Cine Las Americas International, 'Desperate Living,' 'Lluvias De Verano' and 'The Water Magician'
Cine Las Americas International Film Festival
Cine Las Americas Media Arts Center in Austin will host the eighth Cine Las Americas International Film Festival April 20-24. The festival features a selection of dramatic and documentary films made by or about Latin and indigenous groups from across North America. Cine Las Americas will grant awards for best film in a variety of categories, including first narrative feature, documentary feature, films made in Texas, and youth films. The festival continues through April 24. Program highlights include "Hecho en Tejas," a selection of films made by Latinos living in Texas, and Youth Day, an entire day of screenings of films made by filmmakers 19-years-old or younger.
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Desperate Living
Dir. John Waters; writ. Waters; feat. Mink Stole, Liz Renay, Jean Hill, Edith Massey (R)
Fans of the popular musical Hairspray! who have been turned on to John Waters films might be surprised by Desperate Living, made before his crossover success in the '80s. The film is trash at its best (worst?), following a rich housewife and her maid who, having murdered her husband (by sitting on his face, no less), flee to Mortville, a shanty town made of garbage and populated by sociopaths. A typical Waters filth-fest ensues, testing the limits of humor and the intestinal fortitude of its audience.
Desperate Living screens at 10:15pm Wednesday, April 27, at the Alamo Drafthouse, 1255 SW Loop 410. Admission is $2.
Lluvias De Verano
Dir. Carlos Diegues; writ. Diegues; feat. Jofre Soares, Christina Ache, Rodolfo Arena (NR)
Also known as Chuvas de Verano, this award-winning 1978 film from famed Brazilian writer and director Carlos Diegues tells the story of an older man accustomed to watching his life slide idly by until one day he discovers a terrorist hidden in the building, a secret about his son-in-law, and his own love for a comely neighbor. The discoveries shock him out of retirement and fully into the comic plot that plays with the audience's preconceptions of the elderly. Diegues was a central figure of the Brazilian Cinema Novo movement in the '60s and '70s, turning his studies in law and social reform into films that criticized social structures in Brazil.
Lluvias de Verano screens at 4pm Sunday, April 24, and at 7pm Wednesday, April 27, at the Instituto de México, 600 Hemisfair Park. Admission is free.
The Water Magician
Dir. Mizoguchi Kenji; writ. Izumi Kyoka, Masuda Shinji, Higashibojo Yasunaga, Tateoka Kennosuke; feat. Irie Takako, Okada Tokihiko (NR)
Japanese silent film director Mizoguchi Kenji made nearly 90 films before his death in 1956, but only a fraction of them have received the international notoriety that accompanies Akira Kurosawa's and Ozu Yasujiro's filmographies. The Water Magician, adapted from the novel by Izumi Kyoka, is a 1933 production starring Irie Takako, the beautiful star of Japan's silent film era, as a famous water magician who falls for a carriage driver (Tokihiko) and promises to put him through law school. Needless to say, not everything goes as planned. The screening accompanies three works from the McNay's Taisho¯ Chic exhibition that depict Takako.
The Water Magician screens at 7pm Thursday, April 28 at the McNay Art Museum, 6000 N. New Braunfels. Admission is free.
