CINE EN ESPAÑOL / FILMS IN SPANISH


A FALTA DE PAN (Our Daily Bread) by Martin Rosite (Spain) 12 minutes, fiction
Cast: Alex Angulo, Carlos Alvarez Novoa, Amparo Baró / Music: Ignacio Perez Marín
The symphonic Music and panoramic shots in the opening credits suggest a Sergio Leone epic. What Rosite delivers is a duel in the sun of competing takes on Western civilization. A devout Christian in a friar-brown business suit, sporting a curiously rabbinical beard, is out and about on the streets of not-Laredo looking for ways to imitate the mortal life of his savior. Without warning, he is knocked off his feet by a bicycle pedaled by a Worker, complete with Lenin headgear. Brushing himself off, the Believer has the Christian cheek to tell the Prole to run him down from the other side. Then things really get complicated, until the simple truth emerges from the mouths of babes. A storyteller for our time, Rosite took five European festival prizes in 2003 for his seven-minute-long Revolución
Review Excerpt - David Marc
FRIDAY, MAY 2nd at 7:45PM - THE REDHOUSE
Program includes short film The Soupfather (Taiwan), and feature film Nobody (Canada)

EL BENNY by Jorge Luis Sánchez (Cuba) 120 minutes, fiction
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Cast: Rakel Adriana, Ulyk Anello, Reny Arozarena
Music: Juan Manual Ceruto, Juan Formell, Eduardo Ramos, Yotuel Romero, Chucho Valdés, Orishas
This colorful film, inspired by Beni Moré’s fiery life, follows the singer from his simple beginnings as a country boy whose velvet voice and passionate presence would catapult him to fame. Sánchez, in his first film, recreates Moré’s fast-lane life and his politically volatile times with flair and authenticity. The film's lively score features Moré songs played by contemporary musicians. Review Excerpt - Jeff Gorney
THURSDAY, MAY 1st at 9:30 PM - SYRACUSE CENTER 4 THE ARTS
SUNDAY, MAY 4th at 12:00 NOON - DELAVAN ART CENTER

EL BOQUETE (The Tunnel) by Mariano Mussi (Argentina) 83 minutes, fiction
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Cast: Valentina Bassi, Mario Paolucci, Luis Ziembrowski, Daniel Valenzuela / Music: Axel Krygier
This is a low-down family of crooks, losers, and pals in a wild and wacky comedy. Dad, who just came back from prison, found Christ in the slammer but hasn't lost his taste for robbery. His daughter, Myrna, is an enterprising prostitute who accepts a part in a porno film and finds herself pursued by a hot but tough-as-nails policewoman, who makes overtures, which she, of course, accepts. Mom is as pregnant as can be. With her tacky dress and foul mouth, she redefines “raunchy.” They set out to squat in what they think is an abandoned house, under whose bathroom they begin work on “el boquete” (the tunnel), and the dig will take them right into the vault of a nearby bank. It all comes together for a bang-up, lowdown finale in the vault. Review Excerpt - Jeff Gorney
THURSDAY, MAY 1st at 9:30 PM - PALACE THEATER
SATURDAY, MAY 3rd at 7:00 PM - DELAVAN ART CENTER

HUECOS (Hollow) by Paula Ortiz (Spain) 17 minutes, experimental/animation
USA Premiere
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Cinematography: Fran Fernandez Pardo, Javier G. Arredondo / Music: Patricia Ladera
In a wood shop, a boy wonders why one of the marionettes looks so sad. The puppet maker tells him that perhaps it is because “he knows his life hangs by a thread.” Eying a toy plane, the boy finds himself taking flight to the world of puppets, where he tries to save the doomed romance of the sad marionette and his ballerina sweetheart, until he realizes that fate is indeed the puppeteer who pulls the string. Trying to help lovers of hollow wood leads to a hard-won lesson in real life. Huecos was filmed in Spain, yet the look and feel of the boy and the craftsman and his shop suggest Victorian England. Helena Mirrall's dramatic puppets, by contrast, are Spanish to the core‹consumed with passion and yearning, at once dreamy and melancholy. Review Excerpt - Jeff Gorney
SATURDAY, MAY 3rd at 4:30 PM - Syracuse University's GIFFORD AUDITORIUM
SUNDAY, MAY 4th at 12:00 NOON - BRISTOL IMAX OMNITHEATER at the MOST

ICARO (Icarus) by David Hartmann (Cuba) 11 minutes, fiction
USA Premiere  Cast: Jorge Rivera Lopez, Guido D’alvo, Laura Guaragna.  Music: Gerald Moya
Every 60 years, the heavenly body Icaro comes impressively close to the sun. It is the year of years, and two middle-aged pals, Alfredo and Federico, have set up a street stall to sell tickets to the event. Alfredo considers this a celestial occurrence of the first magnitude; he can recite the history of the asteroid Icaro by heart. To his annoyance, Federico insists it is no asteroid, but a comet. Director David Hartmann spins their clash of sensibilities with a delectable sense of inner place and outer space, where paper planets hang by strings and a telescope points toward the unknown.
Review Excerpt - Jeff Gorney
FRIDAY, MAY 2nd at 10:15 PM - HOTEL SYRACUSE GRAND BALLROOM CINEMA
Precedes feature film Goodby Life (Iran)

IN THE HEART OF CHILE by Stacy Barton (USA) 47 minutes, documentary
Barton eloquently documents the long, strange trip of Chile’s capital, Santiago, from the throes of genocide and dictatorship under Pinochet during the 1970s to its current democratic state with interviews from a roster of rebellious movers and shakers who helped the country bridge that gap. Creative people, including painter Hugo Cardenas, artist-writer Jordi Lloret, writer-poet Malu Urriola, novelist-playwright Eugenia Prado, and painter-engraver Sebastian Rojas-Jiminez, have channeled their anger into artistry, to ensure that the years of human rights violations can never be forgotten. Review Excerpt - Bill DeLapp
FRIDAY, APRIL 25 at 9:30 PM - Syracuse University's GIFFORD AUDITORIUM
Carol North Schmuckler New Filmmakers Showcase

LLUEVE (It Rains) by Alexis Méndez Giner (Venezuela), 14 minutes, fiction
USA Premiere
Cast: Antonio Delli, Vito Lonardo, Jose Antonio Rojas, Sandy Siquir
Inspired by John Howinson’s gothic tale, The Floating Beacon tells the inner story of a man running away from himself. It is a fragment in the lives of four individuals as they relate to the main character. Executed in a highly poetic style the film has a wonderful sound track with no dialogue. The actors convey a wide range of emotions just through their non-verbal behavior and interactions with one another. It is cinematographically beautiful. The director has paid a great deal of attention to light, color, and composition of the frame to the degree that the film’s very meaning is carried.
Review Excerpt - Adam Zeller
FRIDAY, APRIL 25 at 10:00 PM - PALACE THEATER
SATURDAY, APRIL 26 at 9:30 PM - PALACE THEATER
Precedes feature film One Day Like Rain (USA)

MALDEAMORES (Lovesickness) by Carlos Ruiz and Mariem Pérez (Puerto Rico) 83 minutes, fiction
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Cast: Luis Guzmán, Teresa Hernández, Luis Gonzaga, Silvia Brito, Miguel Ángel Álvarez, Chavito Marrero
From executive producer Benicio Del Toro comes a film about love at all ages in the backyards of Puerto Rico. A child's first kiss. A man who can’t grasp rejection. An elderly love affair. Passion defeats reason again and again in this film about the eternal masochistic search for love. Facebook Review Excerpt
SYRFILM MIDNIGHT SURPRISE
FRIDAY, MAY 2nd STARTING AT 12 MIDNIGHT – SYRACUSE CENTER 4 THE ARTS

PULQUI, UN INSTANTE EN LA PATRIA DE LA FELICIDAD
(Pulqui, A moment in the native land of happiness) by Alejandro Fernández Moujan
USA Premiere (Argentina), 85 minutes, documentary
The Pulqui was the first jet designed and built in Argentina. Launched in 1951, at the height of Juan and Eva Peron's regime, it was a sleek red projectile that soared across the Argentine blue, a symbol of Perón's “technological utopia” that lifted the heart of the nation. Through a charming, often whacky, but always respectful lens, Fernández Moujan seamlessly intercuts 1950s footage, including patriotic advertisements hawking the promise of a golden future and gruesome newsreels of bloody bombings that killed scores of civilians, bringing a violent end to the Pulqui and other Perón projects. Review Excerpt - Jeff Gorney
FRIDAY, MAY 2nd, PROGRAM INCLUDES 2 SHORT FILMS STARTING AT 10:15
BRISTOL IMAX OMNITHEATER at the MOST

SIBERIA by Renata Duque Lasio (Cuba) 10 minutes, fiction
Cast: Alexis Diaz de Villegas, Laura de la Uz, Ketty Rodriguez, Ludmila Alonso, Saul Seijo / Music: Frank Delgado
Havana, 1992. In a Cuba beset by ideological change, Andres, a professor of Russian, sees his world fall apart. He will pay emotionally for not being able to adjust. Lasio shows Cuba's political, professional, and environmental collapse through exquisitely economic vignettes. A favored student confesses he has changed majors from Russian to one that will better help him earn a living. A teacher foregoes a class in Pushkin to teach Italian. People scramble helter-skelter onto a bus bound for an area where jobs are more plentiful. Graphic images resonate with traditional narrative themes: an old record player spitting out folk Music suddenly stops; Andrés walks down lonely halls past empty classrooms.  Much of the film's power emanates from a highly expressive yet internalized performance by acclaimed actor Alexis Diaz de Villegas. Review Excerpt - Jeff Gorney
SUNDAY, MAY 4th at 2:30 PM- BRISTOL IMAX OMNITHEATER at the MOST