Las Américas Film Network is a media-arts organization that promotes and distributes high-quality, award winning, documentary, feature and experimental films that explore the diversity and richness of Latin America.
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From the director of Wetback: The Undocumented Documentary
Mexico City is not Gotham City but if you ran into any of the five masked activists who protect this metropolis, you’d wonder if you were not living inside a comic book.
These modern-day Super Heroes are a group of Lucha Libre wrestlers who have taken their fight out of the ring and into the streets of the Mexican Capital. Super Barrio, Super Gay, Ecologista Universal, Super Animal and Fray Tormenta are real life masked Super Heroes who fight against evil slumlords, corrupt politicians, homophobia, pollution, animal rights abusers, and poverty. Though their true identity remains a mystery, they could easily be Mexico City’s most popular figures and last salvation.
SUPER AMIGOS is a feature length documentary that follows 5 modern-day Super Heroes in Mexico City as they fight for social justice and human rights.
DOS PATRIAS: CUBA Y LA NOCHE (TWO HOMELANDS: CUBA AND THE NIGHT)
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Director Christian Liffers travels with his team to Cuba to search for evidence. Part of his luggage are poems and prose texts of the Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas. Texts, which describe the desire for love, sexual freedom and the proud and unbending attitude in the fight against discrimination. Are these desires and attitudes still to be found in Cuba? And which desires, clichés, and projections of Cuba attract the producer and many more people? Poems and prose are the reference points for the protagonists and their personal stories of present-day Cuba, which are always the center of attention. Six men with different backgrounds and of different ages describe their life, afflictions, desires, longings and joys in Cuba. They have some things in common: homosexuality (with the exception of Isabel, the transsexual) and the daily social exclusion on the part of the Cuban "Machismo-society" and the Cuban government. However they differ heavily concerning their social status and their opinions on the topic.
ERÉNDIRA, IKIKUNARI
ERÉNDIRA IKIKUNARI is a beautifully shot action film that recreates the 16th century legend of Eréndira, a young Purépecha woman who became an icon of bravery during the destruction of indigenous Mexico by the Spanish conquistadors. When the Spanish arrive, they take advantage of the discord and conflict among the locals, reaping the benefits of a region divided. Eréndira, a young Purépecha woman on the verge of marriage, refuses to allow her land to be destroyed and stands up to the social conventions prohibiting women to participate in battle. In the face of the invasion, she steals and learns to ride a horse against the Spanish, winning the respect of her tribal leaders. Along her amazing journey, she becomes a symbol of strength and resistance within her culture. This feature length film was shot entirely in the original Purépecha language.
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EL DIABLO Y LA NOTA ROJA (THE DEVIL AND THE RED PAGE)
It is said that the most widely read section of any Mexican newspaper is the crime page - la nota roja. Take a road trip through the Oaxacan crime scene with our host, reporter "El Diablo", as brings the victims to a very public purgatory. "Fast paced, and hard-boiled... Buñuel's Los Olvidados of today!".
UN POQUITO DE TANTA VERDAD (A LITTLE BIT OF SO MUCH TRUTH)
New film from Jill Irene Freidberg, director of Granita de arena
When the people of Oaxaca decided they’d had enough of bad government, they didn’t take their story to the media...they TOOK the media.
As a follow-up to her 2006 release, Granita de arena, Freidberg presents the revolution as it was broadcast throughout Oaxaca and the rest of the world. A 90-minute documentary, A Little Bit of So Much Truth captures the unprecedented media phenomenon that emerged when tens of thousands of school teachers, housewives, indigenous communities, health workers, farmers, and students took 14 radio stations and one TV station into their own hands, using them to organize, mobilize, and ultimately defend their grassroots struggle for social, cultural, and economic justice.
ALSO...
The Man of Two Havanas, Cuba, 2007
La otra copa (The Other Cup), Argentina, 2006
When Clouds Clear, Ecuador, 2007
Manda Bala (Send a Bullet),Brazil, 2007
Case de Alice, Brazil 2007
The Prison and the Street, Brazil, 2005