Editor

The 10th Cine Las Americas International Film Festival will host its Documentary Feature Film competition from April 20 – 22, 2007. Films in competition will screen at the Regal Metropolitan Theater (901 Little Texas Lane, near the intersection of IH 35 and Stassney) and The Hideout Theater (617 Congress Avenue).

While the documentary form has established a place for itself with mainstream audiences, the works included in this section push the boundaries to the next level, exposing audiences to stories that are not easy to find anywhere else.

Director of Programming Jacqueline Rush Rivera says, “Our film competition this year is extremely diverse in terms of the filmmakers’ structural and aesthetic approaches, not to mention that 16 different countries are represented.”

Rush Rivera adds, “This year we have our first film from Paraguay, the documentary TIERRA ROJA (RED EARTH), which is in the Guarani language and is being subtitled in English for the first time for its Cine Las Americas screening.”

Documentary feature films in competition are as follows:

TOCAR Y LUCHAR
To Play and To Fight
Alberto Alvero, Venezuela, 2006
9:45 p.m., Sunday, April 23, Alamo
To Play and To Fight presents the captivating story of the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra System - an incredible network of hundreds of orchestras formed of children in rural towns and villages.

DOS PATRIAS: CUBA Y LA NOCHE
Two Homelands: Cuba and the Night
Christian Liffers, Germany, 2006
9 p.m., Friday, April 20, Regal Metropolitan Theater Five homosexual men and one transsexual woman, all from different backgrounds and of different age groups, describe their lives, afflictions, desires, longings and joys in Cuba. Although they find common ground in their daily social exclusion brought on by the “Machismo-society” and the Cuban government, their views differ heavily concerning their social status.


DAS KUIZE LEBAN DES JOSE ANTONIO GUTIERREZ The Short Life of Antonio Gutierrez Heidi Specogna, Germany, Switzerland, 2006
2 p.m., Sunday, April 22, Regal Metropolitan Theater José Antonio Gutierrez was one of the 300,000 soldiers the U.S. military sent to war in Iraq in March 2003. To the world, he was the first American soldier to be killed. In reality, he was a so-called green-card soldier – one of approximately 32.000 non-U.S. citizens fighting in the ranks of the U.S. military. A film about a one-time street kid from Guatemala, full of hopes and desires for a better future, who ultimately dies an American hero far from home.

TIERRA ROJA
Red Earth
Ramiro Gómez, Paraguay, 2006
4 p.m., Saturday, April 21, Regal Metropolitan Theater Tierra Roja portrays four indigenous families immersed in the routine of their daily lives.
Trying to revive lyricism beneath the mundane, their stories project harmony with nature.

ARCANA
Cristóbal Vicente, Chile, 2006
7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 21, Regal Metropolitan Theater This film concerns the last working year of the old prison of Valparaiso in Chile, which closed in April 1999. It is an homage to the prison and to the men who lived there during its 150-year history. The film tells the story not through visible reality, but through the most subjective experience of seeing and feeling the prison from the inside.

LA OTRA COPA
The Other Cup
Damian Cukierkorn, Argentina, 2006
8 p.m., Sunday, April 22, Regal Metropolitan Theater For the first time in history, Argentina sends a team to the Homeless Football World Cup, which was celebrated in 2004 in Gothenburg, Sweden. From the cold stairs of underground train stations to the heart of the first world, the players live a dream in seven days that will change their lives forever.

THE LONGING: THE FORGOTTEN JEWS OF SOUTH AMERICA Gabriela Bohm, USA, Israel, 2007
4 p.m., Sunday, April 22, Regal Metropolitan Theater A portrait of South Americans who, after discovering that their Jewish ancestors converted to Catholicism during the Spanish Inquisition, undertake profound personal journeys of faith. Dismissed by local Jewish authorities, they study via the Internet with an American Reform rabbi who ultimately travels to Ecuador to complete the conversion.

MAQUILAPOLIS
Vicky Funari, Sergio De La Torre, USA, Mexico, 2007
7 p.m., Friday, April 20, Regal Metropolitan Theater For six years Carmen Durán has worked the graveyard shift at one of Tijuana’s 800 maquiladoras (sweatshops). When the plant where Carmen moves to Indonesia in search of cheaper labor and tries to avoid paying legally mandated severance pay, Carmen becomes a promotora (grassroots activist), challenging illegal tactics commonly used by the powerful transnationals.

FALA MULHER!
Woman Speak!
Kika Nicolela, Brazil, 2005
2 p.m., Friday, April 20, Regal Metropolitan Theater
15 afro-descendant Brazilian women talk about their lives as hairdressers, clerks, maids, manicurists and students, plus their experiences being queens in the Carnaval community. Although portrayed in the media as sex symbols - “mulatas” - these women are proud of their African roots and their femininity and celebrate them.