Venezuela Competes in Latin American Film Festival

The 30th annual International Festival of New Latin American Cinema starts today in Havana, Cuba. Venezuela has nine entries in the festival. Of these, three feature films are in the running to win the festival’s crowning “Coral” Prizes:

• 1, 2 y 3 mujeres by Andrea Catalán, Anabel Rodríguez and Silvia Andrea Ríos Goncalves (trailer)
• El tinte de la fama by Alejandro Bellame Palacios (trailer)
• Macuro, la fuerza de un pueblo by Hernán Jabes (trailer)

Currently making headlines are two Steven Soderbergh films about the life of Ernesto “Che” Guevara starring Benicio del Toro. A staggering 500 entries will be aired at the festival, which runs through December 12th.

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Venezuelan History Reaches Film in “Miranda Returns”

Lately, it seems like Venezuela’s history is being chronicled in film like never before.

Take, for example, the biopic Miranda Regresa (“Miranda Returns”), which came out last fall. The movie is a dramatic reimagining of the life of independence hero Francisco de Miranda.

It was produced at Cinema City (in Spanish, Villa del Cine), the government- funded studios that have revived the film industry in recent years.

The trailer below is in Spanish without subtitles, but you’ll probably understand what’s going on without them. It looks like a beautiful film!

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Venezuela a Tempting Locale for Director Tim Robbins

Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey, Naomi Campbell… Hollywood just cannot resist the charms of Venezuela!

The Academy Award- winning U.S. actor and director Tim Robbins visited yesterday, scouting a location for a film.

Robbins was particularly interested in seeing Coro, the desert-like peninsula that juts out into the ocean from the northern state of Falcón.

He also made the requisite visit to Cinema City (la Vllla del Cine) to see Venezuela’s government-funded, state-of-the-art movie facilities. In addition to watching sneak previews of some of the films that are currently in production at Cinema City, Robbins met Venezuelan directors Román Chalbaud, Carlos Caridad-Montero, Alfredo Hueck, and Laura Vásquez.

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Venezuela’s Cinema City Marks Two Year Anniversary

Yesterday, Venezuela’s Cinema City (in Spanish, Villa del Cine) celebrated its second anniversary! If you haven’t already heard, the Cinema City was founded by the government to promote film making as an integral part of national culture. It has stimulated an enormous amount of activity in Venezuela’s movie business, and has created opportunities for many independent writers, directors and artists.

The BBC has called it “a state-of-the-art production house that is changing the face of Venezuelan cinema.”

Cinema City’s second anniversary was celebrated at the facility in Guarenas with a special pre-screening of 1, 2 y 3 Mujeres. The film offers dramatic accounts of the lives of three Venezuelan women who come from very different backgrounds and face distinct challenges. 1, 2 y 3 Mujeres is the collaborative project of directors Andrea Herrera, Anabel Rodríguez y Andrea Ríos. It is one of 18 films to emerge from Cinema City in the last year. Watch the trailer here.

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Venezuelan Film Thinks Local, Goes Global

A short film by Venezuelan director Mariana Fuentes will grace the silver screen at this year’s Chicago Latino Film Festival in April. The international tour of Lupe’s Café (El Café de Lupe) is sponsored by Venezuela’s state-funded Villa del Cine, or Cinema City, which was founded in recent years to promote national artistic production and diversity.

Watch this trailer for Lupe’s Café to see what you can expect, and check the Venezuela in Your Town section for festival details.

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