Thursday 24 to Sunday 27 February

ACMI Cinemas
Australian Centre for the Moving Image - Federation Square, Melbourne

Immerse yourself in the vibrant cultural mosaic of Latin America through film, music, dance, drama, comedy, history, politics and culture in this selection of award-winning contemporary films and documentary plus a live performance by Cuba's Ile Ashe

2005 Melbourne Latin American Film Festival is presented by Melbourne Filmoteca: Latin American, Spanish + Portuguese Film Group, in association with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and with the support of the City of Melbourne

Ticket prices
5 session pass: See five films for $50 / $40 concession (not valid for opening night)
Single session: $12.00 / $9.00 concession
Opening Night (film + fiesta): $15.00 / $12.00 concession
Tickets on sale now from the ACMI box office. Bookings 03 8663 2583.
Internet sales www.acmi.net.au/tickets

Festival information
contact@melbournefilmoteca.org
03 9428 0886 / 0402 242 545

Programme flyer
To download a PDF of the festival programme, click here (3.1mb)

Amarelo Manga (Mango Yellow)
Brazil 2002 100 mins / Portuguese with English subtitles
Directed by Cláudio Assis

Thursday 24 February 7.30pm plus opening night fiesta
Saturday 26 February 1.00pm

OPENING NIGHT FIESTA: Following the Australian premiere screening of Amarelo Manga there will be a Latin American fiesta featuring Latin music, food and drink, piñatas, prizes and a surprise or two.

A bold and uncompromising vision of contemporary Brazil that tackles sexual politics, racism, religion and more. With its blend of ribald comedy and heady realism, independent filmmaker Cláudio Assis' Amarelo Manga provoked an outcry when it premiered at the 2002 Brasilia Film Festival. Set in the picture postcard city of Recife in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, Assis turns his camera away from the colonial buildings and beaches of the tourist brochures, instead focussing on a series of sordid intertwined stories with surreal characters that take place in a single day in the impoverished outskirts of the city.

Wellington (Chico Dìaz) is a butcher in a slaughterhouse married to Kika (Dira Paes) a devout and demure evangelical Christian. Wellington values his wife's religious conviction because it assures him of her fidelity, even as he carries on an affair with another woman. His daily deliveries take him to the seedy Hotel Texas, whose flamboyantly gay cook, Dunga (Matheus Nachtergaele), lusts after the butcher (to no avail). Nearby, at a bar/cafe, Lìgia (Leona Cavalli), the barkeeper, flaunts her sexuality all the while fighting off the constant physical advances of the scruffy customers. One of these, local drug dealer Isaac (Jonas Bloch) is obsessed with death - he buys the bodies of the newly dead, tastes the blood, and fires his gun into the corpses. As day becomes night, the taut social and moral structures begin to loosen. Simmering tensions come to the surface, and the characters are revealed at their most brutal and base.

Much of the controversy surrounding the film concerned its negativity, and indeed, Assis' finely-crafted film reveals the open wounds of a complex and fascinating society. Drawing on the critical lens of 1930s Brazilian modernismo as featured in films and books such as Macunaima, and with an ensemble cast that includes some of Brazil's best actors, Amarelo Manga is disturbing and hilarious in turn – an unforgettable film.

El Tigre de Santa Julia (The Tiger of Saint Julia)
Mexico 2002 128 mins / Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Alejandro Gamboa

Friday 25 February 7.00pm
Saturday 26 February 3.00pm

El Tigre de Santa Julia is a bold and brassy epic tale of adventure that mixes comedy, melodrama and sex, with a rich saturated look that pays tribute to the golden age of 1940s Mexican cinema. Set in 1880s Mexico during the brutal dictatorship of Porfirio Dìaz shortly before the Mexican Revolution, Alejandro Gamboa's film is a tongue-in-cheek retelling of the myth of popular hero José de Jesús Negrete Medina, aka ‘El Tigre de Santa Julia', who, accompanied by a band of merry women, stole from the rich to give to the poor.

José de Jesús (played with camp aplomb by Miguel Rodarte) is dogged by bad luck throughout his early life. He loses his mother, is abandoned by his father, and after finding solace in the army, he experiences a moral awakening and deserts. While in a drunken stupor in the town of Santa Julia, he performs an unwitting act of heroism, witnessed by Nando (Fernando Lujan), a washed-up newspaper reporter. Nando rewrites the events with José de Jesús in the role of a an avenging angel, naming him ‘El Tigre de Santa Julia', and declaring him a champion of the oppressed and enemy of the corrupt and repressive local authorities. Believing the newspaper reports, José de Jesús becomes El Tigre and forms a band of beautiful and sexy women (played by popstars and screen sirens Irán Castillo, Isaura Espinoza, Cristina Michaus and Ivonne Montero) and they pursue a life of solidarity and passion, while at the same time avenging the injustices around them, stealing from thieves and the local authorities to help the poor.

A hilarious and bawdy romp that pokes fun at official history, El Tigre de Santa Julia is a cheeky and visually sumptuous film driven by lively performances and a great sense of fun.

Bolivar Soy Yo (I am Bolìvar)
Colombia 2002 93 mins / Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Jorge Alì Triana

Friday 25 February 9.15pm
Saturday 26 February 5.15pm

This multi-award winning comedy from Colombian director Jorge Alì Triana is a delirious and razor-sharp satire of Latin American politics and contemporary media, in particular network television. Santiago Miranda (in a hilarious performance by Robinson Diaz) is an actor who plays the great historical revolutionary Simon Bolìvar in the cheesy (and tremendously popular) Colombian telenovela (TV soap) ‘The Loves of the Liberator'. Widely revered as ‘the liberator', Bolìvar's military campaigns secured and inspired independence from Spain throughout South America in the early 1800s.

However, Santiago is so immersed in his role that he begins to believe that he is, in fact, Bolìvar. As the series reaches its conclusion, Santiago abandons the filming, infuriated by the corny, lie-filled script. Teetering between reality and insanity, he decides to rewrite the remaining episodes and realise Bolìvar's unfulfilled dream of creating Gran Colombia (Great Colombia) – a unified state consisting of Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and his native Venezuela – as a solution to the institutional chaos, lack of opportunity and endless internal wars in the region. To achieve this, Santiago kidnaps the president of Colombia and demands the establishment of peace talks including the various armed militias. This outrageous act skyrockets him to popularity. His folly is exploited by a group of celebrity-hungry politicians, and his every step is recorded and watched across Latin America via the ever-present television networks.

Triana has crafted an intelligent black comedy that captures the violent, cruel, marvellous, and strange “Macondian” world of contemporary Colombia made famous by the (not so) fictional writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A film of tremendous depth, it celebrates while satirising cultural institutions such as Bolìvar's hero status, the mayhem of Latin American politics, the chaotic world of network television, and of course, the delightfully over-the-top telenovelas.

Historias Minimas (Minimal Stories)
Argentina 2002 90m / Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Carlos Sorìn

Saturday 26 February 7.00pm
Sunday 27 February 3.15pm

Set in the breathtakingly desolate Patagonian landscape in the far south of Argentina (the least populated region on earth), writer/director Carlos Sorin’s (La Pelicula Del Rey) most recent film is a trio of interwoven stories, each following journeys undertaken by three disparate characters.
Roberto (Javier Lombardo), a flamboyant travelling salesman, hopes to win the love of a young widow with a specially-ordered birthday cake for her son. En route to the city of San Julián he encounters the cantankerous eighty-year-old Don Justo (Antonio Benedictti), who is looking for his long-lost dog. Meanwhile, the impoverished Maria (Javiera Bravo) is also heading to San Julián with her young baby to be a contestant on a gaudy game show, where the main prize is a food processor - even though her tiny house has no electricity.

Featuring a largely non-professional cast (Bendectti is a retiree from Montevideo, Uruguay, and Bravo is a folk music teacher from Santiago Del Estero in northeastern Argentina), and shot entirely on location in Patagonia with a skeleton crew, Sorin has crafted a poetic and offbeat road movie full of gentle humour and human warmth.

Cuando los Espiritus Bailan Mambo
(When The Spirits Dance Mambo)
Cuba/USA 2002 95 mins / Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Marta Moreno Vega

Saturday 26 February 9.00pm
Sunday 27 February 1.00pm

Plus live performance by Ilé Ashé

Celebrated in Cuba as the first film to recount the complexity of Afro-Cuban traditions with dignity and truth, Marta Moreno Vega’s absorbing documentary Cuando Los Espiritus Bailan Mambo charts the history and continuing legacy of the sacred African religion, La Regla de Ocha (known internationally as Santeria) as practiced in Cuba. In particular, it looks at the influence of religious music in the development of Cuban popular music styles including son (salsa), rhumba, mambo, timba, Latin Jazz and Cuban hip-hop.

Featuring interviews with priests and priestesses, scholars, traditional and popular musicians, the vibrancy of sacred meaning is celebrated and honoured. Musical groups featured include grammy winners Yoruba Andabo and Clave y Guaguanco, Estrellas Cubana, Anonimo Consejo, Los Eguns Hablan and Los Muñequitos de Matanzas. Highlights include: the meeting between reknown New York-based traditional bata drummer Orlando “Puntilla” Rios and master drummer ChaCha; performances by The Folklorico Nacional Dance Company of Cuba and scenes from the Carnival in Santiago de Cuba which will make you dance in the aisles. Contemporary Cuban Hip Hop artists explain how closely related the religion is to their musical expression. And there is particular attention paid to the role of Afro-Cuban religious music in the development of Latin Jazz, with interviews with and footage of performances by Mario Bauza, Frank ‘Machito’ Grillo, Mongo Santamaria, Tito Puente and others.

Marta Moreno Vega is an Afro-Puerto Rican whose research in Cuba spans twenty-two years, culminating in her book, Altar of My Soul – The Living Traditions of Santeria. She works at the Carribean Cultural Center at the City University of New York (CUNY).

Ilé Ashé will perform prior to both screenings of Cuando Los Espiritus Bailan Mambo. Ilé Ashé (Source of Vitality) brings together Australia’s premier percussionists and dancers in the field of Afro-Cuban folklore. Founded in 2002 by ethnomusicologist and percussionist Adrian Hearn together with Cuban dancer Aloy Junco (Havana Nights 1999 World Tour). The group also includes dancers Kristina Moneron (Cuban Dance Academy) and Alejandro Espinosa (Lady Salsa 2002 World Tour); percussionists Felipe Cornejo (Sambumbia, Sally Ford) and Sergio Fredes (Orchesta del Barrio); and singer Aimé Colás (Havana Connection).