Hola Mexico Film Festival
July 23 - 27
at The Quad Cinemas
The little knowledge the savviest NY filmgoer has regarding contemporary Mexican cinema could fill a thimble—or maybe even the Quad. While the films of auteurs like Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guiellermo del Toro receive international acclaim and nationwide distribution, talented award-winners like Fernando Eimbcke, Luis Estrada and Carlos Reygadas have their films imported to the States, praised and then promptly dumped.
No name authority big or small seems capable of saving these films from obscurity. Who now remembers when Cuarón released Eimbcke’s Duck Season, a thoroughly winning Jarmuschian comedy of adolescent boredom, under his Esperanto Films imprint, or when Alex Cox slapped his seal of approval on Estrada’s A Wonderful World, a screwball comedy of class warfare in Mexico City? Even Reygadas, the most prominent of the three lesser-known Mexican up-and-comers, has not been able to secure an American release for Silent Light, his multiple award-winning—including the 2007 Cannes Jury Prize, which it won along with Persepolis—follow-up to the incendiary Battle in Heaven outside of film festivals.
Enter the first annual Hola Mexico Film Festival, a festival that allows anyone unwilling or unaware that they could pay $16 to see Silent Light at last year’s New York Film Festival—it’s easy to lose track of Reygadas’ film when it is competing with the latest from Todd Haynes and the Coen Brothers—to see it on a big screen in all of its provocative and painterly glory.
Better still, from July 23 through 27, festival attendants get to check out the next generation of unknown Mexican filmmakers. I mean, who wants to wait two or three more years to see major award-winners like Simón Bross’ Bad Habits, Eva Norvind’s Born Without or Rodrigo Pla’s La Zona at The Quad when you can see them at The Quad now!
If populist Mexican cinema is your thing, try Sergio Umansky’s It’s Better if Gabriela Doesn’t Die, a silly meta-melodrama about a telenovela writer’s equally melodramatic personal life. Gabriela may be just a Mexican knockoff of Almodóvar’s colorful soap opera farces but it’s enjoyable for the most part because it doesn’t try to accomplish anything more than that. Like the festival, it delivers what it modestly set out to, specifically a glossy little diversion.
July 23 - 27
at The Quad Cinemas
The little knowledge the savviest NY filmgoer has regarding contemporary Mexican cinema could fill a thimble—or maybe even the Quad. While the films of auteurs like Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guiellermo del Toro receive international acclaim and nationwide distribution, talented award-winners like Fernando Eimbcke, Luis Estrada and Carlos Reygadas have their films imported to the States, praised and then promptly dumped.
No name authority big or small seems capable of saving these films from obscurity. Who now remembers when Cuarón released Eimbcke’s Duck Season, a thoroughly winning Jarmuschian comedy of adolescent boredom, under his Esperanto Films imprint, or when Alex Cox slapped his seal of approval on Estrada’s A Wonderful World, a screwball comedy of class warfare in Mexico City? Even Reygadas, the most prominent of the three lesser-known Mexican up-and-comers, has not been able to secure an American release for Silent Light, his multiple award-winning—including the 2007 Cannes Jury Prize, which it won along with Persepolis—follow-up to the incendiary Battle in Heaven outside of film festivals.
Enter the first annual Hola Mexico Film Festival, a festival that allows anyone unwilling or unaware that they could pay $16 to see Silent Light at last year’s New York Film Festival—it’s easy to lose track of Reygadas’ film when it is competing with the latest from Todd Haynes and the Coen Brothers—to see it on a big screen in all of its provocative and painterly glory.
Better still, from July 23 through 27, festival attendants get to check out the next generation of unknown Mexican filmmakers. I mean, who wants to wait two or three more years to see major award-winners like Simón Bross’ Bad Habits, Eva Norvind’s Born Without or Rodrigo Pla’s La Zona at The Quad when you can see them at The Quad now!
If populist Mexican cinema is your thing, try Sergio Umansky’s It’s Better if Gabriela Doesn’t Die, a silly meta-melodrama about a telenovela writer’s equally melodramatic personal life. Gabriela may be just a Mexican knockoff of Almodóvar’s colorful soap opera farces but it’s enjoyable for the most part because it doesn’t try to accomplish anything more than that. Like the festival, it delivers what it modestly set out to, specifically a glossy little diversion.
