I have spent two days at a great new film residency program in Mexico. Tepoztlan is a village an hour out of Mexico City and home to many filmmakers and artists. Pueblo Magico offers a three week workshop for first and second time filmmakers. It was founded by Flavio Florencio whose own first feature, the award winning transgender doc “Made in Bangkok” will screen at the Palm Springs Film Festival this coming January.
Read more about “Made in Bangkok” when covered at Guadalajara Film Festival L.A.
“I launched this residency because I realized there was a need for such a space for budding filmmakers where they can be free of distractions and pressure,” said its founder, Flavio Florencio. Florencio also founded the Human Rights Film Festival and the African Film Festivals, Africalal in Mexico.
Within 48 hours after opening the first call for entries for the three week workshop (October 17 to November 5), 120 projects from a dozen countries were received and reviewed by the selection committee that included Florencio, Guanajauto Festival Programming Director Nina Rodriguez and cinematographer Maria Secco. “The projects were so interesting that we have accepted more than the requisite eight this year,” said Florencio.
Projects of the 10 residents included eight fiction features and two docs, the bulk of them debuts. Five projects were from Mexico:
The two favorites (voting was by mentors who also attended the event) include the debut film project of Florian Seufert (Germany), the fiction feature, “Dragonflies Don’t Die”. Florian gathered his family to celebrate his parents 30th anniversary and his own 28th birthday on the same day. The footage already shot shows an atmospheric and mysterious world set within the ordinary confines of the large family celebration.
The “runner up” is the second fiction feature of Mauricio Lopez Fernandez (Chile), “La Jauria” in which a pack of dogs kill a herd of cows in a remote Andean hamlet, forcing village elders to make a sacrifice for the future of their youth. The film is still in early development. Mauricio's short film "La Santa" (2012) premiered at Berlinale Shorts and was a finalist for the Teddy Award. His first feature film, "The Guest" ("La Visita") won Best Picture and Best Actress at the Rencontres du cinema Sud-American de Marseilles et Region 2015 and was nominated Best Latin American Film at San Sebastian Film Festival 2015..
The winner receives post-production services, prestige, honor and glory!
Other debuts included:
Faride Schroeder (Mexico)
“Por el Amor a mi Madre” (fiction)
A young teen realizes her mother is an imperfect and vulnerable human being. Faride has served as second assistant director on “The Noble Family” and “Soy Negro” now in post.
Luis Horacio Pineda (Mexico)
“La Cosecha de los Naranjos” (fiction)
A group of teens affected by a fire 15 years ago in the nursery school Guarderia ABC seek revenge upon those responsible for it.
Luis now lives in Los Angeles where he is seeking to establish roots.
Alexander Albrecht (Switzerland)
“Brooklyn Treehouse” (fiction)
This is the story of four young creatives who come to New York; and through their experience of sharing an apartment with a eccentric French artist, they are pushed to make decisions about their own lives.
Produced by Edher Campos from Machete Producciones ("La Jaula de Oro", "Año Bisiesto")
Veronika Mliczewska (Poland)
“Where the Grass is Greener” (fiction)
A Jamaican dreams of living in Ethiopia while an Ethiopian family sends their son to London to seek a better life.
Antonella Sudasassi (Costa Rica)
“El Despertar de la Hormigas” (fiction)
A young mother who questions what she wants for the first time starts taking birth control pills without telling her husband. Pitting her will against social expectations and the fear of being discovered slowlysubmerge her into a state of psychosis with hallucinatory episodes that portray her feeling of guilt, her relationship with her body and sexuality.
Those with second film projects:
Mak Chun Kit (Singapore)
“Huruma” (docu)
Documentarian Mak Chun Kit returns to Tanzania eight years after he volunteered in an orphanage to find out how his friends there have fared.
Pablo Perez Lombardini (Mexico)
“Los Suenos de Geronimo” (fiction)
A seven-year-old boy runs away to seek answers about his father’s death and comes upon a haunted village in the desert.
Maria Fernanda Galindo (Mexico)
“Defensores” (docu)
Two women fight to defend the rights of a group of women who seek the escape the misogyny of their communities.
The program will be offered three times a year for three weeks at a time. The next one is scheduled for March 2016. “We’d like to focus on American indie filmmakers then, as few applied this time,” said Florencio.
In our time, the idea of slowing down is ever more attractive, more important and more difficult. This is a program which offers time for that. “ Pueblo Magico offers its residents a less frenetic pace and a less impersonal approach to developing their projects, with time to enjoy the beauty of their surroundings, visit the pueblo and hang out with mentors,” he added. The serious business of relaxation was led by yogi Namhari teaching meditation and yoga.
It is not by chance that the filmmakers find their needs fulfilled. Their needs are determined first and then the right mentors are found just for them. “If necessary, we’ll find not just film professionals but scientists, shamans or whatever sources they need,” said Florencio.
Mentors this session included Mexican producers Laura Imperiale,Christian Valdelievre and Nicolas Celis; screenwriter Carlos Contreras; Danish directing and acting coach Birgitte Staermose, festival pros/ consultants Mara Fortes, Christine Davila and Blanca Granados and yours truly, Sydney Levine, giving the closing presentation about the international film circuit, what it is exactly and how to enter its charmed circle of networking and screening opportunities.
A Master Class was given by Fernando Trueba, producer of the 2000 classic doc “Calle 54”, writer of the beautiful “Belle Epoque”, writer and director of the fabulous animated music feature “ Chico and Rita”. Residents also made a trip to D.F. for a private screenwriting session with Guillermo Arriaga.
The master class of Nicolas Celis who has formed a coproduction entity with trend setter Jim Stark (producer of Jim Jarmusch’s first films and films of Icelandic filmmaker Fredrik Fredrikson) will be the subject of an upcoming blog.
And soon, a call will be made to first and second time American indie filmmakers to come this March to Tepoztlan.
Read more about “Made in Bangkok” when covered at Guadalajara Film Festival L.A.
“I launched this residency because I realized there was a need for such a space for budding filmmakers where they can be free of distractions and pressure,” said its founder, Flavio Florencio. Florencio also founded the Human Rights Film Festival and the African Film Festivals, Africalal in Mexico.
Within 48 hours after opening the first call for entries for the three week workshop (October 17 to November 5), 120 projects from a dozen countries were received and reviewed by the selection committee that included Florencio, Guanajauto Festival Programming Director Nina Rodriguez and cinematographer Maria Secco. “The projects were so interesting that we have accepted more than the requisite eight this year,” said Florencio.
Projects of the 10 residents included eight fiction features and two docs, the bulk of them debuts. Five projects were from Mexico:
The two favorites (voting was by mentors who also attended the event) include the debut film project of Florian Seufert (Germany), the fiction feature, “Dragonflies Don’t Die”. Florian gathered his family to celebrate his parents 30th anniversary and his own 28th birthday on the same day. The footage already shot shows an atmospheric and mysterious world set within the ordinary confines of the large family celebration.
The “runner up” is the second fiction feature of Mauricio Lopez Fernandez (Chile), “La Jauria” in which a pack of dogs kill a herd of cows in a remote Andean hamlet, forcing village elders to make a sacrifice for the future of their youth. The film is still in early development. Mauricio's short film "La Santa" (2012) premiered at Berlinale Shorts and was a finalist for the Teddy Award. His first feature film, "The Guest" ("La Visita") won Best Picture and Best Actress at the Rencontres du cinema Sud-American de Marseilles et Region 2015 and was nominated Best Latin American Film at San Sebastian Film Festival 2015..
The winner receives post-production services, prestige, honor and glory!
Other debuts included:
Faride Schroeder (Mexico)
“Por el Amor a mi Madre” (fiction)
A young teen realizes her mother is an imperfect and vulnerable human being. Faride has served as second assistant director on “The Noble Family” and “Soy Negro” now in post.
Luis Horacio Pineda (Mexico)
“La Cosecha de los Naranjos” (fiction)
A group of teens affected by a fire 15 years ago in the nursery school Guarderia ABC seek revenge upon those responsible for it.
Luis now lives in Los Angeles where he is seeking to establish roots.
Alexander Albrecht (Switzerland)
“Brooklyn Treehouse” (fiction)
This is the story of four young creatives who come to New York; and through their experience of sharing an apartment with a eccentric French artist, they are pushed to make decisions about their own lives.
Produced by Edher Campos from Machete Producciones ("La Jaula de Oro", "Año Bisiesto")
Veronika Mliczewska (Poland)
“Where the Grass is Greener” (fiction)
A Jamaican dreams of living in Ethiopia while an Ethiopian family sends their son to London to seek a better life.
Antonella Sudasassi (Costa Rica)
“El Despertar de la Hormigas” (fiction)
A young mother who questions what she wants for the first time starts taking birth control pills without telling her husband. Pitting her will against social expectations and the fear of being discovered slowlysubmerge her into a state of psychosis with hallucinatory episodes that portray her feeling of guilt, her relationship with her body and sexuality.
Those with second film projects:
Mak Chun Kit (Singapore)
“Huruma” (docu)
Documentarian Mak Chun Kit returns to Tanzania eight years after he volunteered in an orphanage to find out how his friends there have fared.
Pablo Perez Lombardini (Mexico)
“Los Suenos de Geronimo” (fiction)
A seven-year-old boy runs away to seek answers about his father’s death and comes upon a haunted village in the desert.
Maria Fernanda Galindo (Mexico)
“Defensores” (docu)
Two women fight to defend the rights of a group of women who seek the escape the misogyny of their communities.
The program will be offered three times a year for three weeks at a time. The next one is scheduled for March 2016. “We’d like to focus on American indie filmmakers then, as few applied this time,” said Florencio.
In our time, the idea of slowing down is ever more attractive, more important and more difficult. This is a program which offers time for that. “ Pueblo Magico offers its residents a less frenetic pace and a less impersonal approach to developing their projects, with time to enjoy the beauty of their surroundings, visit the pueblo and hang out with mentors,” he added. The serious business of relaxation was led by yogi Namhari teaching meditation and yoga.
It is not by chance that the filmmakers find their needs fulfilled. Their needs are determined first and then the right mentors are found just for them. “If necessary, we’ll find not just film professionals but scientists, shamans or whatever sources they need,” said Florencio.
Mentors this session included Mexican producers Laura Imperiale,Christian Valdelievre and Nicolas Celis; screenwriter Carlos Contreras; Danish directing and acting coach Birgitte Staermose, festival pros/ consultants Mara Fortes, Christine Davila and Blanca Granados and yours truly, Sydney Levine, giving the closing presentation about the international film circuit, what it is exactly and how to enter its charmed circle of networking and screening opportunities.
A Master Class was given by Fernando Trueba, producer of the 2000 classic doc “Calle 54”, writer of the beautiful “Belle Epoque”, writer and director of the fabulous animated music feature “ Chico and Rita”. Residents also made a trip to D.F. for a private screenwriting session with Guillermo Arriaga.
The master class of Nicolas Celis who has formed a coproduction entity with trend setter Jim Stark (producer of Jim Jarmusch’s first films and films of Icelandic filmmaker Fredrik Fredrikson) will be the subject of an upcoming blog.
And soon, a call will be made to first and second time American indie filmmakers to come this March to Tepoztlan.
- 11/6/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Competition
BERLIN -- In Jose Padilha's crude and violent film The Elite Squad, the pope is visiting Rio de Janeiro and he needs a good night's sleep, so the local police commander sends his crack troops into the closest slum to kill everybody.
Well, not everybody, but all the drug-dealing scum his specially trained officers can find and by any means possible, preferably a high-powered rifle. It means there will be blood and lots of it, all captured by a dizzying hand-held camera racing through some of the worst cases of urban blight on the planet.
Poorly structured and at times incoherent, what boxoffice appeal the film has will rely on its sheer pace and the amount of torture and killing that goes on, so it should do fine.
The basic assumption of the script by Padilha, Rodrigo Pimentel and Braulio Mantovaniis that everyone in Rio is corrupt, especially the authorities. Policemen accept bribes for whatever pays the most: do their jobs or turn a blind eye. They even steal the engines from their own squad cars, sell them and put a piece of junk under the hood instead.
Capt. Nascimento (Wagner Moura) is a cop with integrity, but it's driving him crazy as he risks his life daily battling bad guys in and out of uniform. Plus he has a pregnant wife at home who wishes he would quit.
He's trying hard to accommodate her wish, but he needs to find a replacement to take over command of the elite squad. Since everyone else has been compromised he settles on two rookies who have been best friends since childhood, the brave but hair-triggered Neto (Caio Junqueira) and the cautious but shrewd Matias (Andre Ramiro).
For some reason their work involves getting second jobs so that Neto works at the police auto shop while Matias goes to law school. Neto's commitment leads him to devise a way of intercepting payoffs drug dealers make to the local commander and using the money to supply the squad cars with desperately needed new parts.
Matias hides the fact that he's a cop from the other students, including pretty Maria Fernanda Machado) and takes no action when they fire up joints.
Both situations lead to dangerous complications, though the story is told in a confusing mix of time-shifting flashbacks, and at the end there's still no sign of the pope.
Before they can join the elite squad, however, Neto and Matias have to make it through an odd sort of training camp that involves ritual humiliation. Then, they're handed high-powered rifles and sent into the slums to kill everybody.
Well, not everybody.
THE ELITE SQUAD
The Weinstein Co.
Credits:
Director: Jose Padilha
Screenwriters: Jose Padilha, Rodrigo Pimentel, Braulio Mantovani
Producers: Marcos Prado, Jose Padilha
Executive producers: Maria Clara Ferreira, Bia Castro, Genna Terranova, Eduardo Constantini
Director of photography: Lula Carvalho
Production designer: Tule Peake
Music: Pedro Bromfman
Co-producers: Eliana Soarez, James D'Arcy
Costume designer: Claudia Kopke
Editor: Daniel Rezende
Cast:
Capt. Nascimento: Wagner Moura
Matias: Andre Ramiro
Neto: Caio Junqueira
Capt. Fabio: Milhem Cortaz
Maria: Fernanda Machado
Rosane: Maria Ribeiro
Edu: Paulo Vilela
Roberta: Fernanda de Freitas
Rodrigues: Andre Mauro
Baino: Fabio Lago
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
BERLIN -- In Jose Padilha's crude and violent film The Elite Squad, the pope is visiting Rio de Janeiro and he needs a good night's sleep, so the local police commander sends his crack troops into the closest slum to kill everybody.
Well, not everybody, but all the drug-dealing scum his specially trained officers can find and by any means possible, preferably a high-powered rifle. It means there will be blood and lots of it, all captured by a dizzying hand-held camera racing through some of the worst cases of urban blight on the planet.
Poorly structured and at times incoherent, what boxoffice appeal the film has will rely on its sheer pace and the amount of torture and killing that goes on, so it should do fine.
The basic assumption of the script by Padilha, Rodrigo Pimentel and Braulio Mantovaniis that everyone in Rio is corrupt, especially the authorities. Policemen accept bribes for whatever pays the most: do their jobs or turn a blind eye. They even steal the engines from their own squad cars, sell them and put a piece of junk under the hood instead.
Capt. Nascimento (Wagner Moura) is a cop with integrity, but it's driving him crazy as he risks his life daily battling bad guys in and out of uniform. Plus he has a pregnant wife at home who wishes he would quit.
He's trying hard to accommodate her wish, but he needs to find a replacement to take over command of the elite squad. Since everyone else has been compromised he settles on two rookies who have been best friends since childhood, the brave but hair-triggered Neto (Caio Junqueira) and the cautious but shrewd Matias (Andre Ramiro).
For some reason their work involves getting second jobs so that Neto works at the police auto shop while Matias goes to law school. Neto's commitment leads him to devise a way of intercepting payoffs drug dealers make to the local commander and using the money to supply the squad cars with desperately needed new parts.
Matias hides the fact that he's a cop from the other students, including pretty Maria Fernanda Machado) and takes no action when they fire up joints.
Both situations lead to dangerous complications, though the story is told in a confusing mix of time-shifting flashbacks, and at the end there's still no sign of the pope.
Before they can join the elite squad, however, Neto and Matias have to make it through an odd sort of training camp that involves ritual humiliation. Then, they're handed high-powered rifles and sent into the slums to kill everybody.
Well, not everybody.
THE ELITE SQUAD
The Weinstein Co.
Credits:
Director: Jose Padilha
Screenwriters: Jose Padilha, Rodrigo Pimentel, Braulio Mantovani
Producers: Marcos Prado, Jose Padilha
Executive producers: Maria Clara Ferreira, Bia Castro, Genna Terranova, Eduardo Constantini
Director of photography: Lula Carvalho
Production designer: Tule Peake
Music: Pedro Bromfman
Co-producers: Eliana Soarez, James D'Arcy
Costume designer: Claudia Kopke
Editor: Daniel Rezende
Cast:
Capt. Nascimento: Wagner Moura
Matias: Andre Ramiro
Neto: Caio Junqueira
Capt. Fabio: Milhem Cortaz
Maria: Fernanda Machado
Rosane: Maria Ribeiro
Edu: Paulo Vilela
Roberta: Fernanda de Freitas
Rodrigues: Andre Mauro
Baino: Fabio Lago
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 2/12/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
PARK CITY -- Inspired by "Women of the Dunes", perhaps the most famous film about the ravages of the desert, and a newspaper photograph of a house buried by sand, "House of Sand" is an intriguing meditation on aging, the impermanence of time and man's place in nature. Well-crafted film by Brazilian Andrucha Waddington ("Me You Them") follows the fate of three generations of women over sixty years. It's definitely not a movie for the multiplex, but could generate some interest among sophisticated moviegoers.
Film opens in 1910 with a rag-tag caravan of settlers led by the half-crazed Vasco de Sa (Ray Guerra) arriving at a desolate plot of land on the edge of the desert on the coast of northern Brazil. A barren landscape of wind-swept sand dunes, this for Vasco is the promise land. For his wife Aurea (Fernanda Torres) and her mother Maria Fernanda Montenegro) it's hell.
When Vasco's men abandon the mission and the old man gets crushed under the fallen timbers of a shack he's building, the women are left to fend for themselves in this no-women's land. Fortunately, Massu (Luiz Moldia), part of a settlement of freed slaves living nearby, gives them fish and other necessities. Aurea misses the music and culture of her native Rio and is desperate to return, but she's pregnant and has to pass up a chance to leave with a traveling merchant, a chance that might not come again.
All there is to do in this forgotten land is watch the basic elements at play--the wind, the sun, the stars--and mark the pure passage of time. In that way ten years go by before a group of international scientists arrive to study a solar eclipse. Again Aurea plans her escape, but time is not on her side and the scientists leave without her.
Although there is not a lot of action, Waddington and editor Sergio Mekler find the rhythms in a daily live pared down to its essentials. Like an hourglass, the sand slowly moves and buries the house little by little. And before you know it, Aurea has become as old as her mother and her daughter has become her age, a passage visualized by the actors trading roles. It's a bold juxtaposition that makes the passage of time concrete.
Aurea's daughter Maria, now played by Torres, is grown up and as eager to leave as her mother was. For her part, Aurea has made peace with her fate and settled in to semi-domesticity with Massu and his son. When a battalion of soldiers arrives to investigate a plane crash, it is Maria who leaves with them, leading to a teary good bye with her mother. But Waddington has one more clever and profoundly moving twist up his sleeve that allows the cycle to come full circle.
"House of Sand" is like a chamber piece for these two women played out on a grand outdoor stage. It's as if these extraordinarily expressive faces become a part of the natural landscape. Interestingly, Montenegro and Torres are mother and daughter in real life and perhaps that gives their work here an extra dose of reality. In any case, they are wonderfully watchable performances.
Camerawork by Ricardo Della Rosa captures the raw beauty of nature, and the creative and destructive march of time. Deliberate pace may turn off some viewers, but for those who are not too impatient, the journey is more than worth it.
HOUSE OF SAND
Sony Pictures Classics
Columbia TriStar Filmes do Brasil, Conspiracao Filmes, Globo Filmes, Quanta Centro de Producoes, Teleimage
Credits:
Director: Andrucha Waddington
Writer: Eleana Soarez
Producers: Leonardo Monteiro de Barros, Pedro Buarque de Hollanda, Pedro Guimaraes, Andrucha Waddington
Director of photography: Ricardo Della Rosa
Production designer: Tule Peake
Music: Joao Barone, Carlo Bartolini
Costume designer, Claudia Kopke
Editor: Sergio Mekler.
Cast:
Aurea/Maria (young): Fernanda Torres
Maria/Aurea (old): Fernanda Montenegro
Vasco de Sa: Ruy Guerra
Massu: Seu Jorge
Massu (old): Luiz Melodia
Luiz: Enrique Diaz
Luiz (old): Stenio Garcia
Chico: Emiliano Queiroz
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 114 minutes...
Film opens in 1910 with a rag-tag caravan of settlers led by the half-crazed Vasco de Sa (Ray Guerra) arriving at a desolate plot of land on the edge of the desert on the coast of northern Brazil. A barren landscape of wind-swept sand dunes, this for Vasco is the promise land. For his wife Aurea (Fernanda Torres) and her mother Maria Fernanda Montenegro) it's hell.
When Vasco's men abandon the mission and the old man gets crushed under the fallen timbers of a shack he's building, the women are left to fend for themselves in this no-women's land. Fortunately, Massu (Luiz Moldia), part of a settlement of freed slaves living nearby, gives them fish and other necessities. Aurea misses the music and culture of her native Rio and is desperate to return, but she's pregnant and has to pass up a chance to leave with a traveling merchant, a chance that might not come again.
All there is to do in this forgotten land is watch the basic elements at play--the wind, the sun, the stars--and mark the pure passage of time. In that way ten years go by before a group of international scientists arrive to study a solar eclipse. Again Aurea plans her escape, but time is not on her side and the scientists leave without her.
Although there is not a lot of action, Waddington and editor Sergio Mekler find the rhythms in a daily live pared down to its essentials. Like an hourglass, the sand slowly moves and buries the house little by little. And before you know it, Aurea has become as old as her mother and her daughter has become her age, a passage visualized by the actors trading roles. It's a bold juxtaposition that makes the passage of time concrete.
Aurea's daughter Maria, now played by Torres, is grown up and as eager to leave as her mother was. For her part, Aurea has made peace with her fate and settled in to semi-domesticity with Massu and his son. When a battalion of soldiers arrives to investigate a plane crash, it is Maria who leaves with them, leading to a teary good bye with her mother. But Waddington has one more clever and profoundly moving twist up his sleeve that allows the cycle to come full circle.
"House of Sand" is like a chamber piece for these two women played out on a grand outdoor stage. It's as if these extraordinarily expressive faces become a part of the natural landscape. Interestingly, Montenegro and Torres are mother and daughter in real life and perhaps that gives their work here an extra dose of reality. In any case, they are wonderfully watchable performances.
Camerawork by Ricardo Della Rosa captures the raw beauty of nature, and the creative and destructive march of time. Deliberate pace may turn off some viewers, but for those who are not too impatient, the journey is more than worth it.
HOUSE OF SAND
Sony Pictures Classics
Columbia TriStar Filmes do Brasil, Conspiracao Filmes, Globo Filmes, Quanta Centro de Producoes, Teleimage
Credits:
Director: Andrucha Waddington
Writer: Eleana Soarez
Producers: Leonardo Monteiro de Barros, Pedro Buarque de Hollanda, Pedro Guimaraes, Andrucha Waddington
Director of photography: Ricardo Della Rosa
Production designer: Tule Peake
Music: Joao Barone, Carlo Bartolini
Costume designer, Claudia Kopke
Editor: Sergio Mekler.
Cast:
Aurea/Maria (young): Fernanda Torres
Maria/Aurea (old): Fernanda Montenegro
Vasco de Sa: Ruy Guerra
Massu: Seu Jorge
Massu (old): Luiz Melodia
Luiz: Enrique Diaz
Luiz (old): Stenio Garcia
Chico: Emiliano Queiroz
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 114 minutes...
- 1/30/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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