oscar jubis
04-07-2007, 08:45 PM
The acclaimed Argentine film Los Muertos is finally being distributed commercially courtesy of Facets Multimedia. Lisandro Alonso's second feature is currently playing in New York and Chicago but bookings at alternative cinemas nationwide are expected. Moreover, Los Muertos will be subsequently released on dvd.
Its release, albeit three years after its world premiere, gives me hope that North Americans will eventually have access to at least a few of the magnificent films from Mexico and South America that have played at festivals recently. Among them:
From Argentina: Hours Go By (Ines de Oliveira Cesar), The Wind (Eduardo Mignogna), Glue: Adolescent Story in the Middle of Nowhere (Alexis dos Santos), El Custodio (Rodrigo Moreno), Bombon the Dog (Carlos Sorin), Meanwhile (Diego Lerman)
From Brasil: Delicate Crime (Beto Brant), In the Evil Hour (Ruy Guerra), Drained (Heitor Dhalia),To The Left of the Father (Luiz Carvahlo)
From Chile: Play (Alicia Scherson), Salvador Allende (Patricio Guzman)
From Colombia: Satanas (Andi Baiz)
From Mexico: Mezcal (Ignacio Ortiz), News From Afar (Ricardo Benet), The Citrillo's Turns (Felipe Cazals), The Violin (Francisco Vargas), Aro Tolbukhin:In the Mind of a Killer (Agusti Villaronga).
From Paraguay: Paraguayan Hammock (Paz Encina)
From Peru: Madeinusa (Claudia Llosa)
About Los Muertos:
"Argentina is the Latin American country most influenced by Europe and its artistic legacy, something that has been historically evident in its cinema. Against this current, Mr. Alonso has aligned himself decisively within a Third World tradition in his two features. Both La Libertad and Los Muertos explore rural environments and the relationship between man and nature by imposing a slight, fictional narrative on documentary material. But Los Muertos transcends third-world rural primitivism when it dwells on themes of memory's impact on current reality and a man's re-insertion into a family unit after a long, traumatic absence." (Oscar Jubis)
"There's a boldness about Alonso's method. Some shots may seem too long. But there's an exhilarating sense of really being wholly inside the experience; of losing ourselves in the story Los Muertos tells. I got that feeling when I first watched Boorman's Emerald Forest, and it was a strange and alien -- and at the same time thrilling -- feeling to walk out of the theater into the nighttime city when the movie was over but I was still under its spell, my mind lingering in the Amazon forest." (Chris Knipp)
"This 2004 feature is the second by Lisandro Alonso (La Libertad), a singular and essential figure of the Argentinean new wave. Vargas and the wilderness are such great camera subjects that a sense of quiet revelation is nearly constant." (Jonathan Rosenbaum)
"Like a slowed-down, more realistic and psychologically penetrating cousin of a Werner Herzog or Terrence Malick film, "Los Muertos" is primarily concerned with the rhythms and textures of life". (Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Times)
"Alonso wants you to take this mysterious journey with a mysterious man through a mysterious landscape, and each of us will experience it literally or allegorically or however we may. It's a tremendous experience, whatever it is; the kind of thing supposed art-movie audiences used to tolerate and pretty much don't anymore." (Andrew O'Hehir, Salon)
"Into the river, miraculous landscape: Los Muertos connects with the elemental energies of sunlight, water, and leaf like nothing since Blissfully Yours. Indeed, that might have worked well for a title here -- that, or Heart of Darkness." (Nathan Lee, Village Voice)
Its release, albeit three years after its world premiere, gives me hope that North Americans will eventually have access to at least a few of the magnificent films from Mexico and South America that have played at festivals recently. Among them:
From Argentina: Hours Go By (Ines de Oliveira Cesar), The Wind (Eduardo Mignogna), Glue: Adolescent Story in the Middle of Nowhere (Alexis dos Santos), El Custodio (Rodrigo Moreno), Bombon the Dog (Carlos Sorin), Meanwhile (Diego Lerman)
From Brasil: Delicate Crime (Beto Brant), In the Evil Hour (Ruy Guerra), Drained (Heitor Dhalia),To The Left of the Father (Luiz Carvahlo)
From Chile: Play (Alicia Scherson), Salvador Allende (Patricio Guzman)
From Colombia: Satanas (Andi Baiz)
From Mexico: Mezcal (Ignacio Ortiz), News From Afar (Ricardo Benet), The Citrillo's Turns (Felipe Cazals), The Violin (Francisco Vargas), Aro Tolbukhin:In the Mind of a Killer (Agusti Villaronga).
From Paraguay: Paraguayan Hammock (Paz Encina)
From Peru: Madeinusa (Claudia Llosa)
About Los Muertos:
"Argentina is the Latin American country most influenced by Europe and its artistic legacy, something that has been historically evident in its cinema. Against this current, Mr. Alonso has aligned himself decisively within a Third World tradition in his two features. Both La Libertad and Los Muertos explore rural environments and the relationship between man and nature by imposing a slight, fictional narrative on documentary material. But Los Muertos transcends third-world rural primitivism when it dwells on themes of memory's impact on current reality and a man's re-insertion into a family unit after a long, traumatic absence." (Oscar Jubis)
"There's a boldness about Alonso's method. Some shots may seem too long. But there's an exhilarating sense of really being wholly inside the experience; of losing ourselves in the story Los Muertos tells. I got that feeling when I first watched Boorman's Emerald Forest, and it was a strange and alien -- and at the same time thrilling -- feeling to walk out of the theater into the nighttime city when the movie was over but I was still under its spell, my mind lingering in the Amazon forest." (Chris Knipp)
"This 2004 feature is the second by Lisandro Alonso (La Libertad), a singular and essential figure of the Argentinean new wave. Vargas and the wilderness are such great camera subjects that a sense of quiet revelation is nearly constant." (Jonathan Rosenbaum)
"Like a slowed-down, more realistic and psychologically penetrating cousin of a Werner Herzog or Terrence Malick film, "Los Muertos" is primarily concerned with the rhythms and textures of life". (Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Times)
"Alonso wants you to take this mysterious journey with a mysterious man through a mysterious landscape, and each of us will experience it literally or allegorically or however we may. It's a tremendous experience, whatever it is; the kind of thing supposed art-movie audiences used to tolerate and pretty much don't anymore." (Andrew O'Hehir, Salon)
"Into the river, miraculous landscape: Los Muertos connects with the elemental energies of sunlight, water, and leaf like nothing since Blissfully Yours. Indeed, that might have worked well for a title here -- that, or Heart of Darkness." (Nathan Lee, Village Voice)