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Editor's Note:
LAVA announces a ten percent discount on our titles released this spring. This offer is good until June 30, 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.
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10% Discounts on All New Titles
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Afroargentines Get Details and Purchasing Info
Jorge Fortes, Diego Ceballos
Documentary 75 minutes 2002
With English subtitles
“Most Argentines, if you ask, will tell you: ‘In Argentina there are no black people.’” So opens AFROARGENTINES, a film which unearths the hidden history of black people in Argentina and their contributions to Argentine culture and society, from the slaves who fought in the revolutionary wars against Spain, to the contemporary struggles of black Argentines against racism and marginalization. The film uses historical footage from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, but is mostly based on interviews with black Argentines from a variety of backgrounds: intellectuals and taxi drivers, immigrants from Africa and native Afroargentines. The story that unfolds provides a counternarrative to the national myth of Argentina’s exclusively European heritage. Prizewinner at the 2003 CINESUL Festival, AFROARGENTINES is a refutation of the pervasive exclusion of blacks from official Argentine history. It shows that the first Argentine president, Bernardino Rivadavia, was of African descent. It details black Argentines’ important participation in the revolutionary wars. It shows how tango, a touchstone for Argentine national identity, is rooted in milonga, candombe, cañiegue, and other musical and dance forms of 19th century black Argentines. AFROARGENTINES also exposes how the whitewashing of the Argentine self-image came about. Racist ideas about blacks as dangerous for national progress brought about such genocidal official practices as the drafting of blacks into the most dangerous positions in the army and their quarantining during the cholera epidemics, even as race mixture both diminished the black population and spread African blood throughout the Argentine population, including those who now consider themselves “white.” But the descendants of the first black Argentines live on, their numbers bolstered by black immigration from Cape Verde (such as the parents of Afroargentine co-director Jorge Fortes) in the early 20th century, and in the last 10 years, from West Africa. These immigrants have made their own contributions and faced their own challenges in Argentine society.AFROARGENTINES responds to contemporary racism and marginalization by presenting the voices of individual Afroargentines, who recount their experiences of workplace discrimination, skinhead violence, the difficulty of interracial relationships, the double burden of black women, and the dangerous internalization of stereotypes by black Argentines themselves. They describe how Afroargentines have resisted racism by recourse to the media, through music, and through an incipient but growing political mobilization. AFROARGENTINES provides an important challenge to the marginalization of blacks in Argentine official history by rescuing the story of Argentina’s black cultural legacy from oblivion. It is also a gripping tale of the ways in which individual black Argentines have resisted and coped with everyday racism and are claiming their rightful place within Argentine history and culture.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Calabazos del Sol Get Details and Purchasing Info
Fernando Restrepo
Documentary 15 minutes 2002
With English subtitles
CALABAZOS DEL SOL is an experimental visual project that uses the metaphor of the “calabazo” to describe the way in which the children of Colombia’s troubled Chocó province experience the poverty and political conflict that they have witnessed. The calabazo is a pumpkin-like fruit, which in Latin America is dried and used as a natural container. Like little calabazos (“calabacitos”), the film explains, children can be filled and nurtured with different kinds of experiences. The experiences that flow from the calabazo will affect the way the children construct their own environment in the future. The film uses images of children in the creative process to show that with love, even the children of trauma can go on to make positive contributions to their communities. Against a backdrop of poverty and violence in this marginalized region, the film argues, “the way to counteract these devastating elements is through culture, recognizing the diversity of the people, their territory, their history, and their dignity.”
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Gringo-thon Get Details and Purchasing Info
Greg Berger
Short 17 minutes 2003
With English subtitles
In this brilliant and hilarious parody, filmmaker Greg Berger takes on the theme of Mexican perspectives of the U.S., its citizens, and its imperial project by turning them on their ear. During the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, a misplaced gringo in Mexico City helplessly watches the atrocities through the lens of Mexican television news. His despair turns to hope when he observes some of the millions of Mexico City street vendors who fight their own daily "war" for survival on the streets. Tongue planted firmly in cheek, the film shows how their tenacity inspires him to take to the streets of Mexico's capital, when, in stark role reversal, he sells chewing gum and washes windows to raise money for a guerrilla army to take out Bush. With his shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and horrendously mangled Mexican slang, Berger’s hapless gringo still manages to elicit support for his cause from the bemused Mexicans he meets. GRINGO-THON is an expression of protest from an expatriate living abroad, and also a subversive and wickedly funny meditation on the complexities of "gringo" identity in an American continent whose millions of inhabitants misunderstand each other.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Crosses Get Details and Purchasing Info
Laura Irene Arvizu
Documentary 18 minutes 2002
With English subtitles
Every year, thousands of undocumented immigrants cross the U.S.-Mexico border in their struggle to overcome poverty and make a better life for themselves and their families. Always risky, this crossing has become far more dangerous since the U.S. Border Patrol instituted Operation Gatekeeper in 1995. Although this initiative seeks to make the U.S. border more secure, it has not stemmed the flow of immigrants; its main effect has been to divert the routes by which they cross into the inhospitable desert and mountain regions, where every year, hundreds of migrants die from exposure and dehydration. Almost 1,800 men, women, and children have died a horrible death since Operation Gatekeeper was implemented. CROSSES documents the efforts of artists and activists to bring the disastrous effects of Operation Gatekeeper to the conscience of the people of both the U.S. and Mexico, and to pressure the governments of both countries to make efforts to find a more humane way to deal with the question of migration. In the last few years, these activists and artists have reclaimed the wall that divides the border as a backdrop for art dramatizing the plight of the migrants. In several of these projects, every death is represented by a cross bearing the name of the victim – in many cases, there is nothing to write except “not identified.” These installations, mounted directly on the wall, serve simultaneously as objects of tremendous aesthetic power, as a cry of protest to the U.S. and Mexican governments, as a call to the public, as a warning to would-be migrants, and as a poignant memorial so that the striving dreams of the migrants’ lives and the needless tragedy of their deaths not be forgotten.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Lesbians in Buenos Aires Get Details and Purchasing Info
Santiago Garcia
Documentary 82 minutes 2002
With English subtitles
At work, at play, demonstrating in the street, and cooking dinner in the kitchen, this absorbing documentary features a variety of women’s voices speaking of the lives they have made as lesbians in the Argentine capital. Speaking of their daily lives and first loves, of negotiating with masculinist Argentine society, of politics, of coming out to their parents, and of having children of their own, the testimonies of these women depict lesbian life in contemporary Latin America.The differences between their experiences are indicative of the diversity of the lesbian community in Buenos Aires. One woman, when she came out to her family, was sent to a gynecologist and spent her adolescence in psychotherapy. Another was simply kicked out of her house. One couple holds hands in public, while another woman married a man – and later found a lifelong partner and had a child. Many of the differences are generational: older lesbians remember being arrested for merely going to gay dance clubs, but the younger generation has been able to take advantage of a slow cultural shift and the burgeoning Argentine gay and lesbian movement. All of the women recognize the importance of overcoming their invisibility in Argentine society, but while some don’t want their differences to be sensationalized, others are quite outspoken in their political activism.As women and as lesbians, they are subject to double discrimination, but the film’s eloquent and sympathetic protagonists do not see themselves as victims. They are in many ways typical Argentines, with the same passion for work, family, sports, and their beloved city as any other. This engrossing film shows how these tenacious women carve out purposeful lives for themselves without compromising who they are.
Purchase Price: $ 150.00
Other Road, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Oscar Orzabal Quintana
Feature 90 minutes 1959
With English subtitles
This lost Puerto Rican classic is a black-and-white musical melodrama from the golden years of Latin American cinema. The action unfolds in the picturesque setting of a mountain coffee plantation at harvest time, where a young Puerto Rican Hamlet must deal with his widowed mother’s blooming love for a handsome stranger who appears one day to change their lives forever. Embittered by the drunken foreman and his dead father’s jealous mother, he resolves not to let the man stay, even as the stranger’s nobility and hard work endear him to his mother and the farmworkers. The film was one of the few major productions of the tiny Puerto Rican film industry. Tragically, this important document was lost soon after its premier. Found years later rotting on the banks of a river, it has been painstakingly restored and is available to the public for the first time in 40 years. Set in the idyllic Puerto Rican countryside and featuring rare footage of folkloric peasant music, The Other Road is a rare glimpse into the bucolic country life of the Puerto Rican past.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Jews in Chile: Emigrants Through Time Get Details and Purchasing Info
Cristian Leighton
Documentary 52 minutes 2002
With English subtitles
This documentary provides a window into Chile’s Jewish community of some 20,000 by presenting in detail the lives and stories of three of its members. Presented in their everyday routines of work, family, friendship, and worship, the speakers express their attitudes toward religion and work, and reflect on their own stereotypes and the ones they are subjected to. The juxtaposition of the very different experiences of these speakers illustrates the complexity and richness of Jewish identity in Latin America. Kohava Ezra, an Israeli woman who came to Chile with her Chilean husband, speaks frankly of her feelings about Chile. Her new home is the place where she was able to become a successful entrepreneur, and where for the first time she could have friendships with people of Arab descent. Nonetheless, she criticizes the Chilean attitudes toward work and gender roles, and emphasizes her commitment to her homeland.Lía Weinberg, however, feels far more comfortable in Chile than when she visited Israel. A young Chilean-born woman, she has actively sought out her Jewish roots. She recounts how this search led her to her grandfather and his experience at the concentration camp at Treblinka. Together, they describe their visit to the camp. Her awareness of her grandfather’s story has made her sensitive to the constant threat of subtle prejudice in her daily life, even as she lives much like any other Chilean. Moishe Guzmán, also Chilean-born, narrates the history of Chile’s traditional Jewish community, into which he was born. His ties to Israel, where he lived for 10 years, are deep. He, his son, and his twin brother, who lost his life in the Yom Kippur war, all served in the Israeli army. Moishe eloquently debunks stereotypes about Jews and explains to the audience the fundamental traditions of Judaism and their meaning to him and his family. “To be a Jew,” Moishe says, “is a way of life: being, living, eating, and thinking as the Torah teaches.” And yet he never stops being a Chilean. In the interlacing of his story and the others, we see how Judaism remains vibrant in the Latin American setting.
Purchase Price: $ 200.00
Free to Fly: The U.S.-Cuba Link (For Educational Institutions) Get Details
Estela Bravo
Documentary 33 minutes 2004
With English subtitles
This is the story of the struggle to maintain links between the Cuban and American people. The U.S. embargo on Cuba has severely limited the degree to which U.S. citizens can legally travel to Cuba. This film begins with the idea that families have the right to see one another and that U.S. citizens have the constitutional right to go where they please, arguing that such travel strengthens family ties, fosters cultural exchange and builds understanding. Nonetheless, the film explains, over the last 30 years, anti-Castro activists have engaged in violent intimidation tactics of beatings, political assassinations, and the bombing of businesses and even a plane to prevent the expansion of U.S. travel to Cuba. Still, a variety of human rights organizations, businesspeople, tourists, politicians of both the Democratic and Republican parties, and ordinary Cuban-Americans with family members on the island have continued to do all they can to ensure access to Cuba.
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