Film screening
Oberhausen on Tour:
The Latin American Experience

06/16/2015
7:30pm
Anthology Film Archives

Founded in 1954, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen has been one of the premier showcases for short and experimental films for 60 years and counting. Famous as the site of the Oberhausen Manifesto, which transformed German cinema and helped launch the New German Cinema movement, the festival continues to draw filmmakers, curators, critics, and cineastes to the Ruhr region every May. In addition to the annual event itself, the Festival also operates one of the largest, oldest, and most highly respected short film archives in the world. Today the collection encompasses nearly 2,000 titles, among them many unique prints and works by major filmmakers such as Kenneth Anger, Santiago Álvarez, Maya Deren, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, Jan Lenica, George Lucas, Matthias Müller, Roman Polanski, Alain Resnais, and Jan Švankmajer. And following each festival, a selection of highlights from the most recent edition, as well as classics from the collection, are presented at cinemas throughout the world as part of the “Oberhausen on Tour” program.

This year, the Goethe-Institut and Anthology Film Archives join to host Oberhausen’s annual touring program in New York. On June 16 Anthology will showcase classic Latin American films from the Festival’s archive, while on June 18 the Goethe-Institut will present some of the highlights of the 2014 festival.
 

For a long time, “Way to the Neighbour” was the festival motto. It was meant to apply not only to Eastern Europe, however, for in the 1970s and 1980s further “neighbours” came onto the scene: for example in Latin America with the political films of the “Third Cinema”. These documentary films, some of them experimental, address the social and political situation in the Latin American countries, focusing mainly on the arbitrary rule by dictatorships, the unremitting poverty of the population and the constant attempts by US politics and economy to expand their influence on the continent. At the end of the programme, we take a playful look at the situation today and indeed discover some continuities. Overall, the programme takes a short trip in time through the history of Latin American short film, in the process also reflecting developments in the Oberhausen festival and its archive. Nearly all works on view won major awards in Oberhausen.

La fórmula secreta
THE SECRET FORMULA
Mexico 1966
43 minutes, 35mm, b&w
Spanish with English subtitles
by Rúben Gámez

A small portrait of Mexico – 1966. The problems and dreams of the Mexican people.

Operação Brasil
OPERATION BRAZIL
Brazil 1985
11 minutes, 35mm, b&w
Portuguese with English subtitles
by Luiz Alberto Pereira

When in April 1985 the country's first democratically elected President, Tancredo Neves, became seriously ill right after the elections, the population and the media worried for weeks about this first representative of their national identity.

Queremos as Ondas do Ar!
WE WANT THE AIRWAVES!
Brazil 1986
11 minutes, 35mm, color
Portuguese with English subtitles
by Francisco César Filho & Tata Amaral

A film pamphlet from Brazil against one-way information and for the democratisation of telecommunication. Different textures are combined without compunction.

Mas vale tarde que nunca
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
Cuba 1986
8 minutes, 35mm, color
no dialogue
by Enrique Colina

A satire on punctuality. A pinch of exaggeration gives a grotesque touch to a depiction that seems almost realistic. The film oscillates between lethargy and hectic activity.

O Nome Dele (o clóvis)
HIS NAME (THE CLOWN)
Brazil 2004
15 minutes, 35mm, color
Portuguese with English subtitles
by Felipe Bragança & Marina Meliande

They've met in the summer, in the rain. A film about carnival and silence. About anger and joy. A passionate homage to Rio de Janeiro's surface: full of pain, dreams and sadness. A carnival tale of love and violence.