Habanastation is a 2011 Cuban drama film directed by Ian Padron. Filmed in a slum in western Havana, the film addresses inequalities in Cuba through the relationship between two children of different social strata. The film was selected as the Cuban entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards.
Title: PUEBLOS INDIGENAS, LOS
Description: Los Pueblos Indigenas Hoy is a ten part series that is an educational resource about the indigenous peoples of Mexico. Sponsored by the Mexican government, the series aired on Mexican national television in 2010 in honor of the Bicentennial celebration of Mexican independence. It features studio interviews with indigenous people, including rights advocates and leaders. Each program is 55 minutes and is presented in Spanish and using Spanish subtitles to translate interviews, with two programs on each DVD.
Part 2 of a series of shorts from the 2004 Geografias Suaves regional film festival which feature Maya speaking peoples from Yucatan and Chiapas. The shorts include a video postcard documenting the lives and everyday experiences of children and their communities as well as stories based on folklore and oral tradition from the region.
Description: This documentary combines social commentary with surrealism to explore the Cuban soul. The filmmakers take the viewer on a trip through the heart of twenty-first-century Cuba, making stops in Pinar del Ro, los Acuticos, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, and Guaraabuya. In each stopping place, local lore and characters help present an overall portrait of Cuban history, society, and culture.
Description: A documentary about the Brazilian sex trade, Cinderelas, Lobos, e Principe Encantado explores how poor Brazilian women, mostly black, are lured by middle-aged European men into traveling to Europe with them. European, American, or Canadian men feel that European, American, or Canadian women are too cold and unsensible while the Brazilian women look for the security and freedom that Brazilian men cannot provide. The documentary interviews Brazilian women who were previously sex workers and have now moved to Europe with white men.
Description: Chigualeros is a documentary about one of the most famous orchestras in Ecuador. Chigualeros, founded almost three decades agos , fuses different sounds like son, marimba, guaracha, currulao, bolero, and the chigualo. Like many parts of Latin America, Ecuador has an African history that is evoked through the mix of sounds in the Chigualeros.The documentary presents the lives of the members of the group while also exploring the deforestation of the tropical forests of the region.
Copies: 1 (DVD)
Length: 80 minutes
Description: In Mexico, the voices of the woman who have chosen to have an abortion are virtually absent from public debate. Aborto Sin Pena will introduce you to three of these women, from distinct cultural backgrounds. What they say will surprise you.
Description: Eugenia Ramrez, a young dentist, returns home from a congress, only to find that her apartment has been ransacked. Furious, she tries to recover her childhood photo album at any cost, demanding that justice be done. However, she is unaware that this interferes with the interests of a gang of delinquents who turn her into the pursued instead of the pursuer.
Description: A documentary about the effects of IMF and World Bank policies on the economy and society of Nicaragua, and the efforts to counteract the negative results of such policies through cooperative and community development efforts. Based primarily on oral interviews with representatives from development agencies.
Description: This film by Francis Negrn and Peter Biella examines the impact of AIDS within Hispanic-American communities, focusing on the specific economic, social and cultural factors which influence perception of the AIDS crisis.
Description: Death in the Aymara culture is an experience in which the mourners, the community, the souls participate together. Age-old rituals, mixed with Catholic symbols assimilated by the people, frame the story of Andres and his young daughter Leonora. Upon drowning in Lake Titikaka, they must find their way to Korimarca (the Aymara Heaven) with help from the members of the community to which they belonged.
Description: Aleida Guevara talks fondly about her father, the world famous Che. Aleida talks about the real Che, separating the myth from the man. This bilingual DVD contains a Spanish language version, and another version in Spanish with English subtitles.
Description: In this groundbreaking satirical film about the Cuban Revolution, the craziest situations are seen as normal by most of the inhabitants of Wondertown. Alicia, however, struggles to make sense of what is happening around her from the moment she arrives. This film by Daniel Diaz Torres mixes absurdity, humor and horror, and was banned because it was believed to be anti-revolutionary.
Description: A moving story about growing up in the pampas, based on the famous autobiographical novel of the same title. Through his deep friendship with an old "gaucho," a boy coming of age becomes fascinated with nature and the mysteries of the human soul.
Description: An allegory about an idealistic ten-year-old peasant who dreams of flying like a condor. He eventually learns to fly when he joins guerrillas fighting in an imaginary Central American country.
Description:This film is a bold, intensely emotional, and ambitious story of lives that collide in a Mexico City car crash. Inventively structured as a triptych of overlapping and intersecting narratives, Amores Perros explores the lives of disparate characters who are catapulted into unforeseen dramatic situations.
Description: A tragic urban story about the unfortunate life of a 13-year old circus girl in Mexico City. She is expelled from her job when the official of the circus finds out she is pregnant. She meets a troupe of traveling puppeteers preaching the word of God and joins them, eventually entrusting her son to God.
Description: An informative and sensitive documentary that tells the story of Mayan women activists and their courageous fight for indigenous rights in Guatemala. Featuring several outstanding women that are playing an important role in this struggle, including 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Mench.
Description: Two decades after the devastating region-wide political violence of the 1970s and 1980s, Central America now confronts other forms of violence that have proven to be considerably destructive in their own right. These forms include organized crime, gangs, poverty and marginality, and are exacerbated by the firearms that entered the region during the years of civil war. Las Armas de la Violencia explores the dimensions, effects, costs (both human and economic,) of these new forms of violence and the responses of Central American societies to their emergence.
Description: The documentary is about Jacques Monard/Ramn Mercader, the KGB agent who assassinated Len Trotsky in Mexico. It is an account from the people who knew him during his childhood, and up to and after the crime. This film reconstructs his motivations and his destiny. Starring Elena Poniatowska, Carlos Monivis, and Guillermo Cabrera Infante.
Description: The lively Joo Grilo and the sly Chic are poor guys living in the hinterland who cheat a bunch of people in a small Northeast Brazil town. But when they die, they have to be judged by Christ, the Devil and the Virgin Mary, before they are admitted to paradise.
Description: This visceral, energizing look at contemporary Cuba is an impassioned love story set against the political and economic tensions of Havana. Gustavo, an idealistic young Communist with a glorified vision of the Castro regime, falls in love with Yolanda, a disenchanted dancer who longs to escape to Miami. Despite their radically opposed beliefs, Gustavo and Yolanda are inseparable. The city begins to erupt around Gustavo when his rebellious musician brother injects himself with the AIDS virus in suicidal protest, and his father realizes that he will earn more money as a hotel bar pianist than as a doctor.
Description: A Documentary that delves into the history of the banana. The film starts by explaining the globalization of the banana and its effects on the economy of Honduras. It shows the viewer the hardships and difficulties faced by the common banana workers and their relationship with the fruit corporations.
Description: The second in a trilogy, Barrio Cuba tells a trio of stories, all dealing with commonplace Cuban social struggles. Sols and his superior cast pay tribute to the authentic slums of the Havana suburbs, stripping away the sheen of a world previously glamorized by touristy stereotypes.
Description: You are invited to the wedding of Elizabeth and Artemio in Nuevo Len, Mexico. The video introduces a young couple whose lives and community have roots in Mexico while they encounter the challenges of migrant life in the United States.
Description: The actor, Santiago Miranda, abandons the set of a soap opera that he thinks fails to illustrate the real vision and dream of Bolvar. Miranda is determined to finish Bolvars dream of creating the Great Colombia. Wrapped in his own delirium, he kidnaps the President of Colombia and tries to start a revolution. However, Mirandas beloved, Manuelita Saenz, intervenes in his dreams.
Description: Nearly 2000 maquiladoras have been built in Mexico by companies from the US, Asia and Europe. As a result, the border has become a 2000 mile-long open sewer, a vast toxic waste dump. Filmed in three border regions, (Matamoros and Brownsville; Tijuana and San Diego; Ciudad Juarez and El Paso), Borderline Cases reveals the complexity and magnitude of the clean-up and gives a sense of energy and imagination found in the diverse mix of people of both countries who are re-thinking traditional notions of borders as they engage in the search for solutions.
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