MELBOURNE LATIN AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY
FILM FESTIVAL

November 1st, 7th & 14th
At The Backlot Studios Cinema, 65 Haig St. Southbank.

Saturday November 1st

6:00pm
Cuba – HABANASTATION
2011, 96 min.
[Spanish with English Subtitles]

Previews:

“Habanastation” is an eye opener for the present Cuba. Mayito, the son of Pepe, a jazz pianist of international renown. As such, he can travel abroad for presentations where he is in demand. When Pepe returns home, he usually brings his son a new gadget, usually an electronic game. This time is a PlayStation3, Mayito already has a DVD player he watches on his way to school as his mother drives him there.

The daily routine for the school includes a sort of swearing ceremony in which the children in their neat uniforms promise to be like Che Guevara. Kids will be kids, so it comes as no surprise when Mayito’s classmate, Carlos, who has no clue as to what a PlayStation is, becomes the object of ridicule by Mayito and the more evolved boys. There is a scuffle with Mayito, when Carlos feels he is being taunted for his ignorance.

May Day celebration brings Mayito, Carlos and their class to the plaza where thousands meet to hear speeches praising their system. There is one problem though. Mayito, who has brought the new toy with him in his backpack to show his friends, becomes separated from his group by taking the wrong bus, thinking it is the right one. Realizing his mistake, he is let out by the driver in a section that looks, for all practical purposes, like a ‘favela’ in Rio, or one shanty town in the outskirts of any Latin American cities.
Help for Mayito comes when he bumps into Carlos, the classmate he fought with in school.

8:00pm
Eyes Wide Open – Exploring Latin America Today
2012, 110 min.
[Spanish with English Subtitles]

As Eduardo Galeano discusses so passionately in his book “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent”, the peoples of South America have lived for the last 500 years under political suppression and economic exploitation imposed by European and U.S. powers. Does the dawn of a new millennium promise a continuation of this pattern or the birth of a new cycle? Journeying from one country to the next, Eyes Wide Open soberly reviews the toll the neo-liberal agenda took on the social and economic well-being of Latin America and explores how these countries are now restructuring public power. In Bolivia, Evo Morales nationalizes all hydro-carbon resources. In Argentina, Néstor Kirchner purges corruption, grants amnesty to political prisoners, and rejects American involvement, all while lifting his country out of total economic collapse. Insightful and illuminating, Eyes Wide Open deftly explores the struggle against the invisible God of the Market.

…Donations: $15 one film, $25 two films, $35 three films

Friday November 7th

6:00pm
Venezuela – My Friend Hugo [Mi Amigo Hugo]
A film by Oliver Stone
2014, 50 min.
[Spanish with English Subtitles]

Documentary My friend Hugo, through which US director Oliver Stone tells the world that “it’s time to have another view of Venezuelan politics built by the revolutionary leader Hugo Chavez,” was premiered on Wednesday night in Venezuela’s radio and television hook-up. At the end of filming his previous documentary South of the border in 2009, Stone shared with the commander a night of reflection on his life, the rebellion of February 4, 1992 and the historical importance of the headquarters of the Mountain military museum located in the January 23 parish, west of Caracas.
“My friend Hugo is a response to that night, is one of the feelings I did not express at the time, a sort of farewell,” are phrases that audio-visual production starts with. The documentary gathers testimonials from members of the cabinet, world leaders, family and aides of commander which for 50 minutes build an image of Chavez in his different facets, including the military, communicator, president, humourist, ranger, feminist and strategist.
The Mining and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, the governor of Barinas state and commander’s brother Adan Chavez, Minister for Electricity Jesse Chacon, president Maduro’s wife Cilia Flores, singer Cristobal Jimenez and journalist Jose Vicente Rangel are some of the voices present in My friend Hugo. Also participating was President Nicolas Maduro, who emphasized the untiring manner in which revolutionary leader use to work. “He taught us a rhythm of dense work, with commitment to the things that are being made and to the future,” he said.
“I met Che, I met Mao, but I can say this man (Chavez) is a character who broke the mold,” said President of Uruguay Jose Mujica, one of the world leaders who told in the documentary part of his experiences with the revolutionary leader. Likewise did the president of Argentina Cristina Fernandez, Bolivia’s president Evo Morales, Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa.
“History will miss you” are the closing words of documentary released Wednesday to commemorate the anniversary of the sowing of the supreme commander, who illustrated the path of socialism outlined in the Plan of the Nation 2013 – 2019.

7:20
Guatemala/Honduras “GREEN FLESH, DEATH LAND”
Spanish/Garifura with English subtitles, 30 minutes, 2012

A Central American perspective
Guatemala, The Garifuna communities by the Caribbean Sea and the Honduran farmers in the Bajo Aguán, and her stories of resistance, how they prepared with the new development model called “green economy” to fight against the devastating consequences of multinational corporations mega-projects.

8:30pm
Chile – Nostalgia For The Light
A film by Patricio Guzmán
2010, 90 min.
[Spanish with English Subtitles]

For his new film master director Patricio Guzmán, famed for his political documentaries (THE BATTLE OF CHILE, THE PINOCHET CASE), travels 10,000 feet above sea level to the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert, where atop the mountains astronomers from all over the world gather to observe the stars. The sky is so translucent that it allows them to see right to the boundaries of the universe.
The Atacama is also a place where the harsh heat of the sun keeps human remains intact: those of Pre-Columbian mummies; 19th century explorers and miners; and the remains of political prisoners, “disappeared” by the Chilean army after the military coup of September, 1973 So while astronomers examine the most distant and oldest galaxies, at the foot of the mountains, women, surviving relatives of the disappeared whose bodies were dumped here, search, even after twenty-five years, for the remains of their loved ones, to reclaim their families’ histories. Melding the celestial quest of the astronomers and the earthly one of the women, NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT is a gorgeous, moving, and deeply personal odyssey.

…Donations: $15 one film, $25 two films, $35 three films

Friday November 14th

6:00pm
Colombia – The Cost of a Coke (2014)
2014, 30 min.
[English]

“…Those claims, regardless of whoever made them, are not true”
-Dana Bolden, The Coca-Cola Company
“Matt Beard’s film exposes the lies, moral bankruptcy and corruption that pervades Coca-Cola in Colombia and highlights conflicts of interest of Federal Judge Jose Martinez in presiding over the Coca-Cola lawsuits.”
-Ray Rogers, Killer Coke

Coca-Cola, we’ve found out, has actually been cooperating with paramilitaries in Colombia to execute workers in their own bottling plants that are trying to form unions and trying to demand better working conditions. So we’ve been able to bring this to the attention of Universities and say ‘if Coca Cola doesn’t stop doing this and if Coca Cola doesn’t adopt different practices, then our University is no longer willing to have anything to do with Coca Cola.

In the world of the Coca-Cola Company, whenever there’s a union there’s always a bust, whenever there’s corruption there’s always the real thing, yeah!! Justice Productions latest release, this is the updated version to Matt Beard’s first documentary, The Cost of a Coke (2014).

The Cost of a Coke explores the corruption and moral bankruptcy of the world’s most popular soda, and what you can do to help end a gruesome cycle of murders and environmental degradation.

6:50pm
Mapuche – Chile: The Plunder [El Despojo]
A Documentary by Dauno Totoro
2004, 73 min.
[Spanish with English Subtitles]

A documentary on the struggle of the Mapuche People of Chile to maintain their traditional way of life, increase their autonomy, and recover land taken from them.

8:30pm
Argentina – The White Elephant
A film by Pablo Trapero
2012, 90 min.
[Spanish with English Subtitles]

The Argentinian film-maker Pablo Trapero has always brought muscular confidence and flair to his work, and White Elephant is no exception, a movie about faith and hope to which the new papal election has given an arrowhead of relevance.

It is set in the Villa Virgin barrio, the toughest shantytown in Buenos Aires, a grim place dominated surreally by the gigantic ruined TB hospital built in the 1930s; now a deserted wreck and cathedral of poverty known as the “white elephant” where the homeless camp and drug-dealers ply their trade.
(It looks, to me, creepily like the Ceaușescu presidential palace in Bucharest.) Two priests work tirelessly to help the people there: Father Julián (Ricardo Darin) and his new younger Belgian colleague, Father Nicolás (Jérémie Renier), who believes in actively mediating drug wars.

Julián thinks this will only contaminate and compromise their priesthood, and is listening to his superiors who are asking him to promote the cult of Father Carlos Mujica, the local Marxist priest who was (in real life) killed there in 1974. And meanwhile, Nicolás is beginning to fall in love with social worker Luciana (Martina Gusmán).

For me, the focus of the film is too diffuse: is the implied spiritual dimension of the story merely a symptom of poverty? Or does it have an authenticity that transcends everything? And does the division between Nicolás and Julián imply an urgent moral choice? Or are they just two approaches undertaken in equally valid good faith? A flawed drama, but one with emotional power.

…Donations: $15 one film, $25 two films, $35 three films