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Discounts on LAVA's Fall Titles
Special Offer

December 2003



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Editor's Note:
LAVA announces a ten percent discount on our titles released this fall. This offer is good until December 31, 2003.

Please note that all orders received between December 11 and December 31 will be processed immediately, but will not be shipped until January 2004.

To purchase any of these videos, contact us by email at info@lavavideo.org, by phone 212-243-4804, or by fax 212-243-2007. Our website, www.latinamericanvideo.org, allows for secure purchases by credit card.

** Please see special announcement below **

********************************** The "Dispatches from Rebel Mexico" Tour is now booking dates for spring and fall 2004. The tour includes several films on current social movements in Mexico. The program will include "Atenco: The Machete Rebellion," "Casino De La Selva: The Fight For Cultural Heritage," a short video on the Mexican response to the Iraq War, and other films. To book an event or for more information, please visit www.gringoyo.com or write gringoyo_2000@yahoo.com.


Special Offer for December 2003


National Stadium   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Carmen Luz Parot
Documentary   60 minutes   2001
With English subtitles
After a military coup overthrew the democratically elected Socialist government of Chile on September 11, 1973, the capital’s National Stadium was the scene of the indiscriminate mass detentions of more than 12,000 suspected dissidents, and the brutal interrogations, torture, and executions they underwent. This film is the first in-depth investigation into the chilling events that took place in the stadium. With the testimony of more than 30 witnesses – former prisoners, priests, soldiers, journalists, nurses, and neighbors – this film provides a detailed and moving account of the experiences of those detained in the stadium. This courageous film unearths a part of Chilean history that is still taboo 30 years later. It opens with the 2000 presidential elections held in the stadium, where one of the vote counters who was also a detainee muses on the irony that in people were exercising their democratic rights “in the same place where people were detained and robbed of their freedom.” Moving back and forth through time, the film juxtaposes historical footage with contemporary interviews with survivors, many of whom are walking the grounds of the stadium, still used for concerts and soccer games, for the first time in three decades. It is they, rather than a faceless narrator, who recount the horrific events that unfolded there, as they recount in detail their daily living conditions, their hunger, fear, confusion, and boredom, their torture sessions, their mistreatment, and their small tactics of symbolic resistance. It is the protagonists’ stories that highlight the moral confusion and essential absurdity of the situation. Many of the soldiers were themselves poor teenage conscripts from the Chilean countryside who were themselves full of fear and remorse for the savagery that was taking place. One speaker who served as a soldier at the Stadium recounted his horror upon finding his own brother among the detainees. Others were deeply implicated in the Stadium’s darkest horrors. One torture victim asks, “How could these people destroy someone, torture someone, and then wash their hands, go home, and hug their children?” Another former detainee recounts how his torturer ended a torture session early in order to catch a movie with his wife. Perhaps most surreal is the film’s account of the sham by which the tragedy was brushed under the rug by a complicit media and a culture of “chronic amnesia.” This film is an eloquent first movement toward a sincere confrontation with this repressed past. But, as one Chilean journalist wrote, “The strength of National Stadium does not lie [simply] in providing testimony about something so little remembered and discussed… Its strength lies in showing the most terrible, the most noble, and the most vulnerable aspects of human nature.”
Purchase Price: $ 200.00


Victor Jara: The Right to Live in Peace   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Carmen Luz Parot
Documentary   100 minutes   1999
With English subtitles
Filmed for the 25th anniversary of his death, this biography recounts the extraordinary life of famed Chilean singer-songwriter, theater director, folklorist, and political activist Victor Jara. With historical footage and interviews, the film describes the dramatic story of how Jara, the son of an illiterate peasant, came into international prominence and domestic martyrdom for his talent and his principles. Early on, he had a love of music inherited from his mother, a singer of traditional folk music. As a boy he migrated with her and his siblings to the slums of his country’s capital. Upon her sudden death, he entered university, where he studied theater, met his future wife, and was swept up in the bohemian cultural renaissance that was burgeoning in Chile and that included such artists as singer Violeta Parra and poet Pablo Neruda. Aside from becoming an important Chilean theater director, he began investigating the traditional music he had grown up with and performing it with lyrics that reflected his growing sense of political outrage over the poverty and political oppression which afflicted his country. He eventually became one of the main proponents of Chilean “nueva canción” (New Song), which struggled through music and the arts to re-establish democracy in Chile. But his very prominence led to his ultimate detention, torture, and assassination by the dictatorship, chillingly recounted in the film. In many ways, Victor Jara’s odyssey from the obscurity of the Chilean countryside to political martyrdom is a microcosm of Chilean history, which is evocatively depicted through historic and contemporary footage and interviews with friends, contemporaries, and his widow. Named for one of his most well-known songs, Victor Jara: The Right to Live in Peace is a gripping narrative covering Jara’s life from his early years to his heroic last hours. It is a moving tribute and testimony to a person of great vision and leadership, whose work helped unite a movement under a central goal: the right to live in peace.
Purchase Price: $ 200.00


Waiting for the Messiah   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Daniel Burman
Feature   93 minutes   2000
With English subtitles
Someone hits the wrong key in Hong Kong and a bank in Buenos Aires goes under. In an increasingly globalized world, a financial breakdown in the Far East instantly reverberates in the Third World, and modern-day Argentina is no exception. Some lose their savings, others their jobs. The film centers on the stories of Ariel, a young Jew proud of his origins but suffering an identity crisis; and of Santamaria, a bank employee whose dignity is at stake after losing his job, his house, and his wife. Ariel wants to discover the world, and Santamaria wants to get his back. 'Waiting for the Messiah' is an urban tale about the relationships between people who live in the small universes hidden within Buenos Aires.
Purchase Price: $ 150.00


Born in Brazil   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Cara Biasucci
Documentary   52 minutes   2002
With English subtitles
The World Health Organization suggests a maximum cesarean rate of 15%. Research shows that the majority of Brazilian women prefer natural birth. But statistics provide a different story --- 65% - 85% of all births in private hospitals in Brazil are by cesarean section. Many obstetricians attribute the high cesearean rate to patient demand, when in fact the unnecessary surgery is more convenient and lucrative for doctors. Born in Brazil challenges the dominant cultural belief that surgical delivery is the modern, painless way to give birth, and that cesareans are what women want.This 52-minute documentary reveals the subtle pressures that stimulate the gross misuse of cesareans through touching and humorous accounts of childbirth. Born in Brazil follows five pregnant women in private and public hospitals in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In interviews before birth, the women share their desires, fears, and expectations of childbirth. During birth, the ethical conflicts of modern obstetrics become clear as doctors narrate their patients’ progress. A few days after birth, the women reflect on their experience, often twisting facts and feelings to fit their obstetrician’s story of events.Childbirth is a manifestation of the spontaneous nature of life. In a fast-paced, convenience-oriented society where most things are planned, Born in Brazil serves as a wake-up call to the alarmingly high rates of cesarean section around the world. Indeed, frequent articles published in medical journals and newspapers throughout the world show that cesarean rates are on the rise in the United States, South America, and Asia. Born in Brazil brings to the screen an urgent and essential message. As it explores the relationship between birth and technology, and the pressures of modern society, this documentary provides critical insight on our desire to control the unpredictable by relying on calculated medical procedures.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95


Within Sight: The Cinema of Lombardi   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Jose Luis Ridoutt Polar
Documentary   60 minutes   2003
With English subtitles
Within Sight is a documentary highlighting the cinematic career of Peru’s finest director, Francisco Lombardi. Lombardi’s films represent a variety of genres, ranging from black comedies to thrillers and psychological dramas, but viewing them holistically through the trajectory of Lombardi’s career allows those familiar with Lombardi’s oeuvre and those approaching it for the first time to see both the common themes and constant innovations that have characterized the creative work of this seminal Latin American filmmaker. Within Sight begins with the narrative of how Lombardi, a movie-obsessed young man from the provinces, erupted onto the stagnant Peruvian film scene of the late 1970s with the films Dead at Sunrise (1977) and Immoral Tales (The Friends) (1978) which represented a typically Peruvian reality that had never before been depicted on the screen, using Lima’s most unglamorous architecture for his locations, quintessentially Peruvian dialogue in his scripts, and characters drawn from the social reality of Lima’s various social classes. Lombardi’s work always retained this keen eye for specifically Peruvian social realities, but the films that followed would also engage idiosyncratic and psychologically complex characters, whether grappling with violence and madness (Death of a Magnate [1980]), sexuality (Maruja in Hell [1983]), or confrontations between warring ideologies and values (The City and the Dogs [1985]). The Lion’s Den (1988), dealing with the crossfire between the Peruvian army and Marxist guerillas, was both brilliant and highly controversial, initiating a trend in Lombardi’s work of the turbulent 1990s to comment on Peru’s conditions of political violence and social instability, as in Fallen From Heaven (1990). Although ostensibly apolitical, Under the Skin (1996) and No Mercy (1993) - a Peruvian setting of the Dostoevsky classic Crime and Punishment – deal with themes of judgment and impunity that reflect the discovery of human rights atrocities and its aftermath in Peru. Lombardi’s subsequent films continue No Mercy’s exploration of the particular psychological dilemmas of the young, as in Don’t Tell Anyone (1998) and Captain Pantoja and the Special Services (1999), which explore sexuality, and Red Ink (2000), about coming into one’s own professionally. The revelation of the fall of the Fujimori dictatorship provided a backdrop for the simultaneous stories of Out of Sight (2003), Lombardi’s most recent film, from which this documentary takes its title. Within Sight relies on commentary by the filmmaker himself to provide an intimate understanding of his themes and style, juxtaposing interviews with actors, critics, and writers who have worked with Lombardi with evocative scenes taken from the films themselves. While these excerpts from Lombardi’s work in many ways speak for themselves, their inclusion in this documentary provides an unprecedented look at work as an organic whole, revealing the long-term trends of this influential artist’s most important work.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95


Bracero Program: Sad Recollections a.k.a. Seasonal Farm Laborers Program: Sad Recollections   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Jorge Luis Vazquez
Documentary   26 minutes   2002
With English subtitles
The Braceros Seasonal Farm Laborers Program was an agreement signed in 1942 between the U.S. and Mexican governments to cover wartime labor shortages in the United States. Between 1942 and 1964, almost 5 million Mexican workers worked in the U.S. under the Braceros Program. This short documentary recounts the story of these workers half a century later, as they struggle to right an injustice done to them so long ago.One of the clauses of the financial agreement of the Braceros Program was that 10% of their wages would be deposited in a “savings fund” and paid to them upon their return to Mexico. These wages, however, which total more than $350 million, have been distributed to a mere 2% of the almost 5 million braceros who are entitled to them. Braceros: Sad Recollections narrates the struggle of the now elderly bracero workers to reclaim the wages stolen from them. Assembling from across Mexico, the former braceros, beautifully shot in crisp black and white, recall their long ago experiences in the United States and describe the process by which they are demanding that their claims be recognized and their contributions rewarded.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95


Odd Number, The   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Manuel Antin
Feature   90 minutes   1960
With English subtitles
The Odd Number is one of the best-known films of legendary Argentine filmmaker Manuel Antín. Antín is known for his inspiration in literature and his emotionally taut portrayals of tormented internal struggle. His thought-provoking films have been widely influential in his native country – in an epoch when Latin American filmmakers dealt with their nations’ marginality, Antín strove to unearth deeply human universals. The Odd Number is a moody exploration of complex ties of love and jealousy. The film is an adaptation of a story by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, in which a mother writes her son and his wife in Paris that they will soon receive a visit from his brother … his dead brother. The past slowly unfolds as the film brilliantly weaves together narrative strands from the past and the present to reveal a psychological terrain full of deceit, sexual envy, guilt, and death in the relationship between the two brothers, the wife, and the mother. Both the mother in Argentina and the couple in France slowly succumb to madness and obsession as haunting memories infiltrate the meaningless routine of their lives. Shot in brooding black-and-white in Buenos Aires and Paris and scored to a brittle modernist soundtrack, the film is a masterful existential drama about the persistence of ghosts in the gaps between the unsaid and the revealed.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95




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