For the past couple of years the Cannes Film Festival has premiered highly acclaimed and anticipated Latin American films. This Friday two of these films, both having debuted during the Director’s Fortnight, will be released theatrically. From the late Chilean filmmaker, Raúl Ruiz, is Night Across the Street, the final film of his prolific career. Also opening this week is Alejandro Landes’ fiction film debut Porfirio based on the true life story of a paraplegic man who attempted to hijack a plane in Colombia. They are both stories of men trapped in their own existence and looking for a way out. Porfirio and Night Across the Street open this Friday, February 8 in New York.
Porfirio
Director: Alejandro Landes
Colombia | 2011 | 106 min
In Spanish with English subtitles
A Magic Lantern Release
In 2005, Alejandro Landes came across a newspaper headline that sparked the idea for this film, “Paralyzed Man in Diapers Hijacks Plane to Bogotá.” Landes soon traveled to the man’s hometown and spent time with Porfirio, trying to figure out his motivation for the hijacking. He found a man frustrated by his surroundings, a man who was once a wealthy farmer and cattle rancher but was left paralyzed when hit by a stray police bullet. Landes became convinced that he wanted Porfirio to play himself and later cast his young son and Porfirio’s neighbor, all non-professional actors, to star in the film. What comes across in Landes’ film is that there were not many events that led up to the hijacking; it was the lack of action that ultimately put Porfirio on his path. Landes’ aesthetic choices put the audience inside Porfirio’s world, a claustrophobic, alienated existence. The low, horizontal angles center on Porfirio sitting in his wheelchair, often cutting off other characters at the waist. We see headless bodies; we see things from Porfirio’s point of view. The audience is given a peek into the intimate details of his daily life—love, sex, showering, going to the bathroom—and it becomes clear that the monotony, the pent of feelings of helplessness became the catalyst for his defiant act. As a man who is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair he felt compelled to take control of something and that something ended up being a commercial jet filled with passengers.
Porfirio opens February 8, 2013 in New York at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, 11 West 53rd St) with a limited national release to follow.
La Noche de Enfrente (Night Across the Street)
Director: Raúl Ruiz
Chile, France | 2012 | 101 min
In Spanish and French with English Subtitles
A Cinema Guild Release
At the time of his death in August of 2011, Raúl Ruiz was seventy years old and had directed over 100 films. Night Across the Street is his final film, having premiered posthumously at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Not surprisingly, it is a rumination on death itself—Ruiz knew his own end was near and it is believed that he intended for the film to be screened after his passing. For his final film he chose to adapt two short stories. Ruiz wanted to immerse himself in the “poetic world” of Chilean writer Hernán del Solar in whose work, “daily life coexists with the dream world.” Only a master filmmaker like Ruiz could successfully transfer Solar’s “poetic world” to the screen. The result is a dreamscape of images that flip back and forth between the past, the present, and the future. Don Celso (Sergio Hernandez) is an elderly office worker who is being forced into early retirement. The dread that comes with his dull, humdrum life makes him acutely aware of the minutes that keep passing him by. It becomes clear that Ruiz has pieced together a meditation on death and the passage of time. It not only blurs the line between past and present but also fiction and reality. Shot in HD, it’s a surreal and often confusing experience that leaves the audience contemplating their own mortality (and maybe trying to figure out the story).
Night Across the Street opens February 8, 2013 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (144 West 65th St).
Written by Juan Caceres and Vanessa Erazo, LatinoBuzz is a weekly feature on SydneysBuzz that highlights Latino indie talent and upcoming trends in Latino film with the specific objective of presenting a broad range of Latino voices. Follow @LatinoBuzz on twitter.
Porfirio
Director: Alejandro Landes
Colombia | 2011 | 106 min
In Spanish with English subtitles
A Magic Lantern Release
In 2005, Alejandro Landes came across a newspaper headline that sparked the idea for this film, “Paralyzed Man in Diapers Hijacks Plane to Bogotá.” Landes soon traveled to the man’s hometown and spent time with Porfirio, trying to figure out his motivation for the hijacking. He found a man frustrated by his surroundings, a man who was once a wealthy farmer and cattle rancher but was left paralyzed when hit by a stray police bullet. Landes became convinced that he wanted Porfirio to play himself and later cast his young son and Porfirio’s neighbor, all non-professional actors, to star in the film. What comes across in Landes’ film is that there were not many events that led up to the hijacking; it was the lack of action that ultimately put Porfirio on his path. Landes’ aesthetic choices put the audience inside Porfirio’s world, a claustrophobic, alienated existence. The low, horizontal angles center on Porfirio sitting in his wheelchair, often cutting off other characters at the waist. We see headless bodies; we see things from Porfirio’s point of view. The audience is given a peek into the intimate details of his daily life—love, sex, showering, going to the bathroom—and it becomes clear that the monotony, the pent of feelings of helplessness became the catalyst for his defiant act. As a man who is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair he felt compelled to take control of something and that something ended up being a commercial jet filled with passengers.
Porfirio opens February 8, 2013 in New York at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, 11 West 53rd St) with a limited national release to follow.
La Noche de Enfrente (Night Across the Street)
Director: Raúl Ruiz
Chile, France | 2012 | 101 min
In Spanish and French with English Subtitles
A Cinema Guild Release
At the time of his death in August of 2011, Raúl Ruiz was seventy years old and had directed over 100 films. Night Across the Street is his final film, having premiered posthumously at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Not surprisingly, it is a rumination on death itself—Ruiz knew his own end was near and it is believed that he intended for the film to be screened after his passing. For his final film he chose to adapt two short stories. Ruiz wanted to immerse himself in the “poetic world” of Chilean writer Hernán del Solar in whose work, “daily life coexists with the dream world.” Only a master filmmaker like Ruiz could successfully transfer Solar’s “poetic world” to the screen. The result is a dreamscape of images that flip back and forth between the past, the present, and the future. Don Celso (Sergio Hernandez) is an elderly office worker who is being forced into early retirement. The dread that comes with his dull, humdrum life makes him acutely aware of the minutes that keep passing him by. It becomes clear that Ruiz has pieced together a meditation on death and the passage of time. It not only blurs the line between past and present but also fiction and reality. Shot in HD, it’s a surreal and often confusing experience that leaves the audience contemplating their own mortality (and maybe trying to figure out the story).
Night Across the Street opens February 8, 2013 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (144 West 65th St).
Written by Juan Caceres and Vanessa Erazo, LatinoBuzz is a weekly feature on SydneysBuzz that highlights Latino indie talent and upcoming trends in Latino film with the specific objective of presenting a broad range of Latino voices. Follow @LatinoBuzz on twitter.
- 2/6/2013
- by Vanessa Erazo
- Sydney's Buzz
Edouard Waintrop, Artistic Director of Directors' Fortnight, has presented the lineup for this year's edition, running from May 17 through 27.
Features
Merzak Allouache's El Taaib. Evene claims it's an angry film aimed at the malaise of Algerian society.
Rodney Ascher's Room 237. A documentary about the plethora of theories that have sprung up over the years regarding just what Stanley Kubrick was up to when he made The Shining (1980). More here. IFC Midnight picked up North American rights just yesterday.
Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar and Benjamin Renner's Ernest et Célestine. From the makers of A Town Called Panic, this is an animated adaptation of a series of books about a little mouse who doesn't want to become a dentist and a big bear who doesn't want to become a notary. Site.
Benjamin Ávila's Infancia clandestina. From the San Sebastian Film Festival: "Juan lives in clandestinity. Just like his mum,...
Features
Merzak Allouache's El Taaib. Evene claims it's an angry film aimed at the malaise of Algerian society.
Rodney Ascher's Room 237. A documentary about the plethora of theories that have sprung up over the years regarding just what Stanley Kubrick was up to when he made The Shining (1980). More here. IFC Midnight picked up North American rights just yesterday.
Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar and Benjamin Renner's Ernest et Célestine. From the makers of A Town Called Panic, this is an animated adaptation of a series of books about a little mouse who doesn't want to become a dentist and a big bear who doesn't want to become a notary. Site.
Benjamin Ávila's Infancia clandestina. From the San Sebastian Film Festival: "Juan lives in clandestinity. Just like his mum,...
- 4/25/2012
- MUBI
Chilean-born film-maker who became the darling of the French avant garde
Raúl Ruiz, the Chilean-born film director who has died aged 70 after suffering a lung infection, held audiences with his glittering eye for more than 40 years. Baroque imagery, bizarre humour and labyrinthine plots made his elusive and allusive oeuvre unlike anything else in contemporary cinema.
Although most of his films were made while he was an exile in France, his work was part of the fabulist tradition that runs through much Latin American literature, such as the writings of Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges and Alfonso Reyes. Ruiz liked to quote the Cuban surrealist writer José Lezama Lima, who stated that the task of the poet is "to go into a dark room and build a waterfall there".
Born in Puerto Montt, in southern Chile, Ruiz studied law, theology and theatre before becoming a prolific avant-garde playwright. His first feature,...
Raúl Ruiz, the Chilean-born film director who has died aged 70 after suffering a lung infection, held audiences with his glittering eye for more than 40 years. Baroque imagery, bizarre humour and labyrinthine plots made his elusive and allusive oeuvre unlike anything else in contemporary cinema.
Although most of his films were made while he was an exile in France, his work was part of the fabulist tradition that runs through much Latin American literature, such as the writings of Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges and Alfonso Reyes. Ruiz liked to quote the Cuban surrealist writer José Lezama Lima, who stated that the task of the poet is "to go into a dark room and build a waterfall there".
Born in Puerto Montt, in southern Chile, Ruiz studied law, theology and theatre before becoming a prolific avant-garde playwright. His first feature,...
- 8/19/2011
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
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