Cine Las Americas Daily Schedule: Saturday

501 Screening Room, 1pm
All audiences

Peter Deadings heads this animated, bone-chilling newscast from Mictlan. Tune in to see the results of Selection 08, inform yourself on the emerging theory of Global Chillin,’ and don't miss Breaking Deadline News of the Million Muerto March on the Capitol.
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Las redadas de New Haven | The New Haven Raids
Director: David Koff

501 Screening Room, 1pm
All audiences

Las redadas de New Haven presents the testimony of five Mexican immigrants detained when US Department of Homeland Security “Fugitive Operations Teams” raided their homes and dragged them off to prison. Filmmaker David Koff interviewed them soon afterwards about the raids, how the experience affected their families, and why it's crucial that everyone knows and understands their legal rights.
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Oaxaca, el poder de la comuna | The power of Oaxca's Commune
Director: Carlos Broun

501 Screening Room, 1pm
All audiences

During the Oaxacan teachers’ strike of 2006, the Oaxacan Women’s Committee of the Asemblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca (APPO) took over a government radio station and Channel 9, an immense media complex that the former governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz, ran for his personal use. The Mexican government responded with repression. Brad Will, an American independent journalist, is one of the many martyrs that have died fighting for freedom in Oaxaca. This documentary was filmed during the most intense confrontation in recent Oaxacan history, offering an up-close view of the struggle between the powerful and the powerless.
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501 Screening Room, 3pm
All audiences

In Algonquian, Wabak means “future”. Wabak tells the story of the first Algonquian to be born. Sometimes encouraged by the Good, sometimes discouraged by the Evil, the young child questions if he should continue on his path. A beautiful fable with magnificent imagery.
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Después de la neblina | When Clouds Clear
Directors: Anne Slick, Danielle Bernstein

501 Screening Room, 3pm
All audiences

Después de la neblina is a gripping documentary about a small town in northern Ecuador that lives in resistance to copper mining. Despite violent human rights violations, the town of Junín has managed to preserve its water and forest from the destruction of mining companies that seek to establish themselves there. The town’s residents are often forced to take extreme action in order to defend their community from foreign instrusion. Narrated by the town founders, their children and grandchildren, Después de la neblina presents a story about human survival, and the struggle to overcome the violence and discord between family and friends engendered by the controversy over copper mining. The principal narrator, Robinson Piedra, is a 14 year-old boy who remains youthfully optimistic that the fractured relationships between the community’s members will be repaired.
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501 Screening Room, 5pm
All audiences

In 1989, Alfredo Márquez used an image of Mao in an artwork. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. For every artist, the need to create and be heard is as basic as food and shelter. But what happens when you live in a country where the state clamps down on free thinkers, forcing artists to censor themselves? Four Peruvian visual artists, Alfredo, Claudio Jiménez Quispe, Eduardo Tokeshi Namizato and Natalia Iguíñiz Boggio defy this tyranny through their work, using it to ignite change and inspire ordinary people to speak out. Combining gritty Super 8 with raw vérité footage, Kaneko’s urgent film addresses the struggles and commitment of artists like Alfredo to raise the question – is freedom of expression a right or a privilege?

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Regal Metropolitan 10, 2pm
All audiences

Banned by Brazil’s Federal Department of Public Safety, Rio, 100 Degrees is a landmark film that ushered in the wave of Neorealist cinema in Brazil - Cinema Novo. The film chronicles a day in the life of five peanut vendors from the favelas (shanty towns) of Rio de Janeiro. This was one of the first Brazilian films to address the issues of race, poverty, and class. These themes would continue to be examined by dos Santos throughout his career. – JCRR, Cine Las Americas

'As important to Latin American cinema as [Jean-Luc Godard´s] Breathless is to European film.'
—Toronto International Film Festival

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Regal Metropolitan 10, 4pm
Mature audiences

At 17, Noel Rosa was a funny guy with a twisted chin who liked improvising sarcastic poems for his friends. He studied medicine and played in a local band with other boys from his neighborhood. He befriends Ismael Silva, a composer, who opens up the world of samba and the underworld to him. Challenged by his new friends to compose sambas, Noel writes “Com que roupa?” using a parody of the Brazilian national anthem as its base. It is a magnificent success. From that point on, Noel flies through the golden age of radio like a comet, changing the direction of Brazilian popular music. Between declarations of love and samba duels, the irreverent “Samba Philosopher” sidesteps his professors, family, and even the police to live an intense life buoyed by monumental quantities of cigarettes and alcohol – until illness complicates his life.

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Regal Metropolitan 10, 6pm
All audiences

Featuring:

Tiempo de partir | Time to Leave
Tomás witnesses a car run over a woman. While trying to help her, he notices the presence of Iván, the woman’s son. When the woman dies, Tomás becomes involved in a search for Iván’s father.
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Underpass
Sann, who survived Cambodia's Khmer Rouge as a boy, is still tormented by his memories of the killing fields. He copes with his anger and confusion by painting elaborate and violent graffiti murals on a city underpass. When his mother reaches out to a young illegal immigrant from Central America, Sann's anger and fears rise to the surface, and he must confront them head-on without destroying his own family. He learns that true forgiveness and healing must begin with himself.
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En tránsito | In Transit
Following a chance encounter in Mexico City, two strangers struggle to find common ground as it shifts beneath their feet.
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American Dream
How far will someone go for the American dream? Seven years ago Javier Garcia and his wife Victoria came to the US in search of a better life for their unborn child. Since then, Javier has managed to find success in the workplace and has created a solid home for his family. However, when Javier’s loyalty to his native country is called into question, he faces a dilemma. Which side will he end up on?
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Mexican Dream
This is the story of Juan Pérez, a man seeking the American Dream. When Juan tries to cross the border into Arizona, he is attacked and seriously wounded by a group of Minutemen. Years later, he is working as a night guard in an underground parking lot, hoping to return to his home in Guerrero to see his family – but he is constantly tormented by memories of his past and a series of strange events that will make him realize that his life is a nightmare.
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Regal Metropolitan 10, 8pm
All audiences

Popular chanchada (musical comedy) star Grande Otelo plays Espírito da Luz, a samba composer who hopes to create a better life for himself through his music. Espírito seeks fame and fortune to secure for himself a life away from the slums of northern Rio. Instead, he is exploited by a greedy, dishonest record label producer who appropriates artistic and financial control of the sambista’s music and leaves him penniless. Told through a series of flashbacks, Rio, zona norte is loosely based on the life of the great samba composer Zé Keti. - JCRR, Cine Las Americas

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Regal Metropolitan 10, 10pm
Mature audiences

Valentina is a young student in the city of Valdivia who disappears during a party. Her corpse is later found, prompting an investigation. As the search for the culprit and the reconstruction of the events that led to her disappearance proceed, a hidden power appears and begins to interfere with the investigation.

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Regal Metropolitan 11, 2pm
All audiences

At age 16, Héctor Salgado was arrested and tortured by Augusto Pinochet's forces. By age 20, Héctor was without a country, living in exile in the United States, the very place whose devastating foreign policies toward Chile caused the death and torture of thousands of Chileans. The documentary follows Salgado as he returns to the country of his birth almost 30 years later, camera in hand, to confront the perpetrators of the violence and his former captors, and to look for explanations and justice. In the process Special Circumstances takes an unflinching look at US foreign policy in Latin America in the 1970s and the legacy of Pinochet with which Chile struggles today.

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Regal Metropolitan 11, 4pm
All audiences

Featuring:

Vivir es una obra maestra | To Live is a Masterpiece
To be an artist is to turn any object into a magical one. That mission could easily define the life and work of Peruvian artist Jorge Eielson. Considered by many to be one of the most brilliant artists of the 20th century (poet, novelist, painter, performer), Eielson was also one of the most reclusive and mysterious. After winning the National Poetry Prize at the age of 21, and Theater Prize at the age of 25 in his homeland of Peru, Eielson left for Europe. Few knew what became of him. The trip turned into a long exile and his name, slowly, became a myth. Filmmaker Gaby Yepes takes us on a journey of discovery as she tries to find the man behind the art.
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Multiplicadores | Multipliers
In Brazil, as elsewhere, graffiti continues to develop as an art form, empowering the creative and disenfranchised. Featuring some of Rio de Janeiro’s finest young artists, this elegant short reminds us of the power and necessity of art amid difficult circumstances.
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Eviction
In January 2007, Canadian mining company Skye Resources instigated the forcible eviction of several Q'eqchi' indigenous communities in Guatemala. The evictions were violent, destructive and highly illegal. This is an account of a fight for ownership and livelihood in the face of staunch injustice.
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Amo Beethoven | I Love Beethoven
Hearing is possible without ears. Some people feel the sounds with their skin or with their hearts because their sense of hearing does not function. In the Venezuelan city of Barquisimeto, deaf children learn not only how to play instruments, but also how to sing using sign language. Most of the students come from poor surroundings and are educated to be musicians as part of a social project. The children’s inability to hear voices is only one of the many handicaps they face while living at the margins of society. However, at the music school they discover a world that is open to each one of them.
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Shikashika
Eighty-two year-old Maji has spent her life in a small community of adobe homes high in the Andes mountains of Peru. Her son and grandson earn their living by harvesting glacial ice for “shikashika,” a shaved ice delicacy sold at the steps of a cathedral in town. Twice a week Maji and her family make the eight-mile trek up to the glacier behind their home, where they select the finest blocks of blue ice by hand, before transporting the ice down with pack animals. The film offers a rare glimpse into life and work in the high mountains of Peru.
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Solitário anônimo | Alone and Anonymous
An elderly man lies on the grass waiting to die. In his pocket, a message announces that he comes from a distant land. He has no documents or any possessions. His only desire is to die alone and anonymous. This is the beginning of a documentary that tells the touching story of a man who is determined to plan and control his own death.
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Regal Metropolitan 11, 6pm
All audiences

In the 1950s, a man was born in El Chorrillo, one of the poorest barrios of the city of
Panama. His name was Roberto Duran and later on in his life he would be known as
Hands of Stone. The intertwining story of Panama-Duran, reaches epic proportions when in 1980 Duran challenges the golden boy of the United States, Sugar Ray Leonard for the Welterweight Title of the world. At this time, Central America was going was feeling the heavy handed presence of the Reagan. Thus challenging and perhaps beating a contender like Leonard had huge political and ideological symbolism. Duran's popularity transcends frontiers and he becomes a Latin American hero.

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Regal Metropolitan 11, 8pm
All audiences

What is a woman willing to do to make a better life for her children? Norma leaves her family in Mexico to find work in Spain. In Barcelona she must combat the solitude and the daily obstacles of exile to provide a livelihood for a family that longs for her thousands of kilometers away.
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Hijos de la guerra | Children of the War
Director: Alexandre Fuchs

Regal Metropolitan 11, 8pm
Mature audiences

Hijos de la Guerra tells the story of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), an international street gang founded by Salvadoran civil war refugees in California, which the US government singles out as the fastest growing and most violent gang in the country. The film explores the individual motivations behind gang membership as well as the complex role of government policy in attempting to contain – and yet unintentionally encouraging – the spread of the gang. The institution of stern and increasingly systematic U.S. deportation policies, along with forceful, armed repression of the members by the Salvadoran government, radicalized the group and established its hold in Central America. Instead of reducing the gang's influence, these policies amplified its reach from the barrios of a single city to the cities of an entire continent. This is the first feature-length documentary film to recount the history of the MS-13.

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