Don’t forget to stop by tonight at 8pm for Julio Hernandez Cordon’s Guatemalan film Marimbas del infierno. After the film, director Julio Hernandez Cordon will answer questions, discuss the Guatemalan music scene, and his career in the global Latino film industry. It’s gonna be two hours of pure awesome.
This event is sponsored by the Michigan Humanities Council, a local affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Stop by Wealthy Theatre tonight at 8pm to see the film La Soga and hear a discussion afterward with screenwriter and star of the film Manny Perez. The film starts at 8pm and we’ll have our discussion with Manny immediately following. See you there!
6pm, Sunday April 1 at Wealthy Theatre
2010- Argentina, 105 min. – NR
Directed by Daniel Burman
Spanish with English Subtitles
They are both alone. They need each other but, at the same time, they despise each other. Siblings Marcos and Susana are unable to heal the old wounds festering within them after the death of their mother. When Susana sells their mother’s flat, she deprives her brother of the home where he had cared for their mother his whole life. Marcos’s need to start living again surfaces when his sister forces him to leave Buenos Aires for Uruguay.
Sponsored by the Argentine Consulate in Chicago.
4pm, Sunday April 1 at Wealthy Theatre
2009- Panamá, 91 min. – NR
Directed by Abner Benaim
Spanish with English Subtitles
This hilarious comedy tells the story of Toña and Paquita, the housekeepers for the aristocratic González-Dubois family. These domestic employees have been mistreated for quite some time and they are tired of their situation. So when the family plans a shopping trip to Miami, the maids have a plan of their own; to take con- trol of the mansion. Unexpectedly, they will also discover a family secret.
1:30pm, Sunday April 1 at Wealthy Theatre
2010 – Spain- México- France, 102 min. – NR
Directed by Iciar Bollain, Starring Gael García Bernal
Spanish and Quechua languages, with English Subtitles
Spanish director Sebastián, his executive producer Costa and all his crew are in Bolivia, in the Cochabamba area, to shoot a motion picture about Christopher Columbus, his first explorations and the way the Spaniards treated the Indians at the time. Costa has chosen this place because the budget of the film is tight and here he can hire supernumeraries, local actors and extras on the cheap. Things go more or less smoothly until a conflict erupts over the privatization of the water supply. The trouble is that one of the local actors is a leading activist in the protest movement.
8pm, Saturday March 31 at Wealthy Theatre
2010 – Guatemala/ France/ México, 73 min. – NR
Directed by Julio Hernández Cordon
Spanish with English Subtitles
When marimba player Don Alfonso loses his gig in a musical revue in a swanky Guatemala City hotel — among other setbacks — he sadly faces the notion that there may not be a future in playing the traditional music he loves. Introduced by his godson to the eccentric heavy metal musician Blacko, Don Alfonso makes a wild proposition: that they meld their favorite musical genres in a heavy metal band to be called Marimbas from Hell.
4:30pm, Saturday March 31 at Wealthy Theatre
2009 – Brazil, 86 min. R-14
Directed by Anna Muylaert
Portuguese with English Subtitles
This genre-bending dark comedy that floats by in an unpretentious puff, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is a charmer whose charisma works, like its characters, in modest but lingering ways. In São Paulo, a lonely forty-something guitar teacher lives a tedious life in a lower middle-class apartment, accompanied by her only companions, cigarettes. When she and her new neighbor Max hit it off, however, she discovers that love —and a support group— can help her to overcome her habit… but it can also cloud judgment.
2:30pm, Saturday March 31 at Wealthy Theatre
2009 – Brazil, 78 min. – NR
Directed by Beadie Finzi
Portuguese with English Subtitles
Defying the idea that ballet is an art form steeped in the history of the wealthy white elite, this documentary captures the dreams of two black children from the Favela in Brazil, who, despite constant prejudice and doubt, are both determined to beat the odds and follow their dreams to use dancing as an escape rarely found in their tough day to day lives.
2pm, Saturday March 31 at Wealthy Theatre
2010 – Brazil, 20 min. – NR
Directed by Carolina Moraes-Liu
Portuguese with English Subtitles
Ebony Goddess: Queen of Ilê Aiyê follows three women competing to be the carnival queen of Ilê Aiyê, a prominent and controversial Afro-Brazilian group with an all-black membership. The selection is based on Afro-centric notions of beauty, in counterpoint to prevailing standards of beauty in Brazil, a country famous for slim supermodels and plastic surgery. Contestants for the title of Ebony Goddess dress in flowing African-style garments, gracefully performing traditional Afro-Brazilian dances to songs praising the beauty of black women.
8pm, Friday March 30 at Wealthy Theatre
2009 – República Dominicana, 102 min. – R
Directed by Josh Crook
Spanish with English Subtitles
Making his screenwriting debut, Manny Perez also stars in this tough chronicle of Luisito, a young man walking the line between honesty and the corruption he sees all around him in the Dominican Republic.
GRLAFF 