/ VANDA Duarte: Dissident Films by Latin American Women Directors.
VANDA Cine presents:
VANDA Duarte / Festival of Women and Dissidents
In 2020, Argentinian filmmakers Lucila Mariani and Lara Franzetti founded the film production company VANDA, with the goal of discovering unique visions and showcasing points of view that are too often relegated to the margins. In addition to producing and distributing new films, over the past year VANDA has been organizing online festivals as well, beginning last June with “De 5 a 7”, which presented short films made during the pandemic. VANDA’s latest project, which Anthology will host online in May, is “VANDA Duarte,” a festival dedicated exclusively to the work of Latin American women and dissidents. Comprising one program each day from April 28-May 4, the festival will be available to stream free-of-charge!
Please note: each program will be available to stream from 12:01am-11:59pm ET on the scheduled date.
Texts by: Bartolomé Armentano.
Previous editions.
PROGRAM 1: SHADY JOURNEYS
How far is far enough when it comes to taking distance? Is it possible to run away with our bodies if our minds remain with us? In this program we travel through cities and highways to follow the stream of consciousness of two directors. Journeys, memories, and collective stories lie at the heart of these films.
Tatiana Mazú
SHADY RIVER / RÍO TURBIO
Argentina, 2020, 81 min, digital
Q&A with Tatiana Mazú on Instagram, April 28 at 6pm (NYC) and 7pm (ARG). Details to be announced.
“According to the myth still in force in the coal towns of Patagonia, if a woman enters a mine, the earth becomes jealous. Then, there’s collapse and death. SHADY RIVER starts from a dark personal experience to become a film about the silence of women who live in men’s villages. How to film where our presence is prohibited? How to record the resonances of what doesn’t sound? As the fog and smoke from the power plant cover the town, the voices of the women of Río Turbio force their way between the white of the ice and the hum of the drilling machines, until they blow up the structure of silence.” –DOCLISBOA
Andrea Novoa
NATURAL DISASTERS / DESASTRES NATURALES
Chile, 2020, 26 min, digital
NATURAL DISASTERS is the encounter of three movies, three territories. A personal story that portrays, through experiments revealed by images and extracts from a diary, lived meetings and inhabited places filled by forces of nature, colors, incidents, and struggles.
–Wed, April 28
PROGRAM 2: THE VISIBLE / THE INVISIBLE
This program meditates on the ideas of privacy and the relationships we share with others. How much of ourselves can be perceived by another? How do we find particularities in our surroundings and in the individuals we meet in order to build an intimate story? Realism and onirism, documentary and fiction intermix, giving space to new Latin American narratives.
Brenda Erdei
MOVING / MUDANZA
Argentina, 2020, 15 min, digital
A couple relocates to a new house and organizes a welcoming party. Amidst untidiness and missing keys, they fall asleep and, when they wake up, begin to share their dreams. The day passes and, whenever they awake, they find themselves inhabiting each other’s dream.
Laura Huberman & Manuela Martínez
INSTRUCTIONS FOR ADELA / INSTRUCCIONES PARA ADELA
Argentina, 2020, 15 min, digital
“Grandmother, mother and daughter spend the day sailing on a family sailboat. Three women of three generations, facing the passage of time and an impending farewell.” –MAR DEL PLATA FILM FESTIVAL
Marília Nogueira
ANGELA
Brazil, 2020, 14 min, digital
Angela collects diagnostics of diseases she has never had, but a new friendship might bring this peculiar collection to an end.
–Thu, April 29
PROGRAM 3: THE LIMITS BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
Debating with other people leads to new postures, ways of life, and ideas that help us amplify our horizons and possibilities. Knowledge is crucial when it comes to counteracting prejudice. Breaking through the fear of the unknown, sick bodies, and pre-conditioned concepts, the films in this program narrate stories that invites us, through celebration and memory, to think about genre, identity, and sex.
Eliane Caffé, Carla Caffé & Beto Amaral
SOUTHERN SORCERESSES / PARA ONDE VOAM AS FEITICEIRAS
Brazil, 2020, 89 min, digital
“How do you reinvent activism and unite anti-discrimination movements? In the heart of São Paulo, LGBTQ+ activists and artists document, with humor and style, their appropriation of public space. Through music, improv and vox-pops we hear from an eclectic and dynamic array of Indigenous, Black, homeless and sexual-minority participants. They speak directly to the camera, discussing better awareness-raising strategies, fearlessly expressing their differences of opinion on certain issues, and talking about their personal experiences. With contagious energy, this activist film salutes those who use all their courage and creativity to fight injustice.” –Bruno Dequen, MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL
María Emilia Castañeda
VIRUS
Argentina, 2020, 8 min, digital
Finding two manuscripts among the belongings of her dead father during the COVID-19 quarantine, a woman attempts to use them to reconstruct the past and weave uncertain hypotheses about what she will never know.
–Fri, April 30
PROGRAM 4: TOWARDS A NEW LATIN AMERICAN IDENTITY
f being Latin American is a cultural category rather than a race, is it possible to think about only one Latin American identity? If it existed, it would be made of millions of fragments, and through different experiences, some approximations could be delineated. These films offer a good starting to point to reconsider the concept of Latinity.
Maya Werneck Da-Rin (only available for streaming in Latin America. except Brazil)
THE FEVER / A FEBRE
Brazil, 2020, 98 min, digital
“Maya Da-Rin’s stunning feature debut is a portrait of Justino, an indigenous man torn between Manaus, the port city where he works as a security guard, and the call of the Amazon village where he was born. Like Justino himself, THE FEVER is neither loud nor ostentatious, but it achieves a hypnotic quality by entering the rhythms and patterns of Justino’s life and inviting us to slip into his dreams. The result is a powerful experience in empathy.” –Nicholas Elliott, LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL
Victoria Alessandrini
ESSENTIAL LATINAS / LATINAS ESENCIALES
Argentina/UK, 2020, 12 min, digital
This short documentary animation portrays the personal and collective perspectives of Latin American women during the pandemic in the UK. Through their voices and animated silhouettes, the film highlights the oppression they experience as migrant women and key workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Agustina Biasutto
THE INDEFINABLE / LA INDEFINIBLE
Argentina/U.S., 2020, 9 min, digital
An abstract documentary/hybrid short that celebrates the beautifully diverse essence of Latin women.
Amanda Valle
BACK IN THE ISLAND / DE VUELTA EN LA ISLA
Dominican Republic/U.S., 2020, 4 min, digital
A short film exploring the creative path of artist Amanda Valle as she returns to her home in the Dominican Republic. A journey of self-discovery, the film became the main source of inspiration for the author’s new series composed of twelve paintings.
–Sat, May 1
PROGRAM 5: THE PAINFUL BODY
Intimate and personal stories become public and choral because we can see ourselves in and through them, giving us back irreverent images that can incentivize our own irreverence to put an end to what oppresses us. While there is no monolithic experience of womanhood, these short films convey the weight and labour that’s often placed on femininity.
Camila Kater
FLESH / CARNE
Brazil, 2021, 12 min, digital
“A fresh, unprejudiced reflection on femininity through successive stages of life. A resourceful documentary, FLESH mixes diverse techniques such as paint, watercolor, stop motion, 35mm film and virtual imagery decomposition to obtain a harmonious, vindicating ensemble narrated by five women from childhood to old age.” –VARIETY
Catalina Ibáñez
BODIES THAT FIGHT / CUERPAS QUE LUCHAN
Chile, 2020, 3 min, digital
A short animation that narrates the story of Matilde, which occurred during the feminist wave in Chile in 2018.
Uzu Morales
WITHOUT REST / SIN DESCANSO
Colombia, 2020, 9 min, digital
A portrait of Natalia, a woman who works from dawn until dusk, WITHOUT REST documents her daily routine and her attempts to adapt to the new normal at the market she has been a part of almost her entire life.
–Sun, May 2
PROGRAM 6: BRAVE HEART
Bodies as beloved spaces of revelation, the courage to carry the weight that comes with us and to disassemble and reassemble the images we thought we admired. How do we stop idealizing our idols? These films explore the ways in which, to a certain degree, identity is a product of one’s own authorship.
Cecilia del Valle
CANELA
Argentina, 2020, 77 min, digital
CANELA finds its subject – a 62-year-old trans woman, teacher, and architect – at a crossroads in her life, debating whether or not to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Canela consults with healthcare professionals, her children, and old friends, until she realizes something about her desire that she didn’t really expect. CANELA is a film that is as intelligent, funny, kind, cheerful, and captivating as its main character.
Ana Clara Tavora
WAGNER
Brazil, 2020, 24 min, digital
For years, Wagner (Flávio Rochaa) has been a dead ringer for singer Everaldo, who was a great success in the 1980s. But his inability to separate his identity from that of Everaldo’s leads to a crisis.
–Mon, May 3
PROGRAM 7: CLOSE AND STRANGE
Every day we look at things without truly paying attention, and those impressions end up comprising our daily images. A building in a strange neighborhood may catch our attention and even make us want to take a photograph, but what happens when our eyes and our cameras linger on what is close at hand and we begin to observe things vividly?
Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo
THE CALM AFTER THE STORM / COMO EL CIELO DESPUÉS DE LLOVER
Colombia, 2020, 71 min, digital
Q&A with Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo on Instagram, May 4 at 6pm (NYC) and 7pm (ARG). Details to be announced.
Mercedes returns to her native city to assist her father, Victor, in the shooting of his film. He is a director who has filmed his family throughout the years. In the encounter of hers and her father’s different ways of looking, her mother’s silence, and her brother’s stubbornness, Mercedes embraces her family’s endless contradictions in order to find her own beginning.
Paz Encina
RÍO PARAGUAY TRILOGY / TRILOGÍA RÍO PARAGUAY
Paraguay, 2010, 15 min, digital
A rarely-screened trilogy of short films by the great Paraguayan filmmaker Paz Encina, director of PARAGUAYAN HAMMOCK (2006) and MEMORY EXERCISES (2016).
–Tues, May 4
