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Events for September 25, 2011
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AMBULANTE Film FestivalSun, Sep 25, 2011
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Receptions & Special Events
Admission is free. Reservations required. Reservations will be accepted beginning Tuesday, August 30, at 9 a.m. Please check http://usc/edu/visionsandvoices for an updated festival schedule and to RSVP.
Founded in 2005 by Gael GarcÃa Bernal, Diego Luna and Pablo Cruz, AMBULANTE is a nonprofit organization focused on producing, distributing and exhibiting documentaries in Mexico. Each year, the AMBULANTE organization, in collaboration with Canana, Cinépolis and the Morelia International Film Festival, organizes a touring film festival that brings more than 70 documentaries to nearly 200 venues across twelve states in Mexico. Join us as AMBULANTE comes to Los Angeles for the first time! This festival features groundbreaking international documentaries, both current and classic, that are socially or cinematically important. By traveling with these works, sharing them in different cities and towns and bringing communities together, AMBULANTE fosters a critical vision, generating a collective consciousness about how we perceive and understand our realities.
SCREENING SCHEDULE
Schedule is subject to change. Discussions with the filmmakers will accompany each screening!
Saturday, September 24
El Ambulante (Argentina, 2009, 84 minutes)
Directed by Eduardo de la Serna, Lucas Marcheggiano and Adriana Yurcovich
Benda Bilili! (France, 2010, 84 minutes)
Directed by Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tullaye
Sunday, September 25
12 Onzas (Mexico, 2010, 54 minutes)
Directed by Patricio Serna
The Two Escobars (Colombia-USA, 100 minutes)
Directed by Jeff and Michael Zimbalist
ABOUT THE FILMS AND FILMMAKERS
El Ambulante (The Peddler)
Driving his dilapidated car, a man arrives at a small village. He proposes to the village authorities that he make a feature film with the village people, including the authorities themselves, as main characters. In return, the traveler only asks for lodging and meals until the filmâs release, 30 days later. The offer is accepted and for the next month, the small town lives by the rhythm set by the lonely filmmaker.
Bios:
Eduardo de la Serna, Lucas Marcheggiano and Adriana Yurcovich live in Buenos Aires. In the last few years, they have worked together in several audiovisual projects, taking turns as the director, producer, director of photography and assistant director. Lucas Marcheggianoâs films include 4 a cero, Route 3, Speed Bump and The Pond. Eduardo de la Sernaâs films include Snailsâ Shelter, A Good Business, Medical History, Without Your Eyes, The War and Scarecrow 21. Adriana Yurcovichâs films include A Glass of Soda Water, Different, End of Year, Seed Stitch, Other Times, Search, I Was Told Not to Look and Mouth Shut.
Benda Bilili! (Beyond Appearances)
Ricky has a dream: to make Staff Benda Bilili the best band in Kinshasa, Congo. Roger, a street child, wants to join these stars of the ghetto, who get around in customized tricycles due to a physical disability. Together, they must avoid the pitfalls of the street, stay united and find hope in the music. From the first rehearsals five years before to their triumph in international festivals, Benda Bilili! is the story of a dream come true.
Bios:
In 2004, Renaud Barret was directing a small advertising agency and Florent de La Tullaye was an international photojournalist. Tired of what they were doing, they went to Kinshasa made a television documentary called Jupiterâs Dance. In 2008, they made a documentary about the boxers in the ghetto, Victoire Terminus, Kinshasaâs Boxers. When they met the members of the band Staff Benda Bilili, Barret and de La Tullaye decided to help them with the album production and film the process.
12 Onzas (12 Ounces)
To make it the top you have to take many blows, since only one out of 3,000 boxers becomes successful. Diego, Tony and Brandon, along their managers Mudo and Curita, hope to become champions in one of the two amateur boxing tournaments in Monterrey, Mexico, while struggling to move ahead in life and make something out of themselves in a city plagued by violence.
Bio:
Patricio Serna Salazar studied communications at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey. He received an MA in documentary filmmaking at the Universiatat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona and an MFA in film at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. He has written and directed several short films that have been screened at Sundance, Huesca, Clermont-Ferrand, Huelva, Cinema Jove, Aspen and Morelia, among others. His films include Escapista, El Toro, Mating Call, Tromba Dâoro, Bailén 58 and Chupacabras.
The Two Escobars
While rival drug cartels warred in the streets and the countryâs murder rate climbed to the highest in the world, the Colombian national soccer team set out to blaze a new image for their country. What followed was a mysteriously rapid rise to glory, as the team catapulted out of decades of obscurity to become one of the best teams in the world. Central to this success were two men named Escobar: Andrés, the captain and poster child of the national team, and Pablo, the infamous drug baron who pioneered the phenomenon known in the underworld as ânarco-soccer.â
Bios:
Jeff Zimbalist graduated from Brown University with a degree in modern culture and media. Michael Zimbalist graduated from Wesleyan University and trained as an actor at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. They are both Emmy Awardânominated writers, directors and editors. Their films have been broadcast on television and theatrically distributed around the world. Their documentaries on third-world development issues for clients such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the John Templeton Foundation have received multiple awards.
Co-sponsored by the Latina/o Student Assembly.Location: School Of Cinematic Arts (SCA) - The Ray Stark Family Theatre (SCA 108)
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daria Yudacufski
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An Evening with Iranian Animator Noureddin ZarrinKelk
Sun, Sep 25, 2011 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Receptions & Special Events
Admission is free.
Reception to follow, sponsored by the Farhang Association.
The USC School of Cinematic Arts invites you to participate in a retrospective screening and conversation with Noureddin ZarrinKelk, widely regarded as the father of Iranian animation. The event will include the North American premiere of his most recent film, Bani Adam.
Noureddin ZarrinKelk was born into a family of traditional Persian painters and calligraphers. In fact his last name means âGolden Penâ in Persian. But Noureddin, affectionately called Noori, also had a daring eye for adapting modern subjects, and perhaps it was also his fate to reimagine this 13th-century art form in a new light, as Noor means âlight.â
He started his career at 16, drawing caricatures for Iranian magazines. After earning a Ph.D. in pharmacology, he worked as an illustrator trying to change the long-held tradition of imageless textbooks in Iran. While working at Iranâs Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, Noori saw how animated film can engage young audiences. He went to Belgium to study animation with Raoul Servais and was soon making films for children. He has since advanced Iranian animation almost singlehandedly by founding the countryâs first animation school in 1974 and Iranâs branch of the International Animated Film Society in 1987.
Noori possesses a special humor which exists in all of his work. In The Mad, Mad, Mad World (1975), he portrays each continent on the globe transforming into a variety of animals barking or squawking at neighboring countries. But Noori is hesitant to speak about Iranian politics. Instead he works to encode profound political and social messages in his films, while sharing the culture and history of his country with a worldwide audience. His films express the need for global peace and understanding. In his latest film, Bani Adam (2011), he brings together world leaders to recite a poem by 13th-century Persian poet Saâadi about our common humanity.
Throughout his career, Noureddin ZarrinKelk has helped to find a distinct place for animation and graphic art in the broad field of painting. And Iranian artists are increasingly recognized and received with great respect worldwide, in large part because of Nouredddinâs persistence and hard work. His creativity in animation and graphics is interwoven with powerful peculiarities of Iranian art and soul, making him one of the most renowned representatives of his country. At the same time, his art, with universal values, designates him as an artist of the world.
To see a short ZarrinKelk retrospective video, go to http://vimeo.com/27276390.
Sponsored by the USC School of Cinematic Arts, John C. Hench Animation and Digital Arts, Interactive Media Division, SoCiArts: Socially Conscious Arts and Farhang Foundation: the Iranian-American Heritage Foundation of Southern California.
For more information, contact Lisa Mann at emann@usc.edu or 213-740-2804 or Kurosh ValaNejad at kvalanejad@cinema.usc.edu or 310-488-6830.
Location: Eileen L. Norris Cinema Theatre (NCT) -
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daria Yudacufski
