La Vorágine

Buyers, sellers, people wandering. Toys and jewelry. Tools and cosmetics. Transactions and shouting. A wandering camera lost in the crowd contemplates the passing of a day at the fair on Avenida Argentina in Valparaíso.

When you listen to The Years, the debut studio recording from Urbanites, you're hearing a band in progress. They wanted to make The Years differently, and decided to record the album together, live, in the same space - Studio A of Electrical Audio in Chicago, Illinois. With the exception of limited overdubs, (vocals, drum ensembles and laptop atmospherics) each song represented one collective take, warmly captured to two inch analogue tape. This recording method embraced the mistake as much as the moment. They also chose to document the making of the record with a film, appropriately titled, 'You Can't Rewind The Years'. With a new understanding and years of progress to come, these longtime friends are making the music that they'd always hoped to. As they sing, in The Years' standout track Restless, "Not without trial, not without err - this brokenness is ours to share."

In 1962 Joris Ivens was invited to Chile for teaching and filmmaking. Together with students he made …A Valparaíso, one of his most poetic films. Contrasting the prestigious history of the seaport with the present the film sketches a portrait of the city, built on 42 hills, with its wealth and poverty, its daily life on the streets, the stairs, the rack railways and in the bars. Although the port has lost its importance, the rich past is still present in the impoverished city. The film echoes this ambiguous situation in its dialectical poetic style, interweaving the daily life reality (of 1963) with the history of the city and changing from black and white to colour, finally leaving us with hopeful perspective for the children who are playing on the stairs and hills of this beautiful town.

Photographic and sound story, through the encounter of characters with their stories of a time without end.

There was once, in 1910, a train able to cross the wild territories between Argentina and Chile, making possible a mythical journey, joining two oceans with a single ticket, from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso. The last trip of the BAP was in 1979; in the nineties, its various branches were permanently abandoned. Since then, travelers have been inhabiting the railway landscape as they dream, desire, remember or yearn: as part of their own being and national history.

Twisting in from Chile, Guillermo Ribbeck’s phenomenal EMPTY JARS is a stylishly directed dark fantasy set in a decaying student residence where a woman (Ana Burgos, THE SEA) frees a ghost from a jar and works to find it a suitable human vessel to possess. Potent, inventive and wildly entertaining with a prankster heart and a melancholic soul.

After the social uprising in Chile in October 2019, Camilo el Hueto seeks refuge in Italy, attempting to escape the memories that haunt him. However, a letter will force him to return to his homeland, where he is no longer welcome, determined to get rid of that cursed horn once and for all.

Chile, September 1986. Tamara, commander of the communist guerrilla group Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, and her comrades-in-arms set out to overthrow the military regime installed in 1973 by assassinating the dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Ireneo de Valpo

Violeta más viva que nunca

Documentary about the making of Ang Lee's 'The Wedding Banquet.'

A film about teenagers with growing pains, who discover their own voice and talent through riding and grooming toy horses.

A view of the religious tensions between Muslims and Buddhist through the portrait of the Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, leader of anti-Muslim movement in Myanmar.

As the Egyptian society is hit with a wave of religious and national extremism, filmmaker Nadia Kamal and her grandmother Mary resort to storytelling as they recount to the grandson Nabeel the history spanning 100 years of changes. What's a better way than storytelling to preserve identity?

Cómo empezar una película sobre Javier Aguirre

Balkan Erotic Epic explores the sexual aspects of Serbian folklore. Ancient myths that have trickled into everyday household remedies or explanations are juxtaposed with the joys of the female and male sexual forms from which all human life originates. Functioning as both sexual liberation and reinvented modern myth, Balkan Erotic Epic is a display of the need for a cultural change in viewpoint around sex.

Documentarian Jose Sanchez-Montes turns his attention towards the late Cuban musician Ignacio Villa, known throughout the world as Bola de Nieve (Snowball), with this 2003 biographical documentary entitled simply Bola de Nieve. A master pianist, Bola de Nieve was a mainstay through the middle portion of the 20th century, with his music almost omnipresent in South America cinema throughout those formative decades. With Bola de Nieve's famous statement "I'm a sad person, but my songs sound happy" in mind, Sanchez-Montes also looks at the influence of the musician's African heritage and homosexuality upon Bola de Nieve's unique musical style.

Who Wants to Live Forever, the Wisdom of Aging is a one hour documentary film about the myths, facts and contradictions in the never-ending battle for both longevity and healthy aging.

Through a mosaic of memories, this documentary celebrates music star Vladimír Mišík and highlights one of the great explorations left in his life.

A portrait of a hard rocking band known for their substance-fueled live performances on their evolutionary journey to become one of the greatest cult rock bands of our time.