NEWS

Editors: The festival schedule follows this story.

CHAPEL HILL -- Music and dance in popular films are highlighted in the 13th annual Latin American Film and Video Festival, ongoing through Nov. 23 at seven North Carolina colleges and universities.

The festival, "One Hundred Years of Latin American Film/Cien Anos de Cine Latinoamericano," also features the best of Latin American films since the advent of sound pictures. Films are free and open to the public, in their native languages with subtitles.

Started in 1986 by the Duke-University of North Carolina Program in Latin American Studies' outreach office, the festival's screenings and discussions take place at Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, N.C. Central and N.C. State universities, Guilford College and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This year, UNC-Charlotte joined the festival with its first annual William W. Brown Latin American Film and Video Festival earlier this month.

Experts will lead discussions before each film. The leader before films nightly Nov. 20-22 will be Mexican film director Marcela Fernandez Violante, winner of two Ariels, the Mexican equivalent of Oscars. She also won a Silver Bear for best documentary at the 1970 Berlin Film Festival, and her films are available in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In 1988, she was a visiting professor at UNC-CH.

Her discussion on Sunday (Nov. 21), at 7:30 p.m. in Duke University’s Sanford Institute Building, will introduce a film she co-directed, "Weaving Shadows," on the history of film in the Americas. On Nov. 22 in UNC-CH’s Hanes Art Center auditorium, Violante will introduce "La Negra Angustias," a 1949 film about a female colonel in Emiliano Zapata’s guerilla forces during and after the Mexican Revolution (1911-17).

"This film offers viewers an opportunity to better understand the many Mexicans who are coming to North Carolina by learning about their history," said Sharon Mujica, outreach director for the Duke-UNC-CH program.

UNC-CH history associate professor Dr. John Charles Chasteen will lead discussions before showings that concern music and dance in popular films, on Tuesday (Nov. 16), Thursday (Nov. 18) and the festival’s grand finale on Nov. 23, "Tango," at 7 p.m. in UNC-CH’s Carolina Union Film Theater.

A tango performance by Argentine dancers also will precede the movie, which was nominated this year for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Mujica calls it "one of the most purely joyful pieces of cinema in years."

For more information, contact the Duke-UNC Program in Latin American Studies' outreach office, 223 E. Franklin St., Campus Box 3205, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3205, or 919-962-2414, or visit the festival Web site, http://www.duke.edu/web/las/outreach.html. A festival schedule follows below.

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Contact: Sharon Mujica, 919-962-2414, smujica@email.unc.edu

VENUES:
UNC-CH: Hanes Art Center Auditorium, at the Swain visitors’ parking lot off Cameron Avenue near Columbia Street, and the Frank Porter Graham Student Union film auditorium, off South Road. For information, call 919-962-2414.

Duke: 04 Sanford Institute Building, Science Drive and Towerview Road, Durham, 919-681-3980.

Guilford: Leak Auditorium in Duke Memorial Hall, Greensboro, 336-316-2301.

NCCU: Miller-Morgan Health Science Building, Nelson Street, Durham, 919-560-6331.

NCSU: Campus Cinema, Witherspoon Student Center, Cates Avenue near Dan Allen Drive, Raleigh, 919-515-5161.

UNC-G: Stone Building Auditorium, College Avenue, Greensboro, 336-334-5655.

RATINGS:
Latin American films are not rated. Festival organizers have rated films they feel need ratings with the following designations: V, includes violence; N, includes nudity; S, includes sex.

SCHEDULE:
Tuesday, Nov. 16, 7:30 p.m., NCCU: "Orfeu Negro/Black Orpheus," Brazil, 1959. 103 minutes. Pre-film dialogue led by UNC-CH history associate professor Dr. John Charles Chasteen. The tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, retold against Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, won the 1959 Oscar for Best Foreign Film and a Palm d’or award at Cannes, 1959. Thrilling music, spectacular photography.

Wednesday, Nov. 17, 7 p.m. NCSU: "Yawar Mallku/Blood of the Condor," Bolivia, 1968, 80 minutes, V. Stark portrayal of a poor community driven to revolutionary consciousness by exploitation. Its showing in Bolivia led to a temporary expulsion of the Peace Corps.

Thursday, Nov. 18, 7:30 p.m., Guilford: "Chulas Fronteras" y "Del Mero Corazon"/ "Borderlands" and "From the Heart," Tex-Mex films, 1974, 51 minutes, 28 minutes, respectively. Pre-film dialogue led by UNC-CH history associate professor Dr. John Charles Chasteen. Documentaries on the borderlands between Texas and Mexico, with music conveying the poetry of daily life. Love songs, passion, death, humor and loss are explored in dance halls, small towns and family gatherings.

Friday, Nov. 19, 7:30 p.m., UNC-G: "De Eso No Se Habla/I Don’t Want to Talk About It," Argentina, 1993, 102 minutes. Marcello Mastroianni plays a world traveler who retires to a small town in Uruguay where he is drawn to an intelligent local woman, a dwarf sheltered by an overprotective mother.

Saturday, Nov. 20, 7:30 p.m., NCCU: "Los Olvidados/The Forgotten Ones," Mexico, 1950, 90 minutes. Pre-film dialogue with award-winning Mexican director Marcela Fernandez Violante. This stark portrayal of poverty in mid-20th-century Mexican slums won the Mexican Academy Award for Best Director in 1951 and was nominated for Best Film at the British Academy Film Awards in 1953.

Sunday, Nov. 21, 7:30 p.m., Duke: "Enredando Sombras/Weaving Shadows," Mexico, Cuba, 1999, 106 minutes. Co-directed by award-winning Mexican filmmaker Marcela Fernandez Violante, who will introduce the film. Thirteen directors collaborated on this vision of the history of film in the Americans. Interviewees include Pilar Miro, Michael Chanan, Costa Gavras and Robert Redford. Topics include Cinema Novo in Brazil, Venezuelan film in the 1970s, indigenous concerns and Argentine and Colombian filmmaking.

Monday. Nov. 22, 7:30 p.m., UNC-CH (Hanes Art Center): "La Negra Angustias/Black Angustias," Mexico, 1949, 85 minutes. Pre-film dialogue with award-winning Mexican director Marcela Fernandez Violante. Daughter of a rebel, Angustias is ostracized for her refusal to marry, her independence and her scorn for men. She falls in love but is rejected because of her race and class, causing her to return to her role as a revolutionary. She was a female colonel in Emiliano Zapata’s guerilla forces during the Mexican Revolution, from 1911-17.

Tuesday, Nov. 23, 7 p.m., UNC-CH (Frank Porter Graham Student Union),: "Tango," Argentina, 1999, 115 minutes. A tango performance by Argentine dancers will precede the film. Nominated this year for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, "Tango" features a dancer who falls in love with his beautiful partner and clashes with her gangster boyfriend. Breathtaking tango scenes capture the complexity of dancers’ emotions and the dance itself.

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