Latin American Video Archive - Home
New Documentaries from LAVA
Contemporary Latin America

October 2001



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Editor's Note:
From Cuba's "special period" to Mexico's urban angst to new questions about repression and memory in the Southern Cone, Latin America has gone through immense changes in the 1990s. The new acquisitions listed here capture the tensions and challenges of a region in transition.

To order any of these tapes, contact us by email at info@lavavideo.org, by phone 212-243-4804, or by fax 212-243-2007. Our website at www.latinamericanvideo.org unites the collections of all US distributors that handle Latin American titles, making it easy to locate the titles you are looking for. We are now able to accept payment by credit card.


Cuban Documentaries


Cuba 15   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Elizabeth Schub
Documentary   12 minutes   1997
With English subtitles
Tzunami Ortega Coyra is about to celebrate her 15th birthday with a quinceañera party (similar to a “sweet sixteen” in the U.S.) Cuba 15 narrates her preparations for the party in the little Cuban town of Bauta, where Tzunami says, “the best thing about the town is the discotheque,” and the worst is that “the only place to go is the discotheque.” Filmed in the course of a week, this short film portrays Tzunami’s family, the town’s local characters, and Tzunami herself with freshness and originality. Tzunami is a down-to-earth young woman who nonetheless embodies the contradictions of modern Cuba and of teenage girls the world over. She likes Che Guevara for “his human interests and his international experiences,” but she likes the Spice Girls even more. She recounts, with the precocious world-weariness of the newly experienced, her “lasting relationships” with boys, even as she fears that with her newfound maturity, love and marriage will separate her from her family. Cuba 15, set to pulsating music against everyday Cuban backdrops, irresistibly captures Tzunami’s youthful exuberance and provides a subtle and layered portrait of growing up in Cuba.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95


Woes, Foes and Heroes   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Marilyn Perez
Documentary   10 minutes   2001
With English subtitles
A documentary about Poncheros, or flat tire repairmen, who are a part of Cuba's first steps into entrepreneurship. Woes, Foes & Heroes celebrates the heroic struggle of the Cuban people in commonplace settings.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95



Argentine Documentaries


Prohibido   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Andres di Tella
Documentary   105 minutes   1997
With English subtitles
Based on interviews with theater directors, journalists, academics, and visual artists, this documentary tells the story of Argentina's Dirty War from the perspective of the arts. Considered leftist ideologues by the military dictatorship, many people from Argentina's cultural sector were tortured, forced into exile, or temporarily silenced. Others bravely continued with their work. This documentary gives an overview of the cultural world throughout the period, ending with the children of the disappeared and their current use of music and the plastic arts to express their personal experiences and demand political justice.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95


Montoneros   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Andres di Tella
Documentary   90 minutes   1995
With English subtitles
In the early 1970s, followers of the exiled leader General Juan Peron formed an armed urban guerrilla movement to reinstate his rule - the Montoneros. But during Peron's brief return to power the group felt betrayed by the Peronist party's right-wing tendencies. In the years after Peron's death in 1974, the group embarked on a series of high-profile attacks and kidnappings which ended when Argentina's military government began a Dirty War against various "subversives," effectively wiping out the Montoneros in the process. This gripping documentary tells the Montoneros' story through the eyes of Ana, who joined the group as a young woman, and other former members. Amply illustrated with photos and film footage from the 1970s, this documentary captures the political passions that led the group to turn to violence, and the spiraling repression that characterized Argentina's Dirty War.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95


Zulay Facing the 21st Century   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Jorge Preloran
Documentary   108 minutes   1992
With English subtitles
Filmed over the course of eight years, this film is a dialogue between Zulay Saravino, an Otavalen indigenous woman from Ecuador, and Mabel Preloran, an Argentine anthropologist living in Los Angeles, California. They discuss the problems both of them have faced as women adapting themselves to life in the United States. A universal documentary on transculturation, and the decisions one must face regarding identity, education, economic improvement, and emotional ties.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95



Mexican Documentaries


Forgotten Roots, The   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Rafael Rebollar
Documentary   50 minutes   2001
With English subtitles
Mexico has always imagined itself a nation forged from the encounter between Spaniards and indigenous people in the colonial past. But there are roots that have been forgotten, if not deliberately erased. This impressively researched documentary, the first of a three part series, acknowledges and explores the history and influential cultural heritage of Africans in Mexico. It tells how African people were brought as slaves and servants to the conquistadors, and came to occupy a variety of places in Mexican colonial society, from exploited mine and plantation workers to wealthy landowners. Their story in Mexico is one of both resistance and acculturation, as some slaves rebelled against their masters and others had children with them to advance themselves socially. This video uses both historical documentation and the example of Mexico’s dazzling hybrid traditions to illustrate the deep and pervasive footprints left by African culture in Mexican culture and society. The crowning example is the city of Veracruz, that bustling port of the “Afro-Andalusian Caribbean,” with its bubbling hodgepodge of faces, races, and musical expressions that was the point of entry for the majority of the slaves to enter Mexico. But the video emphasizes that Africans were present throughout the country, and works towards a reconciliation with those African roots of Mexican culture that have been forgotten for too long.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95


We're Still Here   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Greg Berger
Documentary   30 minutes   2001
With English subtitles
A lively and highly informative look at the human mismanagement that has made Mexico City a magnet for "natural" disasters. Narrated by a wise-cracking skeleton, the video shows how millions of “chilangos” (Mexico City residents) live under the constant threat of floods, gas explosions, and disasters like the 1985 earthquake that killed more than 10,000, which loom threateningly on the Mexico City horizon like the active volcano Popocatéptl. But, as the video tells us, “the problem is not Popo, but poo-poo” – less dramatic but equally deadly problems like blocked sewage, shoddy construction, and inadequate engineering that could at any rainstorm cause avalanches in the poor neighborhoods that ring the hills surrounding the city. These latter problems are not dealt with by a government which funds high-profile programs like seismology even as it ignores the more problems that effect millions of citizens everyday. Using file footage from past disasters and interviews with scientists, anthropologists, engineers, community activists, and regular folks, the video convincingly ties the lack of effective disaster prevention to state paternalism and government demagoguery, pointing out that the most effective policies have been made by concerned community members. Instead of putting the community at the mercy of an arrogant and mismanaged government, it says, the state should make itself available to its citizens, reversing the power dynamic in the city and allowing those who know the dangers best and are affected the most to build the necessary infrastructure and awareness.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95




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