¡Viva! Spanish & Latin American Festival: Look South
¡Viva! returns to HOME this month as a cross-artform festival bringing the best of Spanish and Latin American theatre, film and visual art to Manchester. We focus in on the great cinema coming from South America in the programme
Is it just us, or is South American film blowing up right now? We all remember the new wave of Mexican cinema in the mid-00s, the aftershock of which can clearly be seen with the country’s recent dominance at the Oscars: best director in 2014 was Alfonso Cuarón (for Gravity), Alejandro González Iñárritu picked up the same award the following two years (for Birdman and The Revenant), while their cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, has bossed his category. Might Latin American filmmaking be going through a similar renaissance further south?
For evidence, just take a look at the upcoming programme of films at HOME's ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Festival, where South American cinema provides many of the highlights. There’s fat-free revenge movie To Kill a Man (19&22 Apr), from Chile, which picked up the Grand Jury Prize at the 2014 Sundance; drum-tight political thriller Magallanes (20&24 Apr), from Peru; visually astonishing ethnographic study The Embrace of the Serpent (10 Apr), from Colombia; and brutal true-life crime drama The Clan (13 Apr), from Argentina. The latter is directed by Pablo Trapero, who has two of his older films in the festival (Carancho, 18&21 Apr; White Elephant, 19&24 Apr), as part of a retrospective dedicated to Ricardo Darín, which also includes other recent Argentinian gems like XXY (14&17 Apr) and South America’s first foreign-language Oscar-winner, The Secret in Their Eyes (16&20 Apr).
The Clan won the Silver Lion at last year’s Venice Film Festival. The film that pipped it to the Golden Lion also hails from a South American nation and is, for our money, the jewel in ¡Viva!’s film programme: Venezuelan knockout From Afar (11&20 Apr). “I knew we were going to have a prize because the reaction was very good: everybody was talking about it,” says From Afar's director, Lorenzo Vigas. “But I never thought it would be the Golden Lion.”
Vigas sees From Afar’s Venice award, the first time any Spanish-language film has won the festival's top prize, as belonging to the whole of Latin American cinema. “From Afar’s editor is from Brazil, the cinematographer is from Chile, some producers are from Mexico, I am from Venezuela, so it’s a prize for everyone.” It’s particularly important for his home nation, however. “It was like winning the World Cup for Venezuela, really. It’s like the most important prize in Venezuelan history in film. So everyone is very excited about it, but it’s going to be very controversial.”
This controversy stems from the film’s subject matter. It’s a gritty and cinematic study in desire and repression following Armando (Chilean star Alfredo Castro), a middle-aged loner haunted by childhood traumas who begins a love affair with Elder (played by charismatic newcomer Luis Silva), a young street tough he picks up while cruising the mean streets of Caracas. It's a relationship that proves problematic for many reasons, not least because of the attitude to homosexuality in the country.
As Vigas explains, however, those who are uncomfortable with a drama about same-sex love are kind of missing the point. “The theme of the film isn’t sexuality. It’s more about emotional needs, being able or not to go on with life.” The relationship between Armando and Elder marks a first for both men: the first time someone has truly cared for each of them, male or female. “It’s about how you discover, how you open up when someone gives you things you have never had in life.”
From Afar’s greatest strength is its ambiguity. Vigas earned his stripes in documentary but he’s a natural visual storyteller, always showing not telling, as the film elegantly spirals to a devastating finale. “It’s a film that leaves space for the audience to come to their own conclusions,” says Vigas. “There are two different ways you can perceive the film, and for this I love it because it opens it up. The film doesn’t belong to me any more, it belongs to the public.” We recommend you head along and debate your take in HOME's bar after the screening.
¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Festival runs 7-24 Apr. Go to homemcr.org for full programme details