Cine Las Americas

A murder mystery unravels in the middle of the Patagonian Steppe in the short film Sobre la Estepa, loosely translated from Spanish as These Wild Plains. Hecho en Cine, a production company based both in Texas and Patagonia, Argentina, produced the 12-minute movie, which will tentatively have its U.S. premiere in Austin this April at the 15th Annual Cine Las Americas International Film Festival.

Sobre la Estepa was funded through Kickstarter, and was shot in San Carlos de Bariloche, a city situated in the foothills of the Andes Mountains in the province of Rio Negro, Argentina.

Ty Roberts, Hecho en Cine co-founder and Sobre la Estepa writer and director, said the idea for the movie came to him after meeting "interesting" people on a location scout in Patagonia.

"They immediately caught my eye," Roberts said. "It was just a really odd and interesting combination of characters."

During his research for Sobre la Estepa, Roberts came across the 2008 short film Sikumi (On The Ice), which was shot entirely in the Inupiaq language, spoken by the people of Alaska's Northwest Arctic and North Slope. Sikumi, about an Inuit hunter who inadvertently  witnesses a murder, became Roberts's model for Sobre la Estepa, which was shot in Spanish and Mapuche, the language of the indigenous peoples of Southwestern Argentina.

Couldn't get a badge for Fantastic Fest? If you were a Cine Las Americas badgeholder this year, you can see a free movie during the fest anyway, with the director in attendance.

I love it when film festivals collide this way; both fests bring outstanding international programming in a variety of genres to Austin. I also love free. I especially love it when there is free at a festival.

Tomorrow at 2 pm at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar, Cine Las Americas is hosting a special screening of the Fantastic Fest selection, El Infierno. This is not on the Fantastic Fest schedule, so you don't have to worry about getting in a queue for the online ticketing system. This particularly screening is reserved exclusively for CLA badgeholders, so unless you also happen to have a Fantastic Fest badge, you will probably not be able to see this movie again anytime soon (El Infierno screens twice as part of the regular Fantastic Fest schedule). 

The hitch is that you need to get to the theater on time and bring your badge from Cine Las Americas. If you're like me and attend a lot of festivals, you keep your badges, but then you have to find the right badge. To make it easier to find it, the badge has the 2011 Cine Las Americas poster on it, pictured here.

Just remember to leave plenty of time for parking -- it's only day two of Fantastic Fest so there is probably a full parking lot. 

The Cine Las Americas International Film Festival, which has been going on all week, has announced its jury award winners and scheduled them for encore screenings tonight at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar. If you don't have a festival pass, you can buy tickets at the Alamo box office.

Portraits in a Sea of Lies (Retratos en un mar de mentiras) won the Best Narrative Feature award and will be shown at 6 pm. The Colombian movie is about a pair of cousins who travel to their hometown to try to recover land taken from them when younger. The Best Narrative Short, Lupano Leyva, will screen beforehand.

The Best Documentary Feature award went to Defiant Brasilia (Avenida Brasilia Formosa), which plays at 3 pm. The "experimental documentary" from Brazil is about a group of people moved to a fictional street and how they interact together. The Best Documentary Short, If We Stay Alive (Si seguimos vivos), will screen beforehand.

Cine Las Americas wraps up tonight with closing-night film The Life of Fish (La vida de los peces), at 9:45 pm at Alamo on Lamar, followed by an after-party at Club DeVille.

For more Cine Las Americas coverage, check out Austin Vida, which includes an interview with Go For It! filmmaker Carmen Marron and reviews of fest selections Habla Texas and Miss Tacuarembo. In addition, True View Reviews has set up a blog just for their Cine Las Americas reviews.

Much to my regret, I haven't yet been able to get to Cine Las Americas this year. Fortunately, several other excellent online writers have been sharing previews, reviews and other interesting notes on the film festival.

Check out these websites, which will tempt you to head out to Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar and the Mexican American Cultural Center for the remaining films and events at Cine Las Americas this week. Feel free to share links to other coverage in the comments.

• Austin Vida is publishing movie reviews from Cine Las Americas. Annar Verold was impressed with the Chilean documentary Nostalgia de la luz, and amused by opening-night film Las marimbas del infierno.
• Over at Austin Film Society's Persistence of Vision blog, AFS Programming Director Chale Nafus has been sharing his enjoyment of the festival and offering previews of many films. Here are his entries for Day One and Day Three of Cine Las Americas this year, and I'm sure he'll have more before the week ends.
• Kimberley Jones and Richard Whittaker at the Austin Chronicle recommends five must-see events at Cine Las Americas, some of which you can still catch.
• Even the parties are getting a bit of press: Michael Barnes reports on Friday night's Iron Dragon reception on the Statesman's Out and About blog, and chats with the Cine Las Americas filmmakers that attended.

Cine Las Americas is almost upon us so it's high time to do a little preview before opening night on Thursday. If you aren't familiar with Cine Las Americas, it's a festival celebrating the films and realities of those of Latin and Indigenous America, including a diverse selection of narratives and documentaries. Unlike most of the festivals in town, a great deal of the programming for Cine Las Americas is free.

This year, the primary venues are Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar and the Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC). The MACC screenings are free, and this year, the MACC is the main venue. In addition, two satellite venues offer a few additional free movies: the Jones Auditorium at the Ragsdale Center (St. Edwards University), and the Blue Starlite Mini Urban Drive-in. Plus there are those Master Classes I mentioned last week. That means a whole lot more free. Sure, passholders (the equivalent of badges) get priority seating, but that just means with a little patience, you can see a lot of world-class cinema regardless of how tight your budget. Besides, the passes are pretty affordable anyway.

With the 14th annual Cine Las Americas looming on the horizon, we thought there is something you should know. Not only do they have another schedule packed full of films encompassing the breadth of Latin American and indigenous American cinema, this year Cine Las Americas also has four "Master Classes" available to the public.

That's right -- available to the public, as in free, gratis, no dinero, won’t break your piggy bank. Of course there is a slight catch: If you have a film pass for Cine Las Americas, you get priority seating, so if you do want to attend, get there early to be at the front of the line. Or spend a few bucks and get a pass for one of the best kept secrets in film in a movie-hungry town (get one now and save on full price).

The four classes run from Monday, April 25 to Thursday, April 28, and take place at 4 pm in the Black Box Theater at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC). The MACC has been a venue for Cine Las Americas for a while now, and this year more films are screening there, meaning you can easily catch a master class then make the evening's films.

• Monday, April 25 -- Carmen Marron, writer/director/producer, Go For It! talks about getting U.S. distribution for her inspirational dance film. Go For It! Opens theatrically on May 13, released by Pantelion Films (Lionsgate).
• Tuesday, April 26 -- Andrés Martínez-Ríos, founder and director of Aatomo Rentas/Chemistry Cine. This case study of the film Jean Gentil (dir. Laura Amelia Guzmán and Ismael Cárdenes) will be a discussion of current state of international cooperation in production and post-production, with a focus on Mexico and the United States.

Cine Las Americas has been honoring both the 200th anniversary of Mexico's independence and the 100th anniversary of its revolution all year with a variety of film series. The latest is free, and perfect for the season, as it celebrates that famous masked superhero ... Santo.

If you're not familiar with the Santo legend, Santo was a professional wrestler in Mexico in the early 20th century. Santo was so popular he not only became a folklore icon, but spawned a series of 52 films from 1958 through 1982, with the most famous film being Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro (Santo vs. the Vampire Women), which was featured on MST3K. Locals who frequent the Alamo Drafthouse have probably at least seen some clips of Santos films as part of the Alamo pre-shows. But you can now see five of those films in their entirety for the hefty sum of whatever amount of fuel it costs for you to get to the Mexican American Culture Center (MACC) on River Street. 

The Santo Superestrella series runs from October 18 through November 15. Best of all, it's free, and open to the public.  All screenings start at 8 pm, and include English subtitles.   

Did you know that 2010 marks both the 200th anniversary of Mexico's independence and the 100th anniversary of its Revolution? I didn't until this year's Cine Las Americas International Film Festival. 

To celebrate the dual anniversary, Cine Las Americas is programming related free movies and Mexican films in general for the rest of the year, starting with a four-film series co-presented by the Harry Ransom Center.

"The Mexican Revolution Films of the 70s" includes four rare features by influential directors that explorethe Mexican Revolution and other national realities from a period of unprecedented latitude. Here are the four films and the descriptions from the Cine Las Americas website:

• El prinicipio (The Beginning), directed by Gonzalo Martínez Ortega. "Mexico is in the midst of Revolution when the protagonist returns after studying in Paris to find his native town in Chihuahua occupied by Francisco Villa’s revolutionary forces. He visits his deserted home and remembers people and events from his adolescence that provide glimpses of pre-Revolutionary society under dictatorship." (May 6)
• Cananea, directed by Marcela Fernández Violante. "Colonel William Greene, in an expedition across the Sonoran desert, stumbles upon large copper reserves. Almost immediately he decides to set up mines and he quickly becomes one of the wealthiest men in the region. His ambition, however, leads him to mistreat and exploit the men working in the mines." (May 13)

I'm feeling the post-fest blues already. Another Cine Las Americas is over. But it's less than a year til the next one. Chamaco (The Kid), the closing-night film played to a near capacity crowd, with a special introduction thanking festival staff for their hard efforts and announcing the winners of the competitions. I think I wrote them down correctly, but if not I'll correct it when the official announcement comes out:

• Best Narrative Feature:  Mal día para pescar (Bad Day to Go Fishing).
  Honorable Mention:  Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment)
• Best Documentary Feature:  La tierra sin mal (The Land of No Evil). 
  Honorable Mention:  Which Way Home
• Best Narrative Short:  Fantastic Fest selection Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5 
  Honorable Mention:  Austin-made short by Miguel Alvarez, Mnemosyne Rising
• Best Documentary Short:  Olhos de Ressaca (Undertow Eyes).  
  Honorable Mention: Point of Entry
• Best Hecho en Tejas:   Austinite Sharon Arteaga's When I Grow Up
• Narrative Feature Audience Award: Mal día para pescar (Bad Day to Go Fishing).
• Documentary Feature Audience Award:  Which Way Home

I'm sorry I missed updating you all about Cine Las Americas's Tuesday schedule, but I plead a case of Robert Downey Jr.-itis.  I would've only seen one movie anyway, as only one was scheduled at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar that night. Speaking of which, I have to give a shout-out to the Alamo Lamar staff, which handled not one, not two, but three special events that night on top of a weekly series event, meaning every single theater was filled with unique programming in the early evening.  What could have been a major cluster... mess, went off rather smoothly.  Thank you, Alamo Lamar for that.

Wednesday night, well, you should've been there.  Even with two more special screenings, including a special A Nightmare on Elm Street preview with Jackie Earle Haley in attendance and a marketing sneak of part of Toy Story 3 (college students only), things still seemed to run smoothly at the south Alamo location.

At Cine Las Americas, the theme for the night was twisted perceptions. Viajo Porque Preciso, Volto Porque Te Amo (I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You) is a narrative collection of images turning a travel diary of a geologist into an insight on relationships and endings. The narrator is never seen, but through his travels on a field study for an upcoming canal development that will displace farms and villages, the loneliness of the road and what was left behind is heartbreaking. Unfortunately too many of the images are distractingly blurry, but it's still worth a watch.