March/April Film Series. Mexican Montage. These seven recent films suggest the variety of outstanding Mexican productions in the past few years, including the work of accomplished and internationally respected directors.
Carnegie Museum of Art Department of Film and Video
March/April Film Series
Film Series
Mexican Montage
March 14 - April 27, 2002
These seven recent films suggest the variety of outstanding Mexican
productions in the past few years, including the work of accomplished and
internationally respected directors, such as Arturo Ripstein and MarÃa
Novaro, as well as first features by talented newcomers Alexander González
Iñárritu, Oscar Urrutia Lazo, and Carlos Bolado.
This series is presented in collaboration with the Center for Latin American
Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh students,
faculty, and staff with valid ID are admitted free to this series.
Rito Terminal
Thursday, March 14, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 16, 7:30 p.m.
Magical realism pervades this fascinating film as ancient ritual clashes
with the modern world. Mateo, a young photographer from the city, loses his
shadow while documenting a traditional ritual in a remote mountain village.
During his quest to recover it, he is drawn into a supernatural odyssey in
which he is forced to confront the onslaught of progress destroying
indigenous Mexican cultures. This first feature from director Oscar Urrutia
Lazo was filmed on location in the scenic mountains of Oaxaca in southern
Mexico.
(Mexico, 2000) 110 min.
Directed by Oscar Urrutia Lazo
In Spanish and Náhuatl with English subtitles
No One Writes to the Colonel
Thursday, March 21, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 23, 7:30 p.m.
Ripstein, Mexico's most distinguished director, has adapted this story from
a novella of the same title by Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel GarcÃa
Márquez. This magnificent and heart-wrenching film is set in the tropical
heat and heavy rains of a decaying 1950s Mexico. There a retired colonel
and his ailing wife vainly await, in rapturous melancholy, the arrival by
mail of a long-promised military pension. With Salma Hayek.
(Mexico, 1999) 118 min.
Directed by Arturo Ripstein
In Spanish with English subtitles
Bajo California: The Limit of Time
Thursday, March 28, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 30, 7:30 p.m.
After a terrible automobile accident on the Mexico-California border, a
guilt-ridden man abandons his family in search of redemption in the
wilderness of his ancestral homeland, Baja California. As he treks the
desert wastelands and climbs the Sierra Mountains, his encounters during
this spiritual quest include the ghosts of Jesuit missionaries. Noted
Mexican film editor Carlos Bolado's (Like Water for Chocolate) directorial
debut is an allegorical road movie of stunning natural beauty with the
resonance of poetry. Director Bolado will be present Saturday.
(Mexico, 1999) 96 min.
Directed by Carlos Bolado
In Spanish with English subtitles
Give Me Power
Thursday, April 4, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 6, 7:30 p.m.
Todo El Poder, a brave and sophisticated political satire, reveals one of
Mexico's most frightening realities: that much of the crime faced by its
citizens is perpetrated either by the police or by gangs with official
protection. Inspired by real events, this dark and irreverent comedy
portrays a filmmaker who decides to take the law into his own hands by using
his camera as a weapon against a band of dangerous thugs with high-level
protection. Director Sariñana conceived his script after being robbed at
gunpoint four times in Mexico City.
(Mexico, 1999) 102 min.
Directed by Fernando Sariñana
In Spanish with English subtitles
Fiber Optics
Thursday, April 11, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 13, 7:30 p.m.
While conducting separate investigations of a seemingly routine crime of
passion, an unemployed reporter and a mediocre lawyer slowly discover that
they are pawns within a vast, hidden network of organized crime. The two
men are led by a mysterious, spying "voice" that uses telephone and e-mail
to issue commands. This romantic thriller dares to show how the digital
revolution of the 1990s has entered into a monstrous coalition with the
deeply ingrained political corruption of a Latin-American police state.
(Mexico, 1997) 100 min.
Directed by Francisco Athié
In Spanish with English subtitles
Without a Trace
Thursday, April 18, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 20, 7:30 p.m.
Winner of the Latin American Cinema Award at the 2001 Sundance Film
Festival, Sin Dejar Huella is a smartly written and visually sumptuous road
movie about two women on the run. Aurelia is a single mother who has fled
her factory job and drug-dealing boyfriend; Ana is a smooth-talking smuggler
of fake Mayan artifacts fleeing a corrupt cop. When they cross paths at a
truck stop on Mexico's dusty northern border, they decide to travel together
to the lush tropics of Yucatan, knowing that their budding friendship is
built on secrets and deceptions.
(Mexico, 2000) 105 min.
Directed by MarÃa Novaro
In Spanish with English subtitles
Love's a Bitch
Thursday, April 25, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 27, 7:30 p.m.
Amores Perros, Iñárritu's blistering debut feature, is an intensely
emotional story of human and canine lives that violently collide in a Mexico
City car crash. Inventively structured as a triptych of overlapping and
intersecting narratives, every moment in the film seethes with vitality and
a passion for life, even at its harshest and bleakest. This enormously
successful movie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign
Language Film in 2001, and received a host of other international film
awards.
(Mexico, 2000) 153 min.
Directed by Alexander González Iñárritu
In Spanish with English subtitles
Film Series
National Cinemas - Italy & Germany
March 15 - April 14, 2002
This series celebrates the recent publication of two books on national
cinemas by professors of film studies at the University of Pittsburgh:
Marcia Landy, Italian Film, and Sabine Hake, German National Cinema. The
series is intended to pose the question of what it means to speak of a
"national cinema" in a time when national identities, and "nation" as the
basis of identity, are undergoing such radical changes, especially but not
exclusively in Europe.
This series is presented in conjunction with the Center for West European
Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh students,
faculty, and staff with valid ID are admitted free to this series.
National Cinemas Introductory Program
Friday, March 15
Kurtzman Room, main floor, William Pitt Union
11:45 Buffet Lunch
12:30 Keynote Talk by Toby Miller
Toby Miller, Professor of Cinema Studies, New York University, will speak on
the topic National Cinemas-Vital Culture or Yesterday's News?, followed by
responses from professors Marcia Landy and Sabine Hake. Free to the public.
Lamerica
Friday, March 15, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 17, 5:00 p.m.
Lamerica takes place in mid-1990s Albania, a country on the brink of
complete anarchy after the collapse of communism. Two shady Italian
businessmen set up a fraudulent company with a half-crazy, barely
intelligible old political prisoner as puppet chairman. When the old man
unexpectedly disappears, young Amelio is dispatched to find him, only to be
swallowed up in the surrounding social, political, and moral chaos. The
metaphoric title of the film is one of many ways in which director Amelio
(Stolen Children) questions the notion of "nation" in a
new political, economic, and cultural order. The Friday screening will be
introduced by Toby Miller, Professor of Cinema Studies, New York University.
(Italy, 1995) 120 min.
Directed by Gianni Amelio
In Italian with English subtitles
Heidi M
Friday, March 22, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 24, 5:00 p.m.
Heidi, a vivacious Berlin store owner in her late 40s, unexpectedly
encounters her ex-husband and his young, pregnant girlfriend, reawakening
old wounds. Heidi's amorous involvement with one of her customers, Franz,
makes clear her need to resolve the past in order to pursue the future.
Klier's extraordinary mix of melodrama, social critique, and road movie
aesthetic has reflections of classic New German Cinema of the 1970s as
viewed through the lens of a New Europe environment. The Pittsburgh
premiere of this work by an outstanding young German director.
(Germany, 2001) 90 min.
Directed by Michael Klier
In German with English subtitles
Palombella Rossa
Friday, March 29, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 31, 5:00 p.m.
Moretti, Italy's witty and celebrated social satirist, constructs an
engaging comedy around, of all things, a communist water-polo player struck
with amnesia. The ensuing emotional and ideological chaos is rendered in
glorious parody with hilarious attacks on contemporary politics, culture,
and media. While Felliniesque passages recall earlier moments in Italian
film, Moretti's film evokes an international cultural environment in
references like Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire."
(Italy, 1989) 93 min.
Directed by Nanni Moretti
In Italian with English subtitles
No Place to Go
Friday, April 5, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, April 7, 5:00 p.m.
Die Unberührbare, evocatively filmed in black and white, is a wrenching
portrait of middle-aged Hannah as she is torn apart by self-doubt and
naiveté. The story is based on writer-director Roehler's real-life mother,
renowned 1960s novelist Gisela Elsner (Riesenzwerge). Shattered by changes
accompanying the 1989 fall of the Berlin wall and all it represented, Hannah
seeks new beginnings for herself professionally, financially, emotionally.
The bravura performance by actress Hannelore Elsner (no relation) as she
works her way through binge shopping, drug abuse, flamboyant wigs, and
rekindled romances portrays, without angry undertones, an entire German
generation set adrift by shifting national, political, and cultural
identities. Pittsburgh premiere of one of the most powerful 1990s German
films.
(Germany, 1999) 100 min.
Directed by Oskar Roehler
In German with English subtitles
Bread and Tulips
Friday, April 12, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, April 14, 5:00 p.m.
Pane e Tulipani tells the winning tale of Rosalba who, separated by accident
from her husband and young son during a vacation trip, sets out penniless on
her own for Venice. She finds work with a florist and moves in with a local
waiter (wonderfully played by Bruno Ganz), while the husband hires a
hilariously inept would-be detective to track her down. The result is a mix
of comic farce and romantic discovery that speaks as much to an
international audience as it does to traditions of Italian cinema and
culture.
(Italy, 2000) 115 min.
Directed by Silvio Soldini
In Italian with English subtitles
Screenings
Thursday, March 14, 7:30 p.m.
Rito Terminal
Friday, March 15, 7:30 p.m.
Lamerica
Saturday, March 16, 7:30 p.m.
Rito Terminal
Sunday, March 17, 5:00 p.m.
Lamerica
Thursday, March 21, 7:30 p.m.
No One Writes to the Colonel
Friday, March 22, 7:30 p.m.
Heidi M
Saturday, March 23, 7:30 p.m.
No One Writes to the Colonel
Sunday, March 24, 5:00 p.m.
Heidi M
Thursday, March 28, 7:30 p.m.
Bajo California: The Limit of Time
Friday, March 29, 7:30 p.m.
Palombella Rossa
Saturday, March 30, 7:30 p.m.
Bajo California: The Limit of Time
Sunday, March 31, 5:00 p.m.
Palombella Rossa
Thursday, April 4, 7:30 p.m.
Give Me Power
Friday, April 5, 7:30 p.m.
No Place to Go
Saturday, April 6, 7:30 p.m.
Bajo California: The Limit of Time
Sunday, April 7, 5:00 p.m.
No Place to Go
Thursday, April 11, 7:30 p.m.
Fiber Optics
Friday, April 12, 7:30 p.m.
Bread and Tulips
Saturday, April 13, 7:30 p.m.
Fiber Optics
Sunday, April 14, 5:00 p.m.
Bread and Tulips
Thursday, April 18, 7:30 p.m.
Without a Trace
Saturday, April 20, 7:30 p.m.
Without a Trace
Thursday, April 25, 7:30 p.m.
Love's a Bitch
Saturday, April 27, 7:30 p.m.
Love's a Bitch
________________
Admission
Admission to CMA Cinema is $6; $5 for students, senior citizens, and
Carnegie members; and $2 for CinéClub members. University of Pittsburgh
students, faculty, and staff with valid ID are admitted free to the Mexican
Montage and National Cinemas-Italy and Germany series.
Support
General support for the exhibitions and programs at Carnegie Museum of Art
is provided by grants from The Heinz Endowments and the Pennsylvania Council
on the Arts.
Department of Film and Video programs are supported in part by the
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation,
and Dr. Lila Penchansky.
Carnegie Museum of Art
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founded by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1895,
Carnegie Museum of Art is nationally and internationally recognized for its
distinguished collection of American and European works from the sixteenth
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Museum of Art, is dedicated to the collection, study, and exhibition of
architectural drawings and models. For more information about Carnegie
Museum of Art, call 412.622.3131 or visit our web site.
Carnegie Museum of Art Department of Film and Video