News Release

Local angles: Charlotte, Durham,
Greensboro, High Point, Raleigh

19th annual Latin American Film Festival
bridges gap between film and literature

CHAPEL HILL — This year’s Latin American Film Festival, Nov. 6-21 at 18 locations in the Triangle, the Triad and Charlotte, will explore relationships between films and literature.

"Paginas en Movimiento: Literatura Y Cine en America Latina/Moving Pages: Latin American Film and Literature" is the title of the 19^th annual festival, sponsored by the Consortium in Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.

"For more than a century, films have borrowed stories, plots, characters, roles, narrative and rhetorical devices from literary works," said Sharon Mújica, the consortium’s educational outreach director. "Novelists, playwrights and screenwriters have adapted literary texts and written scripts based on established literary genres and styles."

Forty-two screenings, on 17 college campuses and at the Greensboro Public Library’s Central Library, will include film adaptations of works by writers including Nobel Prize winners John Steinbeck and Octavio Paz and Fernando Vallejo, known for social and political commentary about his native Colombia.

Films about literary figures will include "Yo la Peor de Todas" ("I, the Worst of All"), based on the novel "Las Trampas de la Fé" ("The Traps of Faith"). The film profiles 17^th-century Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a poet and essayist, who found herself caught up in conflict between church and state.

Filmmakers, directors and scholars will discuss the films at some of the screenings; all will be free and open to the public, and shown in their original languages with English subtitles.

For film titles, descriptions, dates, times, venues and directions, visit http://www.duke.edu/web/carolinadukeconsortium/filmfestival/filmfestival.htm.

Participating campuses in the Triangle are UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, Durham Technical Community College, N.C. Central University and N.C. State University. For more information, contact Mújica at (919) 843-8888 or smujica@email.unc.edu.

Triad venues will be the Greensboro Central Library, Guilford College, High Point and N.C. Agricultural and Technical universities and UNC-Greensboro. For details, contact N.C. A&T history professor Dr. Jamie Wood, (336) 334-7831.

Charlotte’s William Wilson Brown Jr. Latin American Film and Video Festival is part of the larger festival. Venues will be Davidson and Queens colleges, Johnson C. Smith and Wingate universities and UNC-Charlotte. For more information, contact Dr. Jurgen Buchenau, Latin American studies director at UNC-Charlotte, (704) 687-4635, jbuchena@email.uncc.edu.

Highlights of this year’s festival include the participation of Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Pelayo, introducing and discussing his film "Miroslava" on Nov. 6 at NCSU, opening night for the festival in the Triangle. Pelayo also is cultural attaché of the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles and former director of Mexico’s film archive and film institute.

The film, based on the book "Primero Las Damas" ("Ladies First") by Guadalupe Loeza, profiles the late Mexican movie star Miroslava Sternova. A native Czech, Sternova escaped Europe as a girl, just before Nazis’ advance.

The festival also will show the premiere of "Tangled Web: The Making of "Kiss of the Spider Woman,’" Nov. 17 at Duke. The 1985 movie itself, based on the book by Manuel Puig, will be shown the night before (Nov. 16) at NCSU. "Kiss of the Spider Woman," also showing Nov. 14 at UNC-Charlotte, won Oscar nominations for best director, best picture and best writing. Co-star William Hurt won the Oscar for best actor.

Colombian director Luis Ospina also will be a festival guest, introducing his film "Soplo de Vida" ("Breath of Life") on Nov. 9 at High Point University, Nov. 11 at UNC-Charlotte and Nov. 12 at Duke.

Ospina also will introduce his documentary "La Desazón Suprema: Retrato Incesante de Fernando Vallejo" ("The Supreme Uneasiness: Incessant Portrait of Fernando Vallejo") on Nov. 10 at UNC-Greensboro and Nov. 13 at UNC-Chapel Hill. A panel discussion will follow the Chapel Hill screening.

"Motorcycle Diaries" ("Diaros de Motocicleta"), the opening film in the Triad and Charlotte, adapts a journal written by Ernesto "Che" Guevara when he was 23. With a fellow college student, the future revolutionary traveled across South America for a medical residency at a leper colony. The two began with the same goals, but things changed along the way. The film will show on Nov. 6 at N.C. A&T and Nov. 7 at UNC-Charlotte.

"The Photo that Goes Around the World" ("Una Foto que Recorre el Mundo"), a short film about a famous photo of Guevara, will be shown after both screenings of "Motorcycle Diaries." Interviews with the photographer and a fast-paced collage of images show how the photo has been used internationally as a symbol of inspiration in liberation and human rights struggles.

"We hope the public will be as excited about this festival as we are," Mújica said. "For those who have not had the opportunity to read the books, poems or essays on which the films are based, this is an chance to see the ‘moving pages’ and learn more about Latin America from a different perspective."

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Photos: For photos from the films, contact Bonnie McMannis at (919) 681-3980 or bonniemc@duke.edu
Latin American Film Festival contact: Sharon Mujica, (919) 962-2414 or smujica@email.unc.edu
News Services contacts: Print, L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589; broadcast, Karen Moon, (919) 962-8595