For a couple of weeks Beirut’s Cervantes Institute is presenting a Hispanic film festival entitled ‘First Cinematographical Edition in Spanish’, during the period between April 18 - May 1. It includes films from eight different Spanish Speaking countries.
The event will screen 15 feature and documentary films from Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Chili, Spain, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela. The program includes recent releases and older classics, though all the work was produced in the last decade, according to the daily al Nahar.
In addition to the movies themselves, the festival is hosting several filmmakers who will field questions from the audience after their films are shown. Among the guests are Gonzalo Tapia, the Spanish director of Lena and the film’s producer Pilar Baquero Navarro.
Also on hand will be Sergio Cabrera, the Colombian director of Aguilas No Cazan Moscas (Eagles Do Not Hunt Flies) and Salvador Aguirre, the Mexican director who made De Ida y Vuelta (To and Fro).
Of the festival’s fifteen movies, the one which may be familiar to Beirut audiences is Carlos Saura’s Tango (1998), which had a brief commercial run here a couple of years ago, the Daily Star reported.
This clever and beautifully-shot film tells the story of an Argentine director’s efforts to make the ultimate tango film. Suarez, the director, loses his wife and has an affair with one of his dancers, who happens to be the girlfriend of his mafioso backer.
Obviously there is plenty of sensual music and dance here, but having Suarez as the principal narrative voice gives Tango a certain self-referential quality that makes it as much a consideration of art and politics as an arty love story.
The Daily Star added that among the films that are new to Beirut, one of the more interesting is Jorge Ali Triana’s Edipo Alcalde (1996) (Oedipus the Mayor). Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the pen behind this reworking of Sophocles’ Oedipus, the King, here set in a village in Colombia’s high Andes.
Here the newly appointed mayor, Edipo, is on his way to assume office when he and his military escort are confronted by a vehicle filled with armed men. Edipo shoots straight through the windshield and makes his escape. Once in the village, he discovers that Layo, the most powerful landowner in the region, has been murdered. Outraged, Edipo decrees he will not stop until Layo’s murderers are punished. Set against the escalating conflict between landowners and local guerrillas, Edipo’s oath ends in tragedy.
The festival will also screen Tomas Guitierrez and Juan Carlos Tabio’s comedy Guantanamera (1994). This satire about life in Cuba begins with a chance conversation between Marian, who is marching in a funeral procession, and Gina, a truck driver who happens to have taken the same route. They recognize each other from university where she was his teacher and they find themselves being drawn together during the succession of odd incidents that follows.
Another comedy that had a successful run in Mexico was Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas (1998) (Sex, Shame and Tears).
Set in Mexico City on the eve of the millennium this comic drama focuses on two young couples and how their relationships changes when they’re each visited by an old friend.
In one case the intellectual Carlos isn’t satisfying the needs of his wife Anna, a situation that changes when Tomas, their vagabond friend reappears. Across the street, meanwhile, executive and sleaze bag Miguel and long-suffering wife Andrea are joined by Maria whose arrival triggers another round of lust, rejection, infidelity and reconciliation.
El Dia de la Bestia (1995) (The Day of the Beast) is the festival’s only supernatural action comedy hybrid, which is enough to warrant a look.
Directed by Spaniard Alex de la Iglesia, Beast follows the adventures of a priest who attempts to summon Satan so that he can prevent Armageddon. With his companions an acid-popping metal junkie and the host of a paranormal TV show the priest bumbles through a series of adventures while trying to complete their task.
The odd humor and general silliness is balanced with a genuinely dark vision of Madrid giving this movie a unique flavor. It moves from humor to horror to social criticism without ever losing sight of it’s themes faith, evil and moral responsibility.
For those with a more social realist bent, Salvador Aguirre’s De Ida y Vuelta (2000) (To and fro) takes the stream of labor migration and repatriation between Mexico and America as its backdrop. This social tragedy speaks about the battle between landlords and migrant workers and the poisonous effects of despair on love, friendship and identity. Focusing on Filiberto, a metaphor for the thousands of Mexican workers on both sides of the US border, the film addresses issues of rejection and betrayal, displacement and identity – Albawaba.com
