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.

The series of documentary and fiction features, as well as short films, come from 23 countries and will run on screens Aug. 14-20 in two of the city’s Cinepolis cinemas. The cinema chain’s Fundacion Cinepolis is the event organizer.

Unlike last year, this year’s festival will have two competitive sections: best Mexican documentary and best Mexican short.

Mexico has no shortage of human rights issues for documentarians to tackle, and among the fare at this year’s festival are themes such as migration, global warming, freedom of expression, child prostitution and the slayings of women in Ciudad Juarez.

Productions included in the program range from films such as “Los Que Se Quedan” (“Those Who Remain”), “Voces Silenciadas” (“Silenced Voices”) and “Sin Nombre” (“Nameless”), which have already made the film festival rounds, to less prominent documentaries.

Last year’s event attracted fewer than 4,000 visitors, and about 1,000 of those attended an open-air film broadcast in Mexico City’s Zocalo. In a city of more than 20 million people, that’s not a great turnout.

This year, organizers are going to charge 20 pesos per ticket, unlike last year, when screenings were free.

It’s hoped that charging for tickets might encourage more people to come and see the films. Lorena Guille, executive director of Fundacion Cinepolis, said, “There is a cultural perception here that what’s free isn’t of good quality.”

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

Gael Garcia Bernal, one of Mexico’s most bankable film stars and a favorite in Hollywood, is to be honored at the upcoming International Film Festival in Guadalajara for his contributions to cinema.

Garcia Bernal, star of films such as “The Motorcycle Diaries,” “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” “Babel” and “Amores Perros”, is to be the recipient of the Guadalajara Prize which recognizes the contributions of a person from Latin America to international cinema.

The film star isn’t just a pretty face — Garcia Bernal is also the co-founder of the documentary film festival Ambulante with his close friend and fellow actor Diego Luna. Ambulante just finished its fourth run in Mexico and has traveled to many parts of the world including the United States, Britain, Ireland

and Cuba.

The statement from the Guadalajara film festival (pdf) commends Garcia Bernal for his “tireless concern for films”, adding; “Gael Garcia Bernal is the executive producer along with Diego Luna of Canana Films, a company founded by Pablo Cruz with the goal of bolstering Latin American production and lending support to new filmmakers. Films such as Como Voy a Explotar by Gerardo Naranjo, Sin Nombre by Cary Fukunaga and Sólo Quiero Caminar by Agustin Diaz are part of this company’s productions.”

Well done Gael, but given that he is being commended for many of the initiatives he has done jointly with pal Diego Luna, it’s hard to see why Luna isn’t getting the prize too.

Former recipients of the Guadalajara prize include Mexican director Guillermo del Toro (2007) and musical composer Gustavo Santaolalla (2008).

Image: Gael Garcia Bernal at the opening of this years Ambulant documentary film festival in February. Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times.

– Written for La Plaza

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.

Purchasing any of the millions of pirated DVDs and CDs available at an estimated 50,000 “puestos” or open-air street stalls doesn’t, apparently, make one a great ethical shopper. In fact, it reflects badly on your character. That’s according to the campaign by Canacine (Camara Nacional de la Industria Cinematografica), an association that protects Mexico’s film production and distribution industry.

The ad currently running across cinema screens features three young middle-class girls hanging out in one of the girl’s bedrooms. Two of the girls are playing on the Internet, and the third discovers a pirated movie while browsing her friend’s bookshelves.

“Does your dad buy you these movies?” she asks her friend, a disgusted look on her face.

“Yeah, so?” says the friend.

“Que chafa!” the other girl exclaims, which roughly means, “What a cheapskate!”

The two friends then go on to taunt the other girl and accuse her of having a Papa Pirata (Pirate Papa) before the screen cuts to a line of text that says: “Buying pirated movies says a lot about who you are.”

The advertising campaign launched in December, and is an attempt to tackle the enormous problem Mexico has with pirated products. The International Intellectual Property Alliance says that around 90% of motion pictures sold in Mexico are pirated. At most street stalls, 20 pesos (around $1.38) buys you a pirated movie, and 50 pesos ($3.45) buys you three. In shops, the price of authentic movies on DVDs starts at around 100 pesos (nearly $7).

Piracy in Mexico is “entrenched” and “the sheer dimension of the piracy problem in the Mexican market remains severe and unchanged,”  the IIPA says in its annual country report for Mexico (pdf file).

Growing Internet penetration is also increasing illegal music and movie downloads in the country.

Copies of “Che, the Argentine” were selling at black-market street stalls before the film’s official release in Mexico. You can already buy “The Wrestler” starring Mickey Rourke, at a puesto near you, even though the film is yet to come out south of the border.

The seven or eight times I have seen the anti-piracy ad aired in the last month in Mexican theaters, it always elicited snorts of laughter from cinema-goers.

Maybe they’re amused by the running of such a campaign in cinemas when clearly, the people who go out to the movies are not the worst piracy offenders.

Or perhaps it’s just that piracy is such a normal part of Mexican life that the idea of getting rid of it seems ridiculous. Audaciously, many pirate-movie vendors flog their wares outside cinemas. There is always a woman selling pirated films outside the Cinepolis Diana on Avenida Reforma, and when leaving the parking lot of the Cineteca Nacional in the Coyoacan neighborhood (the city’s most important venue for art and foreign cinema) you can rely on finding a young man and his pirated movie stall specializing in — you guessed it — art and foreign film.

As if that weren’t enough, the indifference of Mexico City’s street cops speaks volumes about the attitude of the government towards piracy. You can frequently spot the city’s police perusing the pirated movie stalls, looking for something to take home and enjoy after a hard day on the job.

– Written for La Plaza.

Image: Pirated goods are widely available on the streets of Mexico City. Taken from a video still by Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times.

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.

Garcia Bernal, star of films such as The Motorcycle Diaries and the current Mexico hit movie Rudo y Cursi (in which he stars with Luna), urged people to have some low-cost fun in the light of the global economic crisis, which is being felt in Mexico.

“We’re at a critical moment, not wanting to spend money, and Ambulante is a free or cheap option to see films in the cinema,” said Garcia Bernal.

Speaking at the launch, Luna said that he and Garcia Bernal founded Ambulante in 2006 (read our report about the launch of the festival here) out of a sense of “responsibility” to do something with all the attention they were receiving because of their acting work.

Since the festival’s humble beginnings when it featured just 19 documentaries, the number of films now has doubled. And it has expanded its reach by traveling to more Mexican cities as well as a number of international locations including the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Cuba.

“The one word that you can’t associate with Ambulante is ‘elitist’, ” Luna told the crowd Friday, responding to accusations from a member of the press that the festival was created as a way for the actors to make more money.

The contrary would seem to be true — many of the films in the festival will be free, and for those screenings that have entrance fees, students will get discounts.

Ambulante helps distribute films by upcoming documentary filmmakers, and also gives grants to help producers and directors get films made.

The actors and the director of the festival, Elena Fortes, said they wanted to challenge the assumption that documentaries are boring, and they hope to appeal to young viewers as much as possible.

Ambulante (a Spanish word referring to a street vendor or a temporary market stall) is supported by Canana Films (the production company owned by Garcia Bernal and Luna), the Mexican cinema chain Cinepolis and the Morelia International Film Festival. It will run from Feb. 6 until April 9 in more than 70 venues including public plazas, cultural centers and museums as well as Cinepolis screens in 16 Mexican cities.

Of the 44 documentaries featured in the festival, nine are Mexican. The festival will also feature a special section on Swedish documentaries.

You can find information about screenings, a full list of the documentaries in the festival and related events here on the official website.

– This post was written for La Plaza.

Image: Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna at the launch of the Ambulante documentary film festival Friday. Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times. For more photos of the launch, go to our Flickr page.