Where We Are:  Argentina
wikipedia

What We Watched:


Bombón: El Perro
Year of Release:  2004
Directed By:  Carlos Sorin
Genre:  Drama
Starring:  Juan Villegas, Walter Donado

Overview:
A unique story about hope and endurance.  Juan Villegas finds himself jobless overnight and begins desperately to look for work aware that age and lack of skill are his greatest weaknesses.  Fate leads him to a farm where he receives an unusual payment for a repair job: a striking-looking breeding dog.  Although initially frustrated, Juan soon realizes that he is blessed with his new companion, who will take him through a fascinating journey filled with incredibly wonderful twists.

My Thoughts:
This is a lovely little film about an ordinary man and the relationship he develops with a dog.  Juan is a genuinely good person, a gentle, trusting soul who is simply trying to find work and get by in life.  This is very much a slice-of-life picture, a basically realistic story where Bombón brings Juan to a new place in his life and a new start.  Everyone is very believable, they look and act like real people.  The ending is very upbeat but doesn't have the "closure" Hollywood movies have taught many viewers to expect.  If that doesn't bother you then I give this a whole-hearted recommendation.  You can watch this with the family, with older children, or with friends who refuse to watch films where something bad happens to a character you care about.  It's just very nice little film.

Bechtel Test:  Fail
(while there are 2 times when women speak to one another, at each time one of the women does not have a name)

Overall: 3.5/5

Where We Are:  Uruguay
wikipedia

What We Watched:


Whisky
Year of Release:  2004
Directed By:  Pablo Stoll & Juan Pablo Rebella
Genre:  Comedy, Drama
Starring:  Andrés Pazos, Mirella Pascual, Jorge Bolani

Overview:
The deadpan style of Jim Jarmusch meets Aki Kaurismaki's wry sensibility in this perversely funny story set in Montevideo, Uruguay.  When Jacobo, a lonely sock factory owner, hears about the impending visit of his irritatingly cheerful brother, who he hasn't seen in years, he enlists his faithful assistant Marta to pretend to be his wife.

My Thoughts:
This is another low-budget film.  In fact, Whisky is so minimalist, you could call it a no-budget film.  It is quiet, droll and subtle.  It's a deceptively simple film - a few days in the lives of three people who mostly go through the routines of their days.  But nothing is given to the viewer, who must decide for themselves whether this is comedy or tragedy, where to laugh, where to feel sad, what happens afterward.  This is a fine little film, about real life and real people, but it's for art film fans only.

Bechtel Test:  Pass 

Overall: 4/5

Where We Are:  Brazil
wikipedia

What We Watched:


Cidade de Deus  (City of God)

Year of Release: 2002
Starring:  Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora, Phellipe Haagensen, Matheus Nachtergaele, Seu Jorge
Directed By:  Fernando Meirelles
Genre:  Drama, Crime

Overview:
Celebrated with worldwide acclaim, this powerful true story of crime and redemption has won numerous prestigious awards around the globe! The streets of the world's most notorious slum, Rio de Janeiro's "City of God," are a place where combat photographers fear to tread, police rarely go and residents are lucky if they live to the age of 20. In the midst of the oppressive crime and violence, a frail and scared young boy will grow up to discover that he can view the harsh realities of his surroundings with a different eye: the eye of an artist. In the face of impossible odds, his brave ambition to become a photographer becomes a window into his world and ultimately his way out!

My Thoughts:
First, what a wonderfully made film.  Powerful, energetic, substantial.  This is a film with a good story, well-drawn characters, and powerful, important themes.  It starts strong and doesn't let up or lose the viewer for a moment.  Great cinematography, great direction, great work by the actors.  

This is a film about violence, about violence begetting violence, about the cycle of violence, and the end only shows the next generation.  It's a film about class, about poverty, about poverty begetting crime begetting violence begetting hopelessness.  It's a film about the corruption of the police, the corruption of government, the harsh realities of society.  And yet there is a small ray of hope, in the character of Buscapé, the one person who may manage to escape the violence and poverty of the favelas and make something of his life.  Buscapé has grown up in the favelas, and because of this he can tell the story of the rise and fall of drug lords and the wars around them.  His insider status is what allows us to enter; his outsider status is what allows us to be able to watch it - without him the film would likely be to bleak.

Cidade de Deus is an intense, visceral, magnificent film about a brutal life.  Live fast, die young, leave a corpse on the street in a pool of blood.  Recommended for any serious film fan, anyone who enjoys a good film, anyone with the stomach to watch it (in other words, not for my friend Katrina).  

If you get a chance, watch the featurette included on the disc as well, for a further look at the favelas and the drug/gun running culture.  Very informative.

Bechdel Test:  Fail

Overall:  5/5

Where We Are: Venezuela
wikipedia

What We Watched


Oriana

Year of Release: 1985
Starring: Doris Wells, Daniela Silverio, Mirtha Borges, Maya Oloe
Directed By: Fina Torres
Genre:  Mystery, Romance

Overview:
A taut, Gothic, Latin American romance, winner of the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Marie returns to a rundown Venezuelan house in the jungle where she spent summers as a child. Her return ignites memories of a summer when her adolescent sexual curiosity led to a surprising encounter. "An exotic JANE EYRE set in a jungle-choked hacienda" (SEATTLE WEEKLY).

My Thoughts:
Ignore the rather lurid overview there.  This is a mystery.  Yes, Maria does return to the hacienda where she once spent a summer with her reclusive aunt Oriana.  The mystery is Maria trying to figure out her aunt and the mystery of her life and family.  The film is told in three timelines:  Maria as an adult, Maria as a teen, and Oriana as a teen, but I didn't find it confusing when it moved between times.  It's a pretty good mystery, as you are led through in Maria's perspective who is naturally curious and inquisitive about her aunt, especially as she finds clues to Oriana's past and is constantly redirected away from her attempts to find anything out.  The end of the film gives you some answers, but other answers must be figured out by the viewer.  While the clues are there, my mom and I had a good discussion figuring out exactly what the relationships within the family were and why Oriana had remained at the hacienda her whole life.

Very glad to have finally gotten the time to watch this, and recommended for anyone who might enjoy a family-centered mystery.

Bechdel Test:  Pass

Overall: 4/5

Where We Are: Senegal
wikipedia

What We Watched:


Touki Bouki

Year of Release:  1973
Starring:  Magaye Niang, Mareme Niang
Directed By:  Djibril Diop Mambety
Genre:  Drama, Adventure, Avant-Garde

Overview:
Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambety's story of two young lovers who long to escape to Paris is a legend in African cinema. Like their New Wave counterparts in France, young Mory and his girlfriend Anta are alienated from their own society and imagine freedom far from the dusty streets of their hometown Dakar. Living at the edge of the heaving, crystal-blue ocean, their dream city doesn't seem so far away, and the lovers embark on an exhilarating picaresque adventure as they try to hustle the money for their passage. They try gambling but lose; they steal the receipts of a charity wrestling match, but take the wrong strongbox. Finally, they manage to rob a rich, predatory man and escape in his roadster. Flushed with victory, Mory imagines himself riding triumphantly into Dakar like a Wolof prince, and suddenly Paris and all its mysteries are within their reach.

A rueful parable about fear and freedom, Touki Bouki has the restless energy of modernity and all the power of traditional African symbolism. Mory's motorbike is accessorized with a pair of cattle horns mounted on the handlebars, and Josephine Baker's sweet voice leads them on thorugh their journey. But the rift between these two worlds is all too real. Though both Mory and Anta board the ocean liner that will take them to their destination, only one of them will stay on to face the truth of realizing a dream.

My Thoughts:
A powerful and challenging film, Touki Bouki is film for exercising your brain.  It was very good, but a lot of the points of the film are in its symbology.  Africans are the cattle lead to the slaughter of colonialism/imperialism, a white "cave man" living in a baobab may be both the off-color of white images of Africans and the death of the wilderness when he is slain in a motorcycle accident.  It's a film with questions:  Can the traditions of the past reconcile with the press of modernity?  Can we have both?  What is freedom and what is success and how do we obtain it?  Is it better to be nobody in your own land or try for something else in a foreign land? 

I think I might have had an easier time with this if I was more familiar with Senegalese culture, but I still found it to be a very good film and I'm glad we watched it.

For anyone who might consider watching Touki Bouki, I should warn you that the cattle slaughter scene at the beginning of the film is VERY graphic and disturbing.  Also, don't touch this with a ten-foot pole if you aren't up for figuring out symbolic meanings, allusion and non-linear storytelling.  Strictly for foreign film lovers and those who like avant-garde film.

Bechdel Test:  Yes, barely

Overall:  4/5

Where We Are:  Niger
wikipedia

What We Watched


La Gran Final  (The Great Match)
Year of Release:  2006
Starring:  Atibou Aboubacar, Shag Humar Khan, Wirapitang Kaapor
Directed By:  Gerardo Olivares
Genre:  Comedy

Overview:
The Great Match tells the adventurous story of three soccer fans, none of whom have ever met, but who nevertheless have two things in common: firstly, they all live in the farthest-flung corners of the planet and, secondly, they are all determined to watch the TV broadcast of the 2002 World Cup final. The protagonists in this global comedy are a family of Mongolian nomads, a camel caravan of Tuareg in the Sahara, and a group of Indios in the Amazon.

My Thoughts:
First I should let you know that Film Movement lists this film for Niger, Mongolia and Brazil, while IMDB lists it for Spain and Germany - it's definitely an international co-production!  I'm including it in the marathon here because of the Niger aspect.  It's a funny, fascinating little film about the lengths men will go to for soccer fandom.  It's a colorful look at three very different traditional cultures, with a quiet look at class and politics on the side.  It's a good look at how very different, and how very similar we all are.  Recommended for just about anyone who doesn't mind a subtitled film.

Bechdel Test:  Fail

Overall: 3/5

ANOTHER BONUS SHORT FILM!

Where We Are: Senegal
wikipedia

What We Watched:


Un transport un commun (Saint Louis Blues)
Year of Release: 2009
Starring:  Umban Gomez de Kset, Mbègne Kassé, Anne Jeanine Barboza, Bigué N'Doye, Adja Fall
Directed By:  Dyana Gaye
Genre:  Musical, Comedy, Road Movie

Overview:
Focus' Africa First program is an initiative designed exclusively for filmmakers of African nationality and residence, and presents annual awards to the best and brightest from around the continent. After touring film festivals around the world, these Africa First short films are now available for audiences everywhere:

Dyana Gaye's ST. LOUIS BLUES, an invigorating traveling musical; Jenna Bass' THE TUNNEL, a moving story of a young girl in search of her father; Jan-Hendrik Beetge's THE ABYSS BOYS a coming-of-age tale amidst rampant corruption and gang violence; and Wanuri Kahiu's PUMZI a startling vision of the future.

My Thoughts:
Saint Louis Blues reminded me of community theatre.  The atmosphere was fun, the performances earnest but unpolished, the production lacking in any sort of real budget, but an enjoyable, entertaining time nonetheless.  It's obvious all the actors are amateurs, but they're having a good time making this little musical and I had a good time watching it over breakfast.

This is director Dyana Gaye's fourth short film, and it seems she's currently seeking funding for a full-length feature.  While Saint Louis Blues lacks polish and depth when compared to Pumzi, I enjoyed it and Gaye has obvious talent and I wouldn't mind seeing more from her.

Bechdel Test:  Pass

Overall:  3/5

Where We Are:  Mozambique
wikipedia

What We Watched:


Terra Sonâmbula (Sleepwalking Land)
Year of Release: 2007
Starring: Nick Lauro Teresa, Aladino Jasse, Hélio Fumo, Ilda Gonzalez
Directed By: Teresa Prata
Genre: Drama, War

Overview:
In the midst of Mozambique's devastating civil war, Muidinga, an orphaned refugee, wanders the countryside in search of his mother.  His only companion is an elderly storyteller, and the only guide to finding his mother is a dead man's diary.  Together the storyteller and diary lead him on a magical, and sometimes macabre, journey across war-torn landscapes to find the family he lost.  Based on Mia Coutou's acclaimed Portuguese novel of the same name, Teresa Prata's transporting drama underscores the power of imagination in surviving, and ultimately overcoming, the catastrophe of war.

My Thoughts:
I'm a bit overwhelmed as to what to say.  This is a powerful film.  It has a lot to say about the effect of ongoing war on civilian populations, on the madness of madness of inter-tribal conflict and prejudice.  When the shopkeeper says that the kind of men he likes are those of "no color," it really resonates to conflict around the globe, not just Mozambique.

This is another low-budget film with amateur actors, but the two leads, Nick Laura Teresa as Muidinga and Aladino Jasse as Tuahir, are really good in their roles.  Jasse really brings Tuahir to life.  I was especially struck by the scene where he recalls life before the war, when he worked for the railroad, and how he brings that to life for Muidinga. 

This is, in part, magical realism, and as such can be read in multiple ways.  Tuahir and Muidinga journey in circles, ever-returning to the burned-out bus they first settle in.  Later the bus moves while they remain in it.  It is left to the viewer whether you believe in the magic, or it is simply their hallucination as the events of their lives overwhelm them.  Just as you are left to decide whether the story of Kindzu that Muidinga reads from the journal has happened as Muidinga reads it, or is it something that Muidinga is embellishing or making up.  The ending is equally ambiguous, letting the viewer end the story themselves.

This is a very compelling film, well made despite its budgetary limitations, but given the subject matter not for the tender-hearted.  There's also one scene that would offend most of my friends - Spoiler:  (Select to view)
- so let me also say that it's not for the easily offended.  It's a scene that could have been left out, but also makes sense in context.  Your mileage may vary, but that scene made me decide I could never show this great film to several of my closest friends and why I didn't rate the film higher.  Otherwise, recommended.

Bechdel Test:  Fail

Overall:  3.5/5