It Came from Kuchar

Showing at the Mar del Plata Film Festival: It Came from Kuchar, directed by Jennifer Kroot

Synopsis from the film festival's website:

Identical twins George and Mike Kuchar -self-taught, libertarian and ingenious- have been practicing what they preach for the last 50 years: filming with no money, with an extraterrestrial creativity and with a festively camp spirit. This documentary celebrates 50 years of happy marriage between the Kuchars and the cinema with interviews to the twins, to declared fans (John Waters, Guy Maddin, Atom Egoyan), to superstars whom the brothers created out of mud -or something worse- with their philosophy of “anybody can act”, and of course, with generous doses of films like Sins Of The Fleshapoids, Hold Me While I’m Naked and Pagan Rhapsody. While George motivates a new generation of students during the shooting of The Fury Of Frau Frankenstein in a Fellinesque classroom, Kroot, the director of It Came from Kuchar, traces the story the brothers, from their origins in the Bronx, a neighbourhood transformed into an impromptu Hollywood due to home-made remakes of classic melodramas, until their jump to the underground firmament of the seventies, together with Warhol, Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger, where they were called the “8 mm Mozarts”. In doing so, Kroot recovers a secret history which places the Kuchars where they belong: the movie screen.

Stay the Same Never Change

Apparently the posts I've done up until now for the Mar del Plata Film Festival have all been for the Film Festival in 2007. So, um, disregard. New posts will be from this year's festival, I promise.

Showing at the 2009 Mar del Plata Film Festival: Stay the Same Never Change, directed by Laurel Nakadate

Synopsis from the festival's website:

Visual artist Laurel Nakadate didn’t need a story line or a plot or anything similar to make her first film one of the biggest surprises of the last edition of the Sundance Festival. Instead, she filmed a group of girls from the suburbs of Kansas City in their real homes, dressed in the clothes they usually wear and living (so to speak, unless you think boys in the Middle West have a black digital rectangle over their eyes) the lives they live. The result is like an absorbing and odd photo album; a harsh look on adolescence, its long days full of boredom, awkwardness, loneliness and hard and contradictory romances. “I hate myself…I am an optimist person”, says one of these girls who, accompanied by Owen Ashworth´s lo-fi music (whose alias, “Casiotone for the Painfully Alone”, is very significant), act as themselves in the sometimes languid and sometimes horrifying beautiful vignettes in Stay The Same Never Change. Like The Virgin Suicides without a story, left only with the rarefied mood of Eugenides´ novel (with a sometimes innocent and sometimes perversely voyeuristic viewpoint), Nakadate captures the dramatic banality and vague anguish of the teenage hearts at the core of the United States.

Fresh Air

Showing at the Mar del Plata Film Festival: Fresh Air, directed by Agnes Kocsis

Synopsis from the film festival's website:

Viola is a beautiful woman. Angela is ashamed of Viola. The communication between them has become almost impossible. They both have habits bordering on obsession. They only meet to watch their favorite TV series; they never miss an episode. Viola works where nobody else wants to and is looking for a true man. Angela wants to be a designer. They want to escape their monotonous lives and find something new, a change of scenery.

I think this video is related in some way, but... you know... Hungarian.

Grbavica

Showing at the Mar del Plata Film Festival: Grbavica, directed by Jasmila Zbanic

Synopsis from the film's website:

Single mother Esma lives with her 12-year-old daughter Sara in Sarajevo’s Grbavica neighborhood, where life is still being reconstructed after the 1990s Yugoslav wars.
Unable to make ends meet with the meager government aid she receives, Esma takes a job as a cocktail waitress in a nightclub. Working all night is difficult for Esma physically and it also forces her to reluctantly spend less time with her daughter. Still haunted by violent events in her past, Esma attends group therapy sessions at the local Women’s Center. In addition to relying on her best friend Sabina, Esma also finds a kindred spirit in Pelda, a compassionate male co-worker from the nightclub.

Feisty tomboy Sara begins to put soccer aside as she develops a close friendship with classmate Samir. The two sensitive young teenagers feel a strong bond because both lost their fathers in the war. But Samir is surprised to hear Sara doesn’t know the details of her father’s noble death.

Sara’s father becomes an issue when she requires the certificate proving he died a shaheed, a war martyr, so that she can receive a discount for an upcoming school trip. Esma claims acquiring the certificate is difficult since his body has yet to be found. Meanwhile, Esma searches desperately to borrow money to pay for Sara’s trip.

Confused Sara becomes violently upset when some classmates tease her for not being on the list of martyrs’ children. Realizing her mother has paid full price for the school trip, Sara aggressively demands the truth. Esma breaks down and brutally explains how the girl was conceived through rape in a POW camp. As painful as their confrontation is, it is Esma’s first real step toward overcoming her deep trauma. Despite Sara’s hurt, there is still an opening for a renewed relationship between mother and daughter.

Reinalda del Carmen, mi mamá y yo

Showing at the Mar del Plata Film Festival: Reinalda del Carmen, mi mamá y yo, directed by Lorena Giachino Torréns

Synopsis from the film festival's website:

In a documentary mode, the filmmaker tries to recover and rebuild the story of the relationship between Jacqueline, her mother who lost her memory over a year ago after a diabetic deterioration, and Reinalda del Carmen, her best college friend, detained and disappeared during the Chilean dictatorship and repression. Testimonies and a visit to that friendship's different scenes reveal the traces of the relation between Jacqueline and Reinalda, who was expecting a child at the time of her detention. A destiny we know not, a faulty act in the recovery of memory; a reflection on friendship, motherhood and loss.

Esas no son penas

Showing at the Mar del Plata Film Festival: Esas no son penas, directed by Anahí Hoeneisen and Daniel Andrade

Synopsis from the film's website:

Un día cualquiera cinco mujeres quiteñas, amigas en la adolescencia, deciden volver a verse al cabo de catorce años. Elena está esperando a su segundo hijo, Marina vive los avatares de la infidelidad, Diana, tempranamente viuda, comparte su soledad junto a su hija quinceañera y Tamara no ha abandonado su alocada vida en los clubes, entre chicos y drogas. Esa noche visitarán a Alejandra, consumida por una enfermedad. ESAS NO SON PENAS es un retrato de grupo, en el que cada quien aporta las luces y sombras de su paradójica condición de clase media, en una ciudad enclavada en los Andes. En ese encuentro, fortuito y desacostumbrado, estas mujeres tejerán –en un vaivén entre la culpa y la esperanza, la soledad y la fraternidad- un tapiz de emotividades que estallan en mitad de la aparente rutina de lo cotidiano.

In other words (i.e. English words, from the festival's website):

Esas no son penas recounts a day in the life of five thirty-year-old women who were school friends and haven't seen each other for fourteen years. Elena is expecting her second child. Marina is going through the ups and downs of infidelity. Diana is a widow and shares her loneliness with her teenage daughter. Tamara spends her life between drugs and too brief relationships. That night, the four of them will visit Alejandra, who has been seriously ill.
A film in which each character shows the shadows and lights of their paradoxical middle-class lives. During this unusual encounter, the five women will build, with guilt and desire, loneliness and solidarity, the tapestry of emotions weaved by the apparent monotony of their lives.

4 Elements

Showing at the Mar del Plata Film Festival: 4 Elements, directed by Jiska Rickels

Synopsis from the film's website:

4 Elements consists of four chapters that each show the struggle of mankind with the different elements.

FIRE shows the "smoke-jumpers" of Siberia that control the fire but also shows how they paradoxically make a fire in the base camp to cook their dinner.

WATER tells the story of the King crab fishers in Alaska and shows the men during the season of four days and nights.

In EARTH two mineworkers crawl like ants between the gigantic machines and it is shown how they scrub each others back after a long and exhausting day.

In AIR astronauts are followed during their heavy physical trainings till the point where they are being launched into space.

4 Elements shows, in a poetic way, the struggle of mankind with the four elements. Four places on earth where companionship and mutual trust are still of vital importance.