Apr 20, 2006

WTF is Latin Cinema?

If there is one thing that drives us Latins crazy is when we all get mixed in the same basket, as my dear friend Marta points out.
Oh, so they are kinda dark skinned and passionate and speak something other than English, then it must be Latins. Case in point, Variety's news about the 2006 Cannes Film Festival competition lineup:
LONDON — Latin cinema is the big winner, while U.S. and French filmers hold their place, in the Official Selection of the 59th Cannes Film Festival (May 17-28), announced in Paris today.
What exactly is Latin cinema, may I ask? Does it come from LatinLand?
It's a way that Hollywood people can wrap their little marketing minds around several films that hail from very different directors from different countries with even different languages. So there are films from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Mexico in competition. If you think about it, three of those are European countries, one is in Latin America. Bonus points if you guess which. Nobody ever thinks of mentioning Anglo cinema for films from the US, Ireland, Australia or Canada, Wales, Scotland. You get the picture.
In any case, the president of the Jury is Wong Kar Wai (whose exquisite movies rather bore me) but there are some very smart people in it: the great Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, director Patrice Leconte. Sounds like the deliberations could be fun. I hope they don't go too pretentious on us.

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