14 films in 4 days

100% VENEZUELA: VENEZUELAN FILM FESTIVALThursday, September 21 – Sunday, September 24100% VENEZUELA will show 14 films from the South American oil-exporting country. Presented by NYU's King Juan Carlos Center, Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Festival focuses on the violence that has characterized Venezuelan cinema through its history, exhibiting classic films from the 80´s and 90´s, and the most recent productions of Venezuelan filmography. 100% VENEZUELA wants to trace a history of violence in this very polemic Latin-American country. Solveig Hoogesteijn, Diego Rísquez and Alfredo Anzola, among other important Venezuelan filmmakers, will attend the screenings and participate in a symposium. With the generous support of the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities, Santa Teresa, Cinema Tropical, Caracas Arepa Bar and Cinematográfica Blancica. Curated by Javier Guerrero, NYU Department of Spanish and Portuguese. For more information to come, please log on http://www.nyu.edu/kjc/100_venezuela/program.pdf

All screenings will take place in:
King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center
53 Washington Square South
212-998-3650

PROGRAM

Thursday 21
4:15 Pandemonium, Hell’s Capital/ Pandemonium, la capital del infierno (1998, 97’)
6:15 I’m a Criminal/ Soy un delincuente (1976, 112’)
8:30 Gala Night
Friday 22
2:00 Amor en concreto/ Love in concrete (2003, 102’)
4:15 Sangrador/ Bleeder (2000, 89’)
6:15 Manuela Sáenz (2000, 97’)
8:15 Se solicita muchacha de buena presencia y motorizado con moto propia (1977, 90’)
Saturday 23
11:00 Symposium
The symposium will be focused in Venezuelan cinema and the violence that has characterized it through history. Also, it will tackle on the actual political situation of this Caribbean country. The filmmakers Alfredo Anzola, Solveig Hoogesteijn and Diego Rísquez will talk about their filmographies and share some comments on their own experience filming in Venezuela. Moderated by Javier Guerrero, NYU Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Refreshments will be served (in Spanish).
2:00 The Wedding/ La boda(1982,110’)
4:15 3 nights/ 3 noches (2001, 105’)
6:15 Tender is the night/ Tierna es la noche (1990, 90’)
8:15 Santera (1997, 97’)
Sunday 24
2:00 Jericó (1990, 90’)
4:15 Punto y raya (2004, 105’)
6:15 De cómo Anita Camacho quiso levantarse a Marino Méndez (1986, 90’)
8:15 Maroa (2005, 102’)

*For more info, please e-mail j.guerrero@nyu.edu

AMOR EN CONCRETO

BY FRANCO DE PEÑA (2003)
One night in Caracas, driving on the Avenue Liberation, one of the many avenues filled with concrete: there is Carlos, a taxi driver, who thinks he knows the ultimate secrets about love, although in reality he has a crush on Carmen, a bolero singer, but he hasn’t known how to approach her in the last 20 years; by the same avenue, there is Claudia, a responsible upper class Doctor, who exists trapped in an eternal fight with her husband, though she is thinking about leaving him after 10 years but she doesn’t know how; on a 125 cc Yamaha, Héctor, a shanty town boy, accompanied by his girlfriend Yamila, accelerates at full speed, promising her that they're gonna get out of this shit hole of life, because he’s not gonna be Mr. Nobody all his life; there is also Tony, a young man in conflict with his father who thinks he’s gay and good for nothing, thrown out of his home to encounter Clemencia, a transvestite, sorrowful and wise, who came to Caracas in search of love and tolerance and instead she only gets beaten by people and the police. Clemencia shares with Tony her dreams and she decides to show him how to be a man. One can also find a military jeep which reappears in the most surprising places, constantly searching for the road to the President’s Palace in order to make a revolution. That night everyone makes a decision to change their live in search of the Love in Concrete...

MAROA

An 11-year-old girl, audacious surviver of the asphalt jungle, fascinated by Mozart, in the middle of a criminal act? Impossible, or at least improbable. Moroa's daily sustenance are cheesy soap operas, “changas” and rap music that interprets the slums; at night, it is the sound of bullets, reflecting statistics of 130 dead each weekend, in the slums of Caracas. Maroa's life will change the moment she hears the clarinet.

SE SOLICITA MUCHACHA...

Alexander and his friend Diosa start working in a furniture store. Alexander suspects that the owner is involved in underground shenanigans. To Grau Klein, they pretend not to know each other, as they find out about his activities, and Alexander decides to give Klein a taste of his own medicine, making him think that he represents a powerful organization and that he works in a furniture store only to “propose a good deal”.

De cómo Anita Camacho...

Anita Camacho, ambitious maid, pretends to be the owner of the house where she works to make a rich man fall in love with her, to marry him and to finally stop being poor. The islander Marino Mendez, owner of a fruitshop, pays attention to her and becomes the object of this lovable and skilful girl's plans who, dressed up in her master's elegant clothes, tries to seduce him. But a trap of love awaits her when she she walks down the street and breaks more hearts than she desired.

PUNTO Y RAYA

Set at a time of heightened tensions between Venezuela and neighboring Colombia, a Columbian soldier on patrol along the Venezuelan border befriends his Venezuelan counterpart, with unforeseen, unfortunate consequences. Cheito, a fast-talking small-time drug dealer is ambushed by police in a Caracas barrio and finds himself drafted into the army. Meanwhile, Pedro, a rural Colombian laborer, volunteers for service. Cheito finally works up the nerve to go AWOL around the time most of Pedro's company is killed in a sniper attack. When the two men stumble upon each other in the jungle, Pedro promptly takes Cheito as his prisoner. Before all is said and done, the two men consort with drug traffickers, masquerade as CIA agents and are even declared war heroes--while gradually becoming something resembling friends.

3 NOCHES

When the corpse of mobster Miguel "el chino" Sanabria surfaces, everyone thinks his death is the result of an argument during the heat of the moment. That is, everyone except Officer Ferran (Victor Mayo), who believes something more menacing was at fault. Along with Picasso (Juanko Vellido), the last person to see Sanabria alive, Ferran sets out to find the truth behind the murder -- and learns something about his own destiny in the process.

SANGRADOR

Maximiliano is a decent man who has fallen in with a gang of thieves. But after three mysterious women tell him that he will never die at the hand of another man, Maximiliano falls prey to his own arrogance and insecurities, and begins to doubt the wisdom of his leader, Duran. Maximiliano's wife plants the notion in her husband's mind that he would be better off without Duran, and Maximiliano plans to take the life of his one-time friend. A free version of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

JERICÓ

It is the XVI century, and Santiago, a Dominican friar assigned to the evangelization of the New World, accompanies the conquistador son his attempt to carry out his mission. The horrors of that war of extermination, the helplessness he suffers and the simple welcome of the indigenous people in their village, converts him into one of them. However, a conflict between tribal families causes his expulsion and returns to a world that he can no longer accept.

SANTERA

Spanish social worker Paula travels to Venezuela to work in a women's prison. She sees that the women ignore one prisoner, Santera Soledad, who practices witchcraft. After Soledad is tortured by guards, Paula befriends her and soon learns about her spiritual father Eulogio, her family, and her past life at her jungle pueblo. Hoogesteijn attempted to capture the frenzy and mysticism of authentic jungle Santera dances and rituals

Manuela Sáenz

In 1856, a whaling port docks at the depressed Peruvian fishing village of Paita. Among the boat's crew is a young sailor by the name of Herman Melville, who is developing the idea for a novel about a whale, called Moby Dick. Meanwhile, in the village resides a woman named Manuela Saenz, who was at the center of national gossip by becoming passionately involved with Simon Bolivar, the Latin American revolutionary. Melville meets her and attempts to get her to talk about Bolivar. She refuses, but his visit prompt her to re-read Bolivar's letters to her, which causes her to have vivid memories of their time together.

PANDEMONIUM, LA CAPITAL DEL INFIERNO

Bitter vision at the bleak state of affairs in a fictional Latin American city, Pandemonium, through the warped view of a completely dysfunctional family. Among them are a radical poet with no feet, a government official who still runs the country from his jail cell, an amoral mother and a beautiful young street kid who they have adopted. An angry, lyrical, surreal film that screams for social justice.

TIERNA ES LA NOCHE

As its director describes it, a film “without bullets, without sea or mosquitoes, without peasants nor flowers...”