Alternative Film Guide

World Cinema Clips: Carlos Diegues‘ road movie Bye Bye Brasil / Bye Bye Brazil (1979) is possibly the best Brazilian film I’ve seen. (Admittedly, I’ve seen only about 70 or so Brazilian productions.)
Set in the Amazonian region, Bye Bye Brasil follows a troupe of down-and-out itinerant entertainers as they attempt to sort through their emotional [...]

The 2008 Tiburon (Calif.) International Film Festival (TIFF), set for March 13–21, will be showcasing more than 225 films from 94 countries.
The festival will open with the US premiere of Miguel Angel Calvo Buttini’s political comedy Dos rivales casi iguales / Twins for President at 7 p.m. at the Playhouse Theater on March 13.
Twins [...]

The second Brazilian production to win the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear, José Padilha’s Tropa de Elite / The Elite Squad, a violent tale about Rio’s special police unit’s fight against slum-based druglords, was a controversial choice for the 2008 festival’s top award. Unlike the previous Brazilian winning entry, the considerably cozier Central Station back [...]

Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Fred Zinnemann, Fay Wray, Henri-Georges Clouzot, T.E.B. Clarke, Yves Allégret, Dan Duryea, Paula Wessely, Burgess Meredith, John Wayne, Gene Autry, Run Run Shaw, and the list of 2007 centenarians goes on. Some are being celebrated — Katharine Hepburn has just been honored with a DVD box set; Barbara Stanwyck is the [...]

More winners at international film festivals…
I’ve added the list of winners at the 30th São Paulo International Film Festival.
The Best Film Award went to a Brazilian production, O Cheiro do Ralo / Drained, which will be screened at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
Other winners include Francisco Vargas’s Mexican drama El Violin / The Violin, [...]

The top winner at the 2006 edition of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, which wrapped today, was Kim Tae-yong’s Korean drama Gajokeui Tansaeng / Family Ties, about different relationships within a dysfunctional family.
In addition to the Golden Alexander Award for Best Film (worth 37,000 euros), Family Ties won a joint Best Actress award (for Moon [...]

I’ve finally added the list of winners at the 2006 edition of the Festival do Rio, the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival.
Curiously, the festival may be "international" when it comes to the screened films but it’s definitely "national" when giving out awards. With the exception of a FIPRESCI (International Film Critics) Prize for [...]

I’ve finally added the list of Kikito winners at this year’s Gramado Film Festival of "Brazilian and Latin Cinema." The Kikitos were handed out on Aug. 19 in the small town of Gramado, located in the Brazilian south.
The Best Brazilian Feature award was given to two films: the semi-documentary Serras da Desordem (literally, [...]

Eiji Okuda’s Nagai Sanpo / A Long Walk, a Japanese drama about an old man (veteran Ken Ogata) who goes out for a long stroll with a mysterious little girl, and Carlos Diegues’s O Maior Amor do Mundo / The Greatest Love of All, the story of a dying Brazilian man (José Wilker) searching for [...]

At Sala Especial [site no longer available], there’s a light-hearted analysis of Brazil’s pornochanchadas: dirt-cheap soft-core comedies — and a few dramas — that helped the Brazilian cinema survive during the dark years of political repression from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. The text is in Portuguese, but the language of the photographs is [...]

Via the Canadian Press: "Canada’s National Film Board is working with both the government and private sector in Brazil on a series of initiatives, including the advancement of digital cinema, documentary co-productions and the training of promising young filmmakers.

"In an agreement signed Thursday, NFB chairman Jacques Bensimon said the [...]

São Paulo, Sinfonia da Metrópole

Via 6d: “Now in its 36th year, the Tampere International Short Film Festival continues its open-minded exploration of Planet Earth. This year’s Festival had a record number of entries. ‘More and more short films are produced around the world. Filmmaking is much cheaper and easier than it used to be. [...]

In the New York Times, Larry Rohter writes about last year’s biggest box-office hit in Brazil, 2 Filhos de Francisco / Two Sons of Francisco. Directed by Breno Silveira, the film tells the rags-to-riches story of two poor rural boys who grew up to become one of Brazil’s biggest sertanejo (the national "country" music) singers. [...]

Obit: Aurora Miranda, Carmen’s sister, died of natural causes on Wed.. Dec. 21, in Rio de Janeiro. Born in Rio on April 20, 1915, Aurora started her show business career in the late 1920s, singing on the radio and with her sister Carmen at Rio’s then prestigious Cassino da Urca. Her biggest hit came out [...]

Obit: Jarbas Barbosa, 76, a pioneering producer of Brazil’s Cinema Novo of the 1960s, died of respiratory problems on Dec. 10 in Recife. Among the films Barbosa produced or co-produced are the film noir Boca de Ouro / Golden Mouth (1963), directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos; Ganga Zumba (1963), about the life and times [...]

"We want to restore the image of Carmen, who has had an incredible impact on Brazil," says Fabiano Canosa, the curator of a Carmen Miranda exhibit being held at the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro. "Carmen Miranda Forever" marks (a little belatedly) the fiftieth anniversary of Miranda’s death, and is being [...]

I’ve finally added the list of winners at the 2005 Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. Those include Best Picture and Best First Film winner Las Mantenidas sin sueños (Argentina), a story of mother-daughter love with a twist, directed by Vera Fogwill and Martín De Salvo; Best Director Miguel Littin (La Tierra prometida / The [...]

Cinema, Aspirina e Urubus / Cinema, Aspirin and Vultures (2006)
Director: Marcelo Gomes. Screenplay: Marcelo Gomes, Karim Ainouz, and Paulo Caldas. Cast: Peter Ketnath, João Miguel
 

 
DIRT ROAD BUDDIES
Carefully directed by Marcelo Gomes; beautifully photographed by Mauro Pinheiro Jr.; tautly written by Gomes, Karim Ainouz, and Paulo Caldas; and extremely well acted by Peter Ketnath and [...]

If it weren’t enough that his Labor Party is at the core of what may well be the worst corruption scandal in Brazil’s history — and that is saying a lot — Brazilian president Lula (aka Luiz Inácio da Silva) was caught watching a pirated DVD while aboard his private jet during a Moscow-Brasília flight [...]

This evening’s highlights at the AFI FEST 2005 at the Arclight Theater complex in Hollywood: L’Enfer / Hell (France / Italy / Belgium, 98 min., 7:00pm), a film loosely inspired by the second part of Dante’s Inferno, with a stellar cast that includes Emmanuelle Béart, Carole Bouquet, Jacques Perrin, Jean Rochefort, Marie Gillain, and Karin [...]

Weekend highlights at the Los Angeles International Latino Film Festival, currently being held at the Egyptian Theater complex on Hollywood Boulevard, include Antonio Dorado Z.’s El Rey / The King (Friday, 7:00p.m., at the Spielberg Theatre, and Saturday, 11:30p.m., at the the Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre), a fictional tale about Pedro Rey, Colombia’s first drug [...]

Tuesday, October 25, highlights at the Los Angeles International Latino Film Festival, currently being held at the Egyptian Theater complex on Hollywood Boulevard, include Walter Carvalho and Sandra Werneck’s Cazuza - O Tempo Não Pára / Cazuza - Time Doesn’t Stop, which offers Daniel de Oliveira’s critically acclaimed performance as the iconic Brazilian singer Cazuza, [...]

As per the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) website, the festival "is dedicated to presenting the best Latino films made in the US, Spain, the Caribbean, and Latin America." Certainly, one could argue about the meaningless label "Latino" - for instance, the original Latins are out of luck since no Italian films are [...]

More "Malditos Filmes Brasileiros!" (Damned Brazilian Movies!) in October, this time at the Cinemateca Brasileira in São Paulo.
Between October 6-9, the Cinemateca will present the series "The Most Important Classics of the Boca do Lixo" ("Boca do Lixo" could be loosely translated as "Trash Alley"), including Rubens da Silva Prado’s 1970 "feijoada" Western Sangue [...]

The film series "Malditos Filmes Brasileiros!" (Damned Brazilian Movies!) continues in September at the Casa França-Brasil in downtown Rio de Janeiro. The theme of the month is the Brazilian "nordestern," also known as the feijoada Western: shoot-em-up flicks shot (no pun intended) in the arid and lawless Brazilian Northeast, where men were born to kill [...]