Events Calendar

AMBULANTE Film Festival

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 García 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 film’s 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 Marcheggiano’s films include 4 a cero, Route 3, Speed Bump and The Pond. Eduardo de la Serna’s films include Snails’ Shelter, A Good Business, Medical History, Without Your Eyes, The War and Scarecrow 21. Adriana Yurcovich’s 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 Jupiter’s Dance. In 2008, they made a documentary about the boxers in the ghetto, Victoire Terminus, Kinshasa’s 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 D’oro, Bailén 58 and Chupacabras.

The Two Escobars
While rival drug cartels warred in the streets and the country’s 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 “narco-soccer.”

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 Award–nominated 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