All Entries in the "film" Category
Filmmakers document consequences of U.S. immigration raid
Back in May 2008, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials rounded up 389 undocumented workers in the Agriprocessors Inc. kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. The raid was the largest in U.S history.
Two weeks later, filmmakers Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan started filming “In the Shadow of the Raid,” a documentary film showing at the [...]
Death in El Salvador
The killing of documentary maker Christian Poveda represents a sad loss for a region much in need of greater understanding.
Video: ‘I’ve never been afraid’: Director, recently slain, talks about filming El Salvador’s gangs
Photographer and filmmaker Christian Poveda was shot dead in El Salvador Sept. 2, 2009. He spent more than 16 months, every day, with the mara gangs of San Salvador to make the 2009 documentary “La Vida Loca.” This is footage from an interview conducted by the Los Angeles Times’ Deborah Bonello with Poveda a few [...]
Christian Poveda, “la Vida Loca” director, killed in El Salvador
Reports have surfaced that French photographer and director Christian Poveda has been shot and killed in El Salvador, possibly by the gangs that his recently released documentary “La Vida Loca (the Crazy Life)” focused on.
Reuters reports:
Suspected Salvadorean gang members killed French filmmaker Christian Poveda, whose 2008 film “La Vida Loca” crudely depicts the hopeless lives [...]
Human rights hit the big screen in second film festival
Mexico’s second annual human rights film festival, supported by a number of organizations here including the Mexico branch of Amnesty International, the Ambulante documentary film project and Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission, opens at the end of the week.
Video: Mexican day laborers are ‘Los Bastardos’ in fictional work
At first glance, “Los Bastardos” seems a surprising film for a Mexican director to make.
How funny will Mexicans find ‘Bruno’?
It will be interesting to see how Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie, Brüno, is received here in Mexico when it launches in cinemas at the end of September.
Video: “Tracing Aleida” director on making the film and Mexico’s “dirty war”
This is a longer version of an edited interview with the director Christiane Burkhard about her documentary film project, “Tracing Aleida”.
Preview the Mexican movies hitting Los Angeles in Hola Mexico festival
L.A. audiences would seem to need no introduction to Mexican cinema.
Fiction series on Mara Salvatrucha wins Webby Award
“The Ten Commandments of la Vida Loca, ” received the Webby Award for best drama series during a weekend ceremony in New York.
First Stop in the New World: dollar-a-dance hostess
This week MexicoReporter.com will be publishing a series of extracts from David Lida’s book “First Stop in the New World.”
Video: American design duo launches arts and culture mag in Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s culture, arts and music scene is the focus of a new magazine launched by two American designers living in the country’s capital, Managua.
Film chronicles woman’s search for identity after Mexico’s ‘dirty war’
This week saw the cinema premiere here in Mexico of a film documenting the real-life story of Aleida Gallangos Vargas, the child of political activists who disappeared during the country’s “dirty war.”
Video: ‘La Vida Loca’ captures daily reality of El Salvador’s gangs, or maras
“La Vida Loca” reflects a depressing and hopeless reality. The documentary follows some of the members of ”la dieciocho,” the so-called 18th Street gang in a poor San Salvador neighborhood.
Guadalajara Film Festival: ‘Those Who Remain,’ ‘Round Trip’ scoop prizes at Guadalajara film fest
Those Who Remain,’ ‘Round Trip’ scoop prizes at Guadalajara film fest.
Video: ‘Those Who Remain’ focuses on families left behind in Mexico by migrants
The homes that Mexican migrants come from are often a jumping-off point for filmmakers, but Rulfo and Hagerman chose to stay at the point of departure to see how those who remain deal with their reduced numbers.
Guadalajara Film Festival: Road-trippers follow the signals in ‘Round Trip’
Throw together two feisty characters from different sides of life’s tracks. It’s an old strategy but it works, as demonstrated by “Viaje Redondo”, Mexican director Gerardo Tort’s road-trip chick flick.
Guadalajara Film Festival: ‘El Enemigo’ examines the morality of revenge
“El Enemigo” (The Enemy) is one of the movies competing for the Guadalajara International Film Festival’s Best Ibero-American Fiction Feature Film this year.
Guadalajara Film Festival: Secret special effects of ‘Hellboy’ and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ revealed
Guillermo del Toro’s imagination is a fascinating abyss full of the kind of monsters that inhabit both our dreams and our nightmares.
Guadalajara — the story so far
I’m on the hoof, but wanted to report on some of the films I’ve seen so far here at the Guadalajara International Film Festival.
Gael Garcia Bernal to be recognized for contributions to film at upcoming Guadalajara festival
Gael Garcia Bernal is to be honored at the upcoming International Film Festival in Guadalajara for his contributions to cinema.
Mexico’s media under scrutiny in documentary
Violence against journalists in Mexico is nothing new but “Voces Silenciadas” broadens the debate around the persecution of journalists to encompass the bigger issues of media ownership and the relationship between the media and Mexico’s political powers.
Mexico City film festival creates new screening category for wierd movies
Five films in the International Festival of Contemporary Cinema (FICCO) are “so bizarre, so completely outside any conventional genre, that it appears organizers liked them, but couldn’t figure out what to do with them.”
Anti-piracy campaign targets cinema-goers
Take a trip to the cinema in Mexico anytime soon and you’ll probably see an ad campaign that scolds the Mexican public for buying pirated movies.
Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna launch 4th Ambulante documentary festival in Mexico
Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, two of Mexico’s most bankable movie stars, launched the fourth annual Ambulante documentary film festival Friday morning in a packed cinema screening room on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma.
Film defends Mexican woman imprisoned in Texas
Rosa Jimenez, a 26-year-old Mexican woman, could currently be serving a sentence of 99 years in a Texas prison for a crime she didn’t commit, according to Lucía Gajá, 34, the young Mexican director of the documentary “Mi Vida Dentro (My Life Inside).”
The film takes aim at the United States criminal-justice system and its treatment of Mexican undocumented female migrants. It is told through the case of Jimenez, who crossed illegally into the United States when she was 17 years old. Clearly on the side of the defendant, the film combines the words of Jimenez, her defense lawyers and the prosecution to lay out what ends up a chilling depiction.
“Mi Vida Dentro” debuted in Mexico last week in cinemas across the capital, and is the first feature-length film from Gajá, who is a graduate of CUEC, the cinema program of the Autonomous National University of Mexico. It’s also the first Mexican documentary to be distributed by Ambulante, the film festival created by two of Mexico’s most bankable stars, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, in 2006.
“Che, the Argentine” premieres in Mexico City
There were no rabble-rousing speeches, but Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the film version, was greeted by an eager audience at the nearly full Julio Bracho cinema, which hosted the premier of the first part of Steven Soderbergh’s long-awaited portrait of the Argentine revolutionary last night.
“Che, the Argentine,” got its first Mexican screening on the sprawling campus of Mexico’s most influential university, the UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico). The movie has, like all upcoming major releases here in Mexico, been selling for weeks now on stands that deal in pirated DVDs, but there remain those who want to see the film on the big screen. The audience was a mixture of all ages, from amorous teenage couples to unaccompanied gray-haired men, and they received the portrait of the much-adored revolutionary with gusto.
Guevara is popular among the sprawling student population here in Mexico City, where he and Fidel Castro, then an exiled Cuban lawyer, planned their Cuban Revolution over dinner and cigars on July 3rd, 1955. The myth and heroic image of the Argentine have replaced a real understanding of the complex man that he was. His face is often emblazoned across flags and T-shirts during student protests and commonly evoked as a universal symbol of social struggle.
Mexico hosts its first human rights film festival
Immigration, women’s rights, illegal detention and human trafficking are some of the themes that will be examined next week during Mexico’s first human rights film festival.
Spotlight on dog overpopulation and abuse in Mexico
Still on the doggy theme of last week, a documentary screening in Mexico City over the weekend focused on how Mexico deals with the thousands of stray dogs roaming its streets. And no, it did not paint a pretty picture.
Bajo Juarez campaigns for the dead women of Ciudad Juarez
Lilia Alejandra is one of the 370 women who have disappeared in Mexico’s Chihuahua state since 1993. Her story is the main focus of Bajo Juárez, a documentary film that was five years in the making and opened here in Mexico this weekend.
Movie ‘La Zona’ thrills with its ambiguous take on Mexico’s class divide
This brilliant directorial debut from Uruguayan-born Rodrigo Pla poses some of life’s most fundamental moral questions in a film that grips the viewer right from the start.
The feature also brings to the cinema, with very little exaggeration, some of the social dynamics of Mexican society and its obstacles to justice.
Set in a gated community for the rich in Mexico City, whose golf course is overlooked by shantytowns, the movie grapples with the issues of the rule of law, vigilante justice and corruption. Director Pla and screenwriter Laura Santullo use a bungled robbery that takes place in a suburb that is run by its own rules as the axis of the film’s moral quandary.
‘La Misma Luna’ splits critics
Fox Searchlight – Under the Same Moon – Official Site_1205966977021La Misma Luna, or Under the Same Moon, made its Mexico City debut last week to a full house. The movie, which is the first Latino-centric feature from Fox Searchlight, tells the story of the separation of mother and son against the backdrop of thorny issue of immigration between Mexico and the United States.
The film has divided critics – which can only be a good sign. Your humble correspondent found it an enjoyable film which, although pulls at the heartstrings a little too gratuitously in places, portrays well the strong relationship between mother and son and also brings to a mainstream flick the important and political issue of immigration between Latin America and the United States.
Video: La Misma Luna
The focus of the latest film from LA-based Mexican director Patricia Riggen is torn from today’s headlines and deals with the issue of families separated by borders.
The Los Angeles Times talked with director Patricia Riggen and screenwriter Ligiah Villalobos in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, about making the film and Mexicans in LA.
This film appeared with this story on LATimes.com
Video: Filmstar Bárbara Mori gets Ugly
Uruguayan actress Bárbara Mori wants to be more than a pretty face, and she has the fake buck teeth and fat suit to prove it.
The Los Angeles Times covered her new movie launch, and we provided the video interview to match.
Massacre memorial – but why now?
There is something odd about entering a modern, brilliantly choreographed and beautifully presented exhibition created in memory of one of the darkest episodes in a country’s modern history. Odd because the tragedy of Tlatelolco, depicted in such rich and excellently executed multi-media form here at at Mexico City’s Centro Cultural Universitario, has yet to be seriously investigated by the Mexican administration even after nearly forty years, and remains a painful scar for those that survived that terrible night and the families of those that didn’t.
Video: Loss of news talk show dismays Mexicans
Los Angeles Times: Supporters of journalist Carmen Aristegui say the cancellation of her radio program poses a threat to the country’s move toward greater democracy.
Video: Mexico’s Faithful Make Annual Pilgrimage On Dia de la Virgen
Wooden crosses bearing the bloodied effigy of Jesus and huge framed pictures of the la Virgen de Guadalupe are quite literally walking down Mexico City’s Calzada de Guadalupe. Boys with gelled hair labor with crosses strapped to their backs and middle-aged women lumber along the tree-lined avenue with enormous pictures roped to their shoulders in an image that brings to mind filmed depictions of the crucifixion itself.
Video: Naked Protest on the streets of Mexico City
El Movimiento de los 400 Pueblos has been protesting naked in Mexico City since 2002. At least 300 men dance naked in some of the citys major squares and streets to draw attention to their cause, whilst the women from the movement collect money from passers-by and give out pamphlets detailing their cause.
Washington Post article on Oaxaca gets a beating
An article published in this weekend’s Washington Post, called “Oaxaca: One Year Later”, has prompted heavy criticism from people living in the southern Mexican state which this time last year was the scene of huge civil unrest and what one critic describes as ‘some of the worst human rights abuses in recent Mexican history; detaining, torturing, and raping men, women, and children who had taken to the streets demanding social and economic justice.’ (Please see comments below for a response from the author).
The writer takes the reader to a number of local restaurants and businesses in Oaxaca, whilst attempting to trace the events of last year, which culminated in the deaths of reportedly as many as 23 people.
Video: Day of the Dead Dance in Tetela de Volcan, Mexico
Tetela de Volcan is a small, traditional town in the state of Morelos, Mexico overlooked by the volcano Popocatepetl, also known as Popo. Here, the locals spend the days of November 1st and 2nd in their local cemeteries, tending to the graves of their loved ones and spending time with their families. In their homes, they build the traditional ofrendas to commemorate Dia de Muertos.
