Celebrating the literary legacy and love of cinema of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, the Consulate General of Colombia in Vancouver and the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival are proud to present No One Writes to the Colonel, a film which many consider to be the finest cinematic adaptation of a García Márquez novel.
Featuring an impressive roster of Cuba’s stage and film actors, Gerardo Chijona’s charming new film centres around two elderly gentlemen and the women they once loved. Still mourning the death of his wife Maruja, Lino Catalá’s now simple life is turned topsy-turvy when Larry Po, a man suffering from multiple personalities, informs him that Maruja led a double life as a bolero singer. Both men join forces to find out the truth about Maruja and the whereabouts of Esther Rodenas, the great love of Larry’s life.
Silvio Vega, a grandfather approaching the final stage of his life, demands that two of his grandchildren take his life because he wants to die by the hand of someone who bears his own blood. To fulfill this wish, they travel together to the plains of Casanare, Colombia, where Silvio lived in his younger days. However, when the grandchildren discover the truth about their grandfather’s past, they will defy his wishes, keeping him alive, agonizing, as punishment for his past actions.
Tijuana is a city of walls, both visible and invisible. Lidia works as a housekeeper for a wealthy woman whose only concern is for her prize pooch Princess. Rafael works as a janitor in a light bulb factory. A meagre retirement looms menacingly in front of each of them. Silently and surreptitiously, they begin a battle: Rafael against a company that seeks to deny him his due and Lidia against the whim of an employer who places a dog’s well-being above her own. A carefully paced, darkly comic and intricately woven story that is both mesmerizing and quietly devastating.
Leo is a teenager like any other, grappling with his first feelings of sexual attraction while trying to wrestle a bit more independence from his over-protective parents. The only difference is that he is blind. To the disappointment of Giovana, his best friend since childhood, he can’t wait to leave home and go on a study abroad program. But when the new student Gabriel arrives in class, a whole new world suddenly opens up right in front of him.
The Naked Room shows a whole world without leaving a single space: the examination room in the psychiatric wing of a Mexico City children’s hospital. Here the traumas and nightmares of a generation of Mexican youth are revealed in all their painful reality. The youth suffer from issues including severe depression, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder from assault and more. Many of the children in the film pose a danger to themselves or others; and the care they receive in this office may be their last hope.
Ximena is an illiterate woman in her fifties (played by Paulina García who won the Best Actress award in Berlin for her role in Gloria) who has learned to disguise her inability to read or write. Jackeline is a young unemployed elementary school teacher who tries to convince Ximena to take classes with her. Persuading her proves to be an almost impossible task, until one day, Jackeline finds something Ximena has been keeping as her only treasure from childhood: a letter Ximena’s father left when he abandoned her many years before.
Part of the Afro-Cuban Showcase at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC.
Part of the Afro-Cuban Showcase at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC.
Cuba/Uruguay, 2013 / 12 min.
Spanish with English subtitles
Director: Agustín Peralta Lemes
