ESSAYS
September 30, 2010
Central Station is one of the most popular and internationally acclaimed Brazilian films of the 1990s. It heralded a renaissance in Brazilian cinema.
March 26, 2010
In I Don’t Want To Talk About It which precedes her sudden death in 1995, Maria Luisa Bemberg explores the same themes as in her most famous movie, Camila.
March 22, 2010
Argentina has one of the most impressive cinematography in the world. Within that cinema, Fernando E. Solanas is a director of seminal importance. In his essay, Towards a Third cinema, Solanas and his co-writer, Octavio Getino, galvanize the overall revolutionary ideas of the time into the concept of a decolonization cinema, denouncing the weak, liberal arts that have, up until […]
July 24, 2011
The world is whole beyond human knowing. -Wendell Berry The Tree of Life, by renowned director Terrence Malick, is years in the making. Its history starts even before Malick’s previous film, The New World, was distributed in 2005. After generating a substantial amount of ink in the media, and hot on the heels of the film’s highly publicized win of […]
March 22, 2010
One of the most interesting aspects of South-American cinema is its post-colonial perspective. Having lived myself and being raised in a Third-world country, I can identify and relate to the plight of South-American characters, living up to their (displaced) roots while fighting their imposed colonial heritage. I’ve seen firsthand the social stratification that the colonial rule instilled into the indigenous […]
March 22, 2010
Although separated by more than a decade, Funny Dirty Little War and Macunaïma both try to provoke social change by using satire.
March 26, 2010
In Felicidades,several lives intersect on Christmas Eve in Buenos Aires as they all strive not to spend the holidays alone.
October 1, 2010
There are some movies that change your perception of what is possible, what is allowed. Alexander Payne's Election was that for me.
October 1, 2010
The transatlantic slave trade was one of the most disruptive acts in history, separating Africans from their backgrounds, traditions, and identities. This has had a significant impact on diaspora films.
March 22, 2010
It was a pleasant surprise to see Alice doesn’t live here anymore. Is it a feminist film? Can a male filmmaker look at a woman through a female perspective?
March 22, 2010
What I found most interesting in The World Of Apu is how much the representation of India came so close to my vision of Haiti, my native country.
March 26, 2010
he City and the Dogs, based on the popular novel of the same name by Mario Vargas Llosa, is an allegory of power in South America.