What to Watch Online On Cinema Tropical This Week
Make sure not to miss the final day of our online program Music+Film: Brazil, closing with a special — and free! — nationwide stream of the ultimate Brazilian music documentary, Beyond Ipanema: Brazilian Waves in Global Music. A must-watch for lovers of Brazilian music, and of global music in general.
And join us tonight at 7pm EDT for a special conversation with directors Béco Dranoff and Guto Barra moderated by scholar Christopher Dunn, streaming live in Cinema Tropical’s Facebook page.
And tune it tonight and tomorrow night to PBS for the broadcast premiere of two timely and urgent Latinx documentaries: Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra‘s docu-thriller The Infiltrators, premiering today on POV, and Bernardo Ruiz‘s Latino Vote: Dispatches from the Battleground, premiering tomorrow on VOCES.
Broadcast Premiere:
THE INFILTRATORS
(Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra, USA, 2019, 90 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
The Infiltrators is a docu-thriller that tells the true story of two young immigrants who get detained by Border Patrol—on purpose—and put in a shadowy for-profit detention center. Marco and Viri are members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a group of radical Dreamers who are on a mission to stop deportations. And the best place to stop deportations, they believe, is in detention.
Premieres, Monday, October 5. 10pm EDT on PBS’ POV
Broadcast Premiere:
LATINO VOTE: DISPATCHES FROM THE BATTLEGROUND
(Bernardo Ruiz, USA, 2020, 60 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
With both younger Latinos and new citizens joining the ranks of registered voters across the country, the growing magnitude of this cross-section of the electorate has clear political implications for the 2020 presidential election. But trying to woo voters based on their cultural similarities without factoring in their complex and varying individual interests could prove to be a losing game plan. Following activists, organizers, and others who are working to maximize Latino turnout in their local communities while simultaneously devoting their efforts to COVID-19 relief as the pandemic surges, Latino Vote: Dispatches from the Battleground delves into the high-stakes fight to activate Latino votes in these battleground states – and gives voice to newly registered Latino voters themselves about what the galvanizing issues are for them.
Premieres Tuesday, October 6, 9pm EDT on PBS’ VOCES
Cinema Tropical Presents:
MUSIC+FILM: BRAZIL 2020
Presented annually since 2008, Cinema Tropical’s popular series Music+Film: Brazil has showcased numerous screenings featuring the best of Brazilian music and a who’s who of performers from every corner of the South American country. The 2020 special online edition of the series is no exception.
BEYOND IPANEMA: BRAZILIAN WAVES IN GLOBAL MUSIC
(Guto Barra and Béco Dranoff, Brazil/USA, 2009, 89 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Streams for Free on Monday, October 5
WHERE ARE YOU, JOÃO GILBERTO?
(Wo bist Du, João Gilberto?, Georges Gachot, Switzerland/ France/Germany, 2018, 107 min. In German, Portuguese, English and French with English subtitles. New York premiere)
Streaming through Monday, October 5
GILBERTO GIL ANTHOLOGY VOL. 1
(Lula Buarque de Hollanda, Brazil, 2019, 73 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles. North American premiere)
Streaming through Monday, October 5
Latin American Films at the 58th New York Film Festival:
TRAGIC JUNGLE
(Yulene Olaizola, Mexico, 2020, 96 min. In English, Creole, Maya, and Spanish with English subtitles)
Streaming October 9 -14
THE LOBBY
(Heinz Emigholz, Germany/Argentina, 2020, 76 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Streaming through October 6
‘Program 6: Here and Elsewhere’
AQUÍ Y ALLÁ (Melisa Liebenthal, Argentina/France, 2019, 21 min.)
APIYEMIYEKî? (Ana Vaz, Brazil/France/Portugal/Netherlands, 2019, 27 min.)
Streaming through October 7
Daily Recommendation:
LOS RUBIOS
(The Blonds, Albertina Carri, Argentina, 2003, 83 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Who were the Carris? What did they look like? Were they activists, revolutionaries, heroes? And: how did they disappear? It’s questions like this that drove Albertina Carri to make this reconstruction of the kidnapping and murder of her parents, in 1977, under the dictatorial regime of the Argentine junta. The film is a combination of documentary, fiction and even animation, and has the qualities of a thriller. In order to bring the subject to life, Carri uses a spontaneity of mood and at times almost improvisational forms to make the subject come alive in her innovative investigation. The dialogue between doc and fiction creates a spark between the present and lost memory and the attempt to recover it. Carri takes a fresh look at this painful chapter from recent history from the point of view of a new generation of Argentine filmmakers.
Watch Now
Daily Recommendation:
LOVELING
(Benzinho, Gustavo Pizzi, 2017, Brazil/Uruguay, 95 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Irene is raising four rambunctious sons in a home that is physically crumbling but warm and happy. As Irene simultaneously shelters her sister Sonia (who just left a volatile marriage), supports her own husband through a financial crisis, and plans her own long-awaited high school graduation, Irene’s eldest son, Fernando, suddenly announces he has been recruited by a professional handball team in Germany and will be leaving in just three weeks. Consummate caretaker Irene prickles at the idea of emancipating the 16-year-old so he can travel and live alone, and she becomes increasingly anxious about what her future holds. Loveling thought-fully contemplates the complicated balance between the destructive and restorative elements of our bonds to the people we love and cherish most.
Daily Recommendation:
GUILTY MEN
(Pariente, Iván D. Gaona, Colombia, 2016, 115 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Iván D. Gaona’s sharp debut feature taps into Colombia’s roiling discontent amidst corruption and the foreboding legacy of paramilitaries in the countryside. The queasily tense drama tracks a rural love triangle that ensues when a woman’s ex surfaces, to the displeasure of her corrupt strongman fiancé. Despite a sweet sense of yearning between the potential lovers, any hope of romance seems set to wither and die amidst the moral rot and, more concretely, the thefts and killings that periodically occur and drive home the powerlessness of the area’s inhabitants. Gaona shows how the violence becomes a part of the landscape as much as the local sugarcane, as he charts the varying degrees to which people give in, or resist.
Daily Recommendation:
SALVADOR ALLENDE
(Patricio Guzmán, Chile, 2004, 100 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
A leftist revolutionary or a reformist democrat? A committed Marxist or a constitutionalist politician? An ethical and moral man or, as Richard Nixon called him, a ‘son of a bitch’? In Salvador Allende, acclaimed Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán (The Battle of Chile and Chile, Obstinate Memory) returns to his native country thirty years after the 1973 military coup that overthrew Chile’s Popular Unity government to examine the life of its leader, Salvador Allende, both as a politician and a man. Using rare archival footage, family photos, interviews with Allende’s friends, professional colleagues, his daughters and other relatives as well as UP militants, workers, journalists, his personal secretary and Edward Korry, former U.S. Ambassador to Chile, Salvador Allende portrays the life, times and political formation of the Valparaiso-born doctor who was active in Socialist Party politics as a senator and who ran unsuccessfully for President three times before finally being elected in 1970.
Watch Now
Daily Recommendation:
MISS BALA
(Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico, 2011, 113 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
One of the most exciting young talents around, the Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo (I’m Gonna Explode) approaches the hot-button topic of drug violence through the perspective of an unlikely, unwitting heroine: a Tijuana beauty pageant contestant (Stephanie Sigman) who stumbles into the path of ruthless cartel operatives and corrupt officials. Although inspired by a true story, Miss Bala avoids docudrama cliches and tabloid sensationalism, and instead evokes the pervasive climate of fear and confusion that has enveloped daily life in some increasingly lawless pockets of northern Mexico. Using long takes and fluid, precise camera work, Naranjo fashions a highly original thriller: an anguished and harrowing mood piece with an undertow of bleakly absurdist humor and moments of heart-stopping action.
VOD Release:
I HATE NEW YORK
(Gustavo Sánchez, Spain, 2018, 75 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
New York, 2007-2017. Over a decade, the director delves into the private world of Amanda Lepore, Chloe Dzubilo, Sophia Lamar and T De Long; four artists and transgender activists from the city’s underground scene. Little by little, their testimonies reveal fragments of a past –sometimes dramatic, always fascinating and simply extraordinary– that formed their identities and transformed their lives. Their words, fears and hopes take the audience from an outsider’s point of view to being emotionally invested in their destiny.