Rio’s Caixa Cultural Screens 20 Films from Central America

By Jay Forte, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Starting next week, Tuesday, August 14th through August 26th, Caixa Cultural in Rio de Janeiro will host a new film exhibit of recent and awarded productions from the seven Central American countries, as well as a debate and a masterclass.

There will be twenty films, almost all of them unreleased, including short films, feature films and documentaries, selected by the Brazilian-Honduran curator Laura Bermúdez. They are productions of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.
 
In a press release, Laura Bermúdez explains, “Central America is an almost invisible region within our own [South] American continent. Sometimes it appears to be a piece of disembodied, imaginary land, floating in the void between the south and the north.”

“But the reality is that our little isthmus remains in a constant state of convulsion. In the atmosphere of Central America, wars, dictatorships, coups and natural disasters were breathed. The scene is dyed red with the current postwar period, gangs, the drama of migrants, drug trafficking, extreme violence and total unconsciousness of gender ideology.”

Adding, “To all this, we add to the frightening corruption and absolute impunity that characterizes our political systems. With this selection of films, we move completely away from the exotic and approach the only thing that really unites Central America with Brazil: our human stories.”

Among the highlights of the exhibit are the documentaries La Parka (2013), short film by Gabriel Serra, the first Nicaraguan film to run for the Oscars; the award-winning short Berta Vive (2016), by Katia Lara, about the life of Berta Cáceres, an Indian who became, after his assassination, an icon of struggle and resistance in Honduras.

Also Ana Andara’s Felicidade do Som (2016), winner of doctv Panama and premiered at the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) in the Netherlands, presenting a journey through our senses with incredible characters that show another side of Panama.

The feature films Distance (2012), Sergio Ramírez’s award-winning debut film, tells the true story of a father’s reunion with a daughter who was captured by the army twenty years after the civil war in Guatemala; and the award-winning Medea (2017) by Alexandra Latishev, one of the most recent films in Costa Rica, which invites audiences to reflect on the relationship of women with their bodies.

The film exhibition will also hold a masterclass on Saturday, August 18th, at 2PM, on the cinematographic production and the main festivals in Central America with the filmmaker (director of the film Negra Soy) and curator of the event Laura Bermúdez. The masterclass has free entry, with tickets available starting at 1PM that day.
 
What: Cinema Centroamérica (Films from Central America)
When: Tuesday, August 14th through Sunday, August 26th; see program for showtimes
Where: Caixa Cultural – Avenida Almirante Barroso, 25 – Centro
Entrance: R$6 (full) and R$3 (half) and by law, CAIXA customers pay half.