The Cinema Tropical Festival, running February 24-27 at Village East Cinemas in New York, will present a slate of new and interesting films coming out of Latin America, all winners of the Cinema Tropical awards handed out earlier this year. Of the eight films on the program, a combination of fiction and documentary — and sometimes a blending of the both — only a few have had a theatrical release in New York, the others regulars on the festival circuit.
To mark the opening night of the festival, ARTINFO selected four essential films to see at the Cinema Tropical Festival.
“El Alcalde”
February 26, 7 p.m.
The film, which screened at the Toronto Film Festival last year, is in an Errol Morris-like portrait of a hubristic political animal from filmmakers Emiliano Altuna, Carlos F. Rossini, and Diego Osorno. The camera rests its eye on Mauricio Fernandez, the outspoken and eccentric mayor of San Pedro Garza García, an affluent area in the northern state of Nuevo León in Mexico. An outspoken critic of the drug cartels, Fernandez has been criticized for his reported penchant for vigilante justice and take-no-prisoners public attitude. By the end of the film, with a fantastic sequence that brings it into the surreal, the question that hangs over the subject remains unanswered: Should Fernandez be hailed as a hero, or sent to the loony bin?
“Post Tenebras Lux”
February 26, 9 p.m.
A hallucinatory journey that floats through the mind of filmmaker Carlos Reygadas, an enfant terrible of Latin American cinema who’s often accused of provocation for its own sake. And “Post Tenebras Lux” will certainly provoke. The film strings together startlingly beautiful sequences with only a thin wrapping of narrative — moments, including a soccer match at an all-boys British private school, are seemingly devoid of connection to the rest of the film and only make sense in a hazy way. The work was picked by ARTINFO critic Graham Fuller as one of the best films of 2013.
“The Girl From the South”
February 24, 9 p.m.
Half diary-film, half investigation, “The Girl From the South” charts filmmaker José Luis García’s fascination with South Korean activist Im Su-kyong. In 1989, García first came into contact with Im Su-kyong at the Youth and Student Festival in Pyongyang, North Korea — the first section of the film features home video footage of the time spent in Pyongyang, while the second features Garcia and a translator traveling to Seoul to speak to her and document her life, to mixed and ultimately surprising results.
“Viola”
February 27, 7 p.m.
One of the strongest cinematic voices to come out of Latin America in recent years, Matías Piñeiro’s brief film, clocking in at just over an hour, focuses on an all-female theater troupe performing the works of Shakespeare. Specifically, they rehearse a scene from “Twelfth Night,” and the play’s themes of doubling and deception are absorbed into the private lives of the cast — until a sudden shift at the end reverses the entire thing.
