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| 2pm |
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Compadre (US Premiere)
Director: Mikael Wiström
Documentary. 2004. Sweden. 86 min. Spanish and Swedish, subtitled. |
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Compadre is a documentary about the destiny of a Latin
American family over a period of thirty years.
Its focus is on the strong character of the disabled father,
Daniel. Together with Nati, the love of his life, and their newly-born
daughter Sandra, he begins family life working on a garbage heap
in Lima, Peru, in the seventies. That is where they meet the director
of the film and make him the godfather of their child.
Since then, the lives of the director and of the family have
been deeply related in friendship and conflicts over those thirty
years. Compadre addresses the conditions of love and
friendship in a world torn by poverty and inequality.
The film is an independent continuation of the feature length
documentary The Other Shore (1992).
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Compadre is preceded by:
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Porter (Solo Un Cargador)
Director: Juan Alejandro Ramirez
Documentary. 2003. Peru. 20 min. Spanish, subtitled. |
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What does a simple porter dream about? Solo un Cargador
is not a documentary but a spoken meditation. In voice-over narration,
an anonymous Peruvian porter expresses his thoughts on his condition
and his impossible dreams. While hauling foreign travellers’
gear through the mountains, the porter’s thoughts wander towards
the desire for a better life, beyond material ambition.
Deprived of hatred, his voice bears the silent disillusion of
the destitute, living in a world that will never be fair. Far
from giving in to the pressures of his harsh living conditions,
he maintains a sense of irony throughout his troubling, intimate
revelations.
His terse narration evokes an ageless longing for justice and
redemption. A film with a human face and an illustration of the
life of the cargadores in Peru.
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| 4:30pm |
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The Other Side of Burka (US Premiere)
Director: Mehrdad Oskouei
Documentary. 2004. Iran. 52 min. Farsi, subtitled. |
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On the southern Iranian island of Qeshm
in the Persian Gulf, women wear a headscarf, but also a “burka,”
a pinching mask of black bands pressing against the eyebrows and
nose, and ending in a point just above the mouth.
The interviewed women do not remove this outward sign of oppression,
but against the strict religious rules they talk openly into the
camera about their emotional problems, mental condition and physical
complaints. “We never wanted to appear before a camera,
but now we do. We may wear a burka, but we are human beings. We
breathe and live.”
During a special ceremony called Zar (which means possession),
different afflictions of the women can be treated. When there
is no camera around, their only possible cry of distress is often
death. “A woman is like a pair of shoes,” a grieving
husband says. “When one is gone, you can find another one.
But what am I supposed to do with the children?”
Both men and women make lasting statements in the film, just
as filmmaker Mehrdad Oskouei does by filming shots of the daily,
barren life on the island, which is plagued by draughts and other
catastrophes.
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The Other Side of Burka is preceded
by:
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Khatabah (Matchmaker) – LA Premiere
Director: Ridwan Hassim
Narrative Short. 2004. Australia. 8 min. English. |
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A young woman consumed with passion... in a land hostile to her
desires... meets a khatabah (matchmaker) brave enough to
defy the law... to help make her greatest fantasy a reality.
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| 6pm |
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Between Midnight and the Rooster's Crow (LA Premiere)
Director: Nadja Drost
Documentary. 2005. Canada/Ecuador. 66 min. English and Spanish,
subtitled.
Filmmaker in attendance. |
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This documentary follows the journey of a first-time filmmaker
as she investigates why a Canadian oil company is mired in social
and environmental controversy in the Amazon.
The question of what it takes to be a “good corporate citizen”
is examined through the experiences of the very people whose lives
have been drastically altered by oil companies, a government desperate
for foreign investment, and a rapidly-globalizing world, all fueling
the race for the black gold that lies beneath the rainforest floor.
A Q&A with director Nadja Drost will follow the screening.
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| 8pm |
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Ama: In the Memory of Time
Directors: Daniel Flores Y Ascencio
Documentary. 2002. El Salvador. 63 min. Spanish, subtitled.
Filmmaker in attendance. |
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The documentary narrates the life of José Feliciano Ama,
spiritual grandmaster, leader and chief of the Izalcos, a Nahua-Pipil
Nation and his family, survivors of a 1932 genocide in western
El Salvador.
This is the personal quest of Don Juan Ama to clear his uncle’s
name and to restore his family and tribal dignity, by claiming
their traditional ways, beliefs, as well as their relationship
to the land, in a country struggling with development and democracy.
To enter Don Juan’s world is undoubtedly a direct access
to the pre-Colombian world of the Americas today; it allows us
to appreciate today’s life among the Nahua-Pipil of Izalco
and the erudition of the indigenous thinking and tenacity upon
imposition and repressive forms of terror.
A Q & A with director Daniel Flores will follow the screening.
Presented by The Latino Museum
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