SPLALit - Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Literature and Culture

Friday, December 08, 2006

Books of the year

From this year's The Guardian's selection

Kiran Desai: A new translation of Roberto Bolaño's Distant Star (Harvill), pertinent once again now we're back to discussing the machinery of dictatorship, of institutionalised distrust. This book charts the destruction of bohemian life in Chile, the corruption of poetry.

Hisham Matar: Javier Marias' Written Lives (Canongate) is a wonderfully luxurious collection of short biographical pieces on authors the Spanish writer so clearly enjoys evoking. Marias's gaze is affectionate, humorous and penetrating.

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Latin American Literature

La Malinche and Inés Suárez

For centuries both women have been reviled as collaborators in Spanish conquests of the new world that verged on genocide. La Malinche was an Aztec turncoat who helped Hernán Cortés conquer Mexico; Inés Suárez was a Spanish seamstress who joined another conquistador, Pedro de Valdivia, in slaughtering the inhabitants of Chile.

Now two of Latin America’s female literary giants, Laura Esquivel and Isabel Allende, have come to the rescue by writing novels casting them as misunderstood heroines who could be role models for today’s women.

Some critics have balked at the revisionism, saying the novels gloss over the rape and savage subjugation that accompanied the 16th century colonial invasions of Central and South America.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

The Natural Order of Things by Antonio Lobo Antunes

The natural choice after reading José Saramago is to read António Lobo Antunes, another leading Portuguese writer with several novels already available in English translations. Reading these two novelists, as well as João de Melo, gives the impression that there is some very exciting fiction coming out of Portugal. The Natural Order of Things is a novel in which the very theme is the coexistence, or simultaneity, of the past and the present, and of the real and the unreal. Antunes’s technical skill in getting this across is alone worth looking at. Among other stylistic feats, he writes amazing sentences in which two scenes, years apart in time, take place at once. He is compared to Nabokov, among others, for the time shifts, the song-like riffs and the very particular repetitions which are also reminiscent of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things.

32nd Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival

As the 32nd Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival headed into its final stretch, Francisco Vargas' "The Violin," Jorge Duran's "Forbidden to Forbid" and Juan Carlos Valdivia's "American Visa" figured as favorites to take top plaudits at Huelva's kudofest.

In his first edition as Huelva fest director, Eduardo Trias put together a strong competition with three lesser-known competish titles also currying good buzz: Alejandro Doria's healing priest drama "The Hands," Santiago Loza's femme friendship story "4 Women, Barefoot," and Chilean Alberto Fuguet's frustrated musician tale "For Rent."

Playing out-of-competish, fest opener, flamenco musical comedy "Por que se frotan las patitas?," went over strongly on its world preem last Saturday.

"Visa" and "Hands" also figure among the six nominations announced at Huelva for best foreign Spanish language film at January's Goya Awards.

Other contenders are Mexican docu "In the Pit," Chile's sex drama "In Bed," Ecuador's road movie "How Much Further" and Colombia's foreign-lingo Oscar candidate "A Ton of Luck."

The Republic of Poetry by Martín Espada

What sort of place is "The Republic of Poetry"? As portrayed in the title poem of Martín Espada's dynamic eighth collection, it's a place where poets eat for free in restaurants, where "poets rent a helicopter/ to bombard the national palace/ with poems on bookmarks," and where the "the guard at the airport/ will not allow you to leave the country/ until you declaim a poem for her/ and she says Ah! Beautiful."
While such a land might sound like a fanciful literature-loving utopia, what's described here is the very real republic of Chile -- to which the poem is dedicated, and whose culture and recent history provide the lion's share of inspiration for the book. Yet Chile is not the only muse here: The book's three sections provide a triptych of metaphorical "republics" of poetry, including the poetry of elegy -- where both the past and the dead are visited -- and the poetry of protest. Throughout, poetry is shown to bear the power to dissolve, reshape and illuminate the borders of time and place.

Espada, a Brooklyn native whose parents hailed from Puerto Rico, has long been inspired by Latin American poetry (of which he is a widely published translator), and most especially by Chile's most esteemed and extraordinary poet, Pablo Neruda. Today Espada teaches courses on Neruda, along with creative writing classes, as a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. And in his own poetry (for which he has won the American Book Award), he often seems to work in the tradition of Neruda, displaying a vibrant, far-reaching and distinctively openhearted imagination on matters both political and personal.

Lower City directed by Sergio Machado

Let's face it, love triangles can be a drag on film. The sex might be diverting but two guys fighting over the same girl (it's almost never the other way round) usually means there's no real love story. The blokes are too busy with their cockfight. It's a phallocentric form.

Lower City is a bit different. It does have both a real (simulated) and metaphoric cockfight, but it also encompasses three corners of a bruising and compelling love story. It's a brilliantly fresh, immediate and intimate film from a young Brazilian director who is announcing his arrival. It's also quite sexy.

Sergio Machado is 38, from Bahia, the most African of the Brazilian states.

He has worked with Walter Salles since being recommended by the great novelist Jorge Amado, whose books made Bahia famous. Salles (who made The Motorcycle Diaries) produced Lower City, which is set mostly in Salvador, the Bahian capital.

Read More

The trailer is available here.
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Latin American Film

In the National Board of Review Awards, held yesterday, Pedro Almodovar's "Volver", which swept the European Film Awards at the start of the week, won best foreign language film.
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Spanish Film

reading others' words

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel as seen by edify. Babel is a difficult and challenging experience, and doubt I'll ever watch it again, but I don't really need to; it stays with you and never lets go.

***
DC's found some Juan Goytisolo's fans, quoting Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Edmund White and Orhan Pamuk.

***
Mantex on Alejo Carpentier - His literary style is a wonderful combination of dazzling images and a rich language, full of the technical jargon of whatever subject he touches on - be it music, architecture, painting, history, or agriculture.

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Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Almodovar's colors

An article about Viva Pedro! festival, a retrospective of Almodovar's films, and the predominance of Red

Attending this month's Pedro Almodovar film festival will have you seeing red.

Not from anger, disillusionment or disappointment. Far from it.

Literal red. The brilliant Spanish director's movies are awash in the color, symbolically used to evoke revenge, murder and, most of all, passion.

In "The Flower of My Secret," a woman's sexy red dress at once captures her physical desire and her bottomless desperation. In "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," a scorned woman's smart red pantsuit signals her determination to get even.

In "Matador," a fantastic yet overlooked thriller, the action culminates with lovers completing a murder-suicide pact, their nude bodies collapsing onto a bed of crimson bullfighter's capes at the moment a solar eclipse turns the Castillian countryside the shade of blood.

The bold use of color is just one of the many stylistic ticks you pick up when you watch Almodovar's best films back to back. And that's what makes Cinema 21's two-week Viva Pedro! festival particularly enticing. The double-feature screenings that begin Friday (and precede the Dec. 22 opening of Almodovar's latest, "Volver") span two decades of work, pairing the director's hits with lesser-known rarities. Seeing these eight films during the course of days, not years, you notice artistic brushstrokes and recurring themes that might otherwise get lost.

Lola Alvarez Bravo by Elizabeth Ferrer

Lola Alvarez Bravo did not set out to be the "first woman photographer" of Mexico, but that is how she is remembered today. Wife of Mexico's leading photojournalist Manuel Alvarez Bravo, her influence extends to the latest generation of Mexico's female photographers, many of whom studied under her tutelage. Bravo's contribution is now being acknowledged through an assessment of her work by scholar Elizabeth Ferrer titled Lola Alvarez Bravo.
(...)
As photographer, educator, and curator Bravo traveled the country documenting rural areas, indigenous people, and cultural traditions. Her imagery was inspired by "frolicking," she said - a playful description that typifies her approach to her subjects.

Colleagues such as surrealist painters Frida Kahlo and Marie Izquierdo, as well as visits from acclaimed French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, encouraged her to weave both surreal and traditional elements into her work.

Alfaguara Prize 2007 Jury

Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa will preside to the jury of the 10th edition of the Alfaguara Prize 2007. Like in previous editions, the composition of the rest of the jury will not become public until the award is announced.
From his first edition in 1998, outstanding writers have presided over the Jury of the Alfaguara Prize: Carlos Fuentes, Eduardo Mendoza, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Jorge Semprún, Luis Mateo Ten, Jose Saramago, Manuel Caballero Bonald and Angeles Mastretta.
The Alfaguara Prize is one of the most important literary awards in Spanish language.
Previously awarded authors include, last year's winner Peruvian Santiago Roncagliolo with Abril Rojo, Graciela Montes, Ema Wolf, Laura Restrepo, Xavier Velasco, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Elena Poniatowska, Clara Sánchez, Manuel Vicent.
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Latin American Literature, Spanish Literature

Interview with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

An interview with Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu about his last film "Babel", which is tipped for an Oscar.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has become one of the most acclaimed directors in Hollywood with just three films - Amores Perros, 21 Grams and, now, Babel, perhaps the film he's received the most press for and one that will likely lead him to an Oscar nomination for best director. Part of the recent wave of Mexican directors, including Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron, Inarritu is a part of a new era of filmmakers who are willing to challenge viewers to see something new in the medium. As great as Perros and Grams were, Babel is Inarritu's first masterpiece, a fascinating dissection of culture, communication, and crisis in the new millennium.

What attracted studios to Babel

I don't know. I think maybe the [studio] people are tired to be making the same kinds of films. They feel that there's something, that maybe they can bet on some elements. Maybe they feel like the package makes sense and they trust in the elements, like the story, the director, the actors, and the way I pitched them. And, I presented them in a way that they trust. I think all of these people, maybe as you are, are bored, of doing and seeing the same thing. So, I gather that's what drives them, kind of the curiosity about this film.