the style and meaning of Mexico's two greatest comic actors, the famed cultural critic Carlos Monsiváis notes that the source of Tin Tan and Cantinflas' art is based on the contrasting social worlds projected by these comedians - who, one might add, like Chaplin's Tramp, became their characters: Tin Tan, a carefree soul, is forever aspiring to be modern and 'hip'; while Cantinflas, an urban proletarian of natural wit, becomes the symbol of those forever marginalized. Monsiváis concludes his essay, however, by stressing their similarities: "Their social satire was launched with incredible accuracy and great insight into the sentimentalism of their audiences. Celebrated actors seemingly without anything in common, and legendary icons in different ways, Tin Tan and Cantinflas are still today the greatest reference points for a multigenerational audience who learned to laugh while watching them and who, in revering them, smile triumphantly as if they just saw them at yesterday's fiesta."
Mar�Elena de las Carreras-Kuntz, Ph.D.
For more information www.fordamphitheater.org
To See Event Images Click Here
29 JUNE 2005
Click to see the video of the Event
A film by Nelson Pereira dos Santos
(Brazil/1955)
Katia Moraes
Accompanied by
Bill Brendle, keys and Kevin Ricard, percussion
...
Samba Fever, Brazilian Dancers
...
Poster design:
Hector Cruz Sandoval /Halo Group Download pdf file
DJ and host: Sergio Mielniczenco
Orpheum Theatre842 South Broadway
Downtown Los Angeles
A COLLABORATION WITH THE LOS ANGELES CONSERVANCY'S LAST REMAINING SEATS SERIES
For more information www.laconservancy.org or 213.430.4219
The Latin American Cinemateca of Los Angeles, in collaboration with the Los Angeles Conservancy, is proud to present one of the seminal works of Brazilian Cinema Novo, RIO, 40 GRAUS (1955). Directed by Nelson Pereira Dos Santos, a precursor to and a leading director of the most influential film movement to come out of Latin America in the 1960s, this story takes us into the streets of Rio de Janeiro, weaving one day in the life of five black children who come down from the favelas, the city’s poorest neighborhoods, to sell peanuts in Copacabana beach and other classic tourist spots like the Corcovado and Sugar Loaf mountain.
This film, shot on location with a small camera crew, outside the studio system and featuring non-professional actors as well as a carioca school of samba, is considered a landmark Latin American film. It shows how the lessons of Italian Neo-Realism and the barebones production approach of the French New Wave were put to good use in a country whose commercial cinema presented a picturesque view of Brazilian life, mainly through musical chanchadas (slapstick comedies). The film also countered Hollywood’s stereotypical image of Brazil which unfortunately had been immortalized by the tutti frutti hats of Carmen Miranda and the antics of a Disney animated parrot, Jose Carioca.
RIO, 40 GRAUS – 40 degrees Celsius, the temperature of a very hot summer day – brought to the screen the humanity, humor and needs of the favelas, through characters that interact in clever narrative ways with the full spectrum of Brazilian society, from politicians and well-off families to the struggling middle andworking class. Two passions – dear to Brazil at large - unite the inhabitants of this beautiful city spreading along the Guanabara Bay: soccer in the famous Maracanᠳtadium, and the yearlong preparation for Carnival. They are captured naturalistically, with a sober eye towards the humanizing detail. Like Pereira Dos Santos’ subsequent film, Rio, Zona Norte (1957), the city’s peculiar geographic configuration (the favelas crest the hills while the affluent areas coast the beaches) becomes the real protagonist. Rio also functions as a microcosm of Brazilian society. In his first fiction film, the director tackled from a benevolently critical perspective the structure and dynamics of this culturally and racially diverse Latin American metropolis.
Mixing humor, astute social observations and a dollop of melodrama, RIO, 40 GRAUS embodies the principles and practice of Cinema Novo, which sought – in the words of Glauber Rocha, one of its most accomplished filmmakers – “to make cinema with a camera and an idea”. It is difficult today – with the legacy of Cinema Novo still alive in the work of Walter Salles, Fernando Meirelles, or Hector Babenco, for example – to understand how RIO, 40 GRAUS was truly
an unusual picture for its time. It was a provocative way to see Rio: real cariocas in their natural surroundings, shot with a documentary-style look; and a tapestry of interwoven stories, framed by aerial views of the city, opening and closing one hot summer day. The film marries, like the director’s other classic of his first realist stage, Vidas Secas (1963), minimal technical resources with a strong and poetic sense of Brazil’s every day reality. Nothing more modern today.
Maria Elena de las Carreras-Kuntz, Ph.D.
To See Event Images Click Here
Sponsors
Consulado-Geral do Brasil em Los Angeles
Additional Support
March 2005
A Tribute to Dolores Del Rio
A collaboration with the San Diego Latino Film Festival (March 10-20, 2005)
Produced by the Media Arts Center San Diego
Download festival schedule & list of films here
La Otra
Dir. Roberto Gavaldón
(Mexico, 1946, 98 min., 16mm)
Friday, March 18, 8:00 PMFlying Down to Rio
Dir. Thornton Freeland
(USA, 1933, 89 min., 35mm)
Saturday, March 19, 4:00 PMThe Fugitive
Dir. John Ford
(Mexico/USA, 1947, 104 min., 35mm)
Sunday, March 20th, 5:00 PM
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last updated on 08.29.2007
