By Nathan Duke
Queens will get a cinematic taste of Latin America when the Havana Film Festival kicks off its 11th annual series of films April 16. This year’s slate of 40 films from 14 nations will include political movies, documentaries and a four-hour thriller.
The festival will be primarily hosted at Manhattan’s Quad Cinema, but will also hold screenings at the Queens Museum of Art in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the Bronx Museum of Art, New York University’s King Juan Carlos of Spain Center, the New York Directors Guild Theatre, El Museo del Barrio in Manhattan and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Tickets at the Quad, at 34 W. 13th St., will be $11 for general admission or $8 for seniors and students with identification. But all screenings in Queens and other sites throughout the five boroughs will be free.
“We try to have a lot of variety in nationalities and topics,” said Diana Vargas, programming director for the film festival. “If a filmmaker is not picked by a festival in the top category, such as Sundance or Toronto, it’s hard for them to get to the United States because people don’t know about them. So we try to get those films and provide subtitles for them to give them an opportunity to be shown here.”
This year’s selection includes films from Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Peru, El Salvador and the United States.
The Queens museum will show films as part of the festival April 17 and 20.
The festival, which will run from April 16-23, has several headliner pictures this year. Its opening night gala will be a screening of 2008’s “Los Dioses Rotos,” a film involving pimps and prostitutes that was Cuba’s official submission for Best Foreign Film at this year’s Academy Awards.
“It’s a modern look at Havana, even though it’s set in the 1920s,” Vargas said. “There’s a new generation of filmmakers taking over Cuba.”
Attendees will also be able to view “Extraordinary Stories,” a four-hour Argentinian thriller that links three stories and has elements of magical realism.
“It’s one of those movies that will become a cult movie, a landmark,” Vargas said.
The festival will also screen “Van Van Fever,” a documentary on the popular titular Cuban group that has toured the Latin American nation for the past 40 years, as well as Uruguay’s “Gigante,” which is the tale of a man who stalks a woman after she leaves work each day.
Each year, the film series honors the work of an artist who has had a major influence on Latin American filmmaking. This year’s honoree is Enrique Pineda Barnet, a novelist and director who filmed 1964’s “Cosmorama” and 1965’s “Giselle” as well as co-wrote the legendary “I Am Cuba.”
Tomas Gutierrez Alea’s 1968 classic “Memories of Underdevelopment” will also screen during the festival.
“We have an educational component, so we’ll show classics that have been important for Latin American cinema — some for their message or others for their technique,” Vargas said. “We try to present some landmark films, so people will know there is a history behind the recent boom in Latin American cinema.”
The events will culminate April 23 at Manhattan’s Directors Guild Theatre, at 110 W. 57th St., with an awards ceremony. Prizes for best screenplay, director and film will be handed out during the ceremony.
“We have filmmakers from all over Latin America but for the first time we will have a big delegation of Cubans coming to the festival,” Vargas said. “Because of the political climate of the past seven years, there was no possibility for Cubans to come to the U.S., especially after Sept. 11 and the Iraq War. So we are happy they are coming this year.”
Tickets can be purchased in advance at hffny.com, where a complete film schedule is available. Weekday passes, available for $40, will grant admission for all films before 5 p.m.
Read film reviews by Nathan Duke at criticalconditions.net.
