CINE CON CULTURA
Each fall during Latinx Heritage Month, film lovers of all ages gather in Ithaca for the New York's Latinx American film festival: Cine con Cultura. Festival screenings will take place several times a week from Tuesday, September 15th, 2020 through Wednesday, October 14th, 2020.
2020 marks our six annual celebration of Latin American filmmakers from all over the continent, and we are so proud to announce our official festival selection for this year, which includes 14 films. Some are brand new, some are from a few years ago, and all of them provide a different glimpse into life throughout Latin America and the US.
We are also thrilled to continue collaborating with Ithaca organizations this year: in addition to our longtime partners Cinemapolis, Ithaca College, and Cornell Cinema, we are also teaming up with the Multicultural Resource Center, the Tompkins County Immigrant Rights Coalition, the LGBTQI Center at Ithaca College, the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF), and the Committee on US-Latin American Relations (CUSLAR).
For more information visit culturaithaca.com and check out our social media pages on Facebook (www.facebook.com/Cineconcultura), Twitter (@cineconcultura), and Instagram (cineconcultura) and follow us for ongoing updates.
Several professors are collaborating with the film festival including the festival’s director Dr. Enrique González-Conty, and Cornell professors Dr. Cecelia Lawless and Dr. Debra Castillo.
Several films are free and open to the public and to buy tickets go to Cinemapolis and Cornell Cinema’s websites.
Epicentro is an immersive and metaphorical portrait of post-colonial, "utopian" Cuba, where the 1898 explosion of the U.S.S. Maine still resonates. This Big Bang ended Spanish colonial dominance in the Americas and ushered in the era of the American Empire. At the same time and place, a powerful tool of conquest was born: cinema as propaganda. In his latest film, Academy Award nominee Hubert Sauper (Darwin's Nightmare) explores a century of interventionism and myth-making together with the extraordinary people of Havana—who he calls "young prophets"—to interrogate time, imperialism and cinema itself. (Kinomarquee.com)
Epicentro
(Cuba/Austria, 2020)
By Hubert Sauper
108 minutes / documentary
Sept. 15 through Sept. 24, 2020
$12
Winner of the Best Documentary award at the Cannes Film Festival, master filmmaker Patricio Guzmán's The Cordillera of Dreams completes his trilogy (with Nostalgia for the Light and The Pearl Button) investigating the relationship between historical memory, political trauma, and geography in his native country of Chile. It centers on the imposing landscape of the Andes that run the length of the country’s Eastern border. At once protective and isolating, magisterial and indifferent, the Cordillera serves as an enigmatic focal point around which Guzmán contemplates the enduring legacy of the 1973 military coup d’état.
Along the way, Guzmán interviews artists, writers, and documentarians, drawing out their conflicted feelings towards the Cordillera and its relationship to Chilean national identity and history. Among the interviewees are Vincente Gajardo and Francisco Gazitúa, sculptors who draw from the raw materials of the Cordillera to produce their artwork. Jorge Baradoit, a writer of history and fiction, discusses the continuation of Pinochet’s project in the social and economic structure of contemporary Chile. Musician Javiera Parra remembers the violence she witnessed as a child. The film’s prominent moral voice is Pablo Salas, a filmmaker and archivist who has worked since the 1980s to document acts of political resistance and state violence. (cinema.cornell.edu)
The Cordillera of Dreams
(Chile, 2019)
By Patricio Guzmán
85 minutes / documentary
Sept. 18 through Sept. 24, 2020
Free w/reservation. Reservations open one week in advance of the first playdate.
Ana is a divorced architect with two daughters. There is a possibility for Ana in her work: a project that would mean moving to Mexico along with professional advance. In the middle of the separation of her parents, and her dad’s cancer diagnosis, Ana will have to make decisions that will affect her entire family. (cinelasamericas.org)
Apego
(Costa Rica/Chile, 2019)
By Patricia Velásquez
80 minutes / fiction
Sept. 19, 2020 at 7pm
through Sept. 22, 2020 - Free
Morgana is a Mexican transgender opera singer with a dream: a sex reassignment surgery. We follow her odyssey all the way to Bangkok as she fights for the identity she has been struggling all her life to construct.
Made in Bangkok
(Mexico, 2015)
By Flávio Florencio
75 minutes / documentary
Sept. 23, 2020 at 7pm
through Sept. 26, 2020 - Free
Based on harrowing true events, Song Without a Name tells the story of Georgina, an indigenous Andean woman whose newborn baby is whisked away moments after its birth in a downtown Lima clinic—and never returned. Stonewalled by a byzantine and indifferent legal system, Georgina approaches journalist Pedro Campas, who uncovers a web of fake clinics and abductions—suggesting a necrotic corruption deep within Peruvian society. (cinema.cornell.edu).
Song Without a Name/ Canción sin nombre
(Perú, 2019)
By Melina León
97 minutes/ fiction
Sept. 25 through Oct. 1st, 2020
Free w/reservation. Reservations open one week in advance of the first playdate.
When they were young, Melisa Liebenthal and her friends were really close. Now the filmmaker is an adult, she and her friends look back on their childhoods and teen years, and how they developed into women. To this end, she filmed them during dinner parties and talked to them individually with photo albums at the ready. Liebenthal and her friends reminisced using these.
How did they feel as children? What was puberty like for them? How do they see themselves now? But also: why are women still expected to primarily be attractive? In the meantime, Liebenthal reflects on her uncomfortable relationship with the camera using her own childhood photos and videos. Why is she mistaken for a lesbian or even a man so often? Why does she seem to deviate from the norm and what is that actually? This playful, autobiographical reconstruction of her still-young life attempts to unravel the essential life questions facing this woman in her 20s. (iffr.com)
Las lindas/
The Pretty Ones
(Argentina, 2016)
By Melisa Liebenthal
77 Minutes / documentary
Sept. 26, 2020 at 7pm
through Sept. 29, 2020 - Free
The documentary “Fait Vivir” follows the month-long Colombian tour of the collective Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra from the mountains of Cali, country of the salsa, to the Caribbean city of Barranquilla, home of the cumbia. (Radio Canadá Internacional).
Fait Vivir
(Colombia, 2020)
By Oscar Ruiz Navia
76 Minutes / documentary
Sept. 30th, 2020 at 7pm
through Oct. 2, 2020 - Free
Inspired by the actual case of Colonia Dignidad (The Dignity Colony, a remote, Chilean Nazi sect founded after WWII), The Wolf House masquerades as an animated fairy tale, photographed to appear as one continuous shot, waiting for the wolf at the door. Maria, a young woman, finds refuge in a house in the south of Chile after escaping from the sect of German religious fanatics. Two pigs, the only occupants of the house, welcome her inside. Like in a dream, the universe of the house reacts to Maria’s feelings. The animals transform slowly into humans and the house becomes a nightmarish world unto itself. (cinema.cornell.edu).
The Wolf House/
La casa lobo
(Chile, 2018)
By Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León. 73 Minutes / Stop Motion
Oct. 2 though Oct. 8, 2020
Free w/reservation. Reservations open one week in advance of the first playdate.
Addiction has made 28-year-old Isabella a living hell, and her family is desperate to pull her out of it. Rehab centers are apparently the best option, but she will soon realize that she has to fight in order to gain her freedom. (imdb.com).
Azules Turquesas
(Ecuador, 2019)
By Mónica Mancero
83 Minutes / Fiction
Oct. 3, 2020 at 7pm
through Oct. 6, 2020 - Free
This documentary film portrays the current lives of the Ramón Carrillo neighborhood in the city of Buenos Aires. It follows the people who were forced to move 25 years ago from the buildings that were built for the biggest pediatric hospital in Latin America called the “Albergue Warnes” and are now facing similar gentrification threats.
Los relocalizados
(Argentina, 2017)
By Darío Arcella
99 Minutes / documentary
Oct. 8, 2020 7pm
through Oct. 11, 2020 - Free
History haunts the border town of Columbus, N.M. when Mexican riders on horseback cross the line to commemorate Pancho Villa’s 1916 raid. As border dwellers and their divergent accounts of the Villa raid are introduced, the more subtle work a borderline does in shaping their lives comes into focus. (Ashland Independent Film Festival).
Crossing Columbus
(USA, 2020)
By Cathy Lee Crane
78 Minutes / documentary
Oct. 9 though Oct. 14, 2020
Free w/reservation. Reservations open one week in advance of the first playdate.
**Q&A with filmmaker Cathy Lee Crane on Oct. 14 at 7:30pm at Cornell Cinema
A man tries to cope with the death of his sister, but he can’t because he must continue working with the illegal business of bringing undocumented immigrants from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. (imdb.com).
El silencio del viento
(Puerto Rico, 2017)
By Álvaro Aponte Centeno
84 Minutes / Fiction
Oct. 11, 2020 at 7pm
through Oct. 14, 2020 - Free
¡Las Sandinistas! uncovers the untold stories of women who shattered barriers to lead combat and social reform during Nicaragua’s 1979 Sandinista Revolution, and the ensuing US-backed Contra War, as these same women continue as leaders in the struggle against their current government's suppression of democracy and women's rights.
The film is centered around the personal stories of Dora Maria Téllez, the young medical student who became a major Sandinista General, and four of her revolutionary allies - Nicaraguan women who overcame traditional gender barriers and subverted stereotypes to lead rebel troops in battle and reshape their country with landmark social reform. ¡Las Sandinistas! exposes a watershed moment in history when thousands of women transformed society’s definition of womanhood and leadership before facing renewed marginalization by their male peers after the wars ended. Now, 35 years later, amidst staggering levels of gender violence in Nicaragua, these same women brave the streets once again to lead popular movements for equality and democracy. (lassandinistas.com)
Las sandinistas
(Nicaragua, 2018)
By Jenny Murray
96 Minutes / documentary
Oct. 12, 2020 at 7pm
through Oct. 15, 2020 - Free
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