Cynematik • Cyndi Greening

I am fond of saying that seeing films at the Sundance Film Festival gives you a pretty good idea of what you’re going to see for the upcoming year in independent film. The International Guadalajara film fest closed yesterday and several of the award-winning films were at Sundance.

During the 21st Annual Guadalajara Film Festival, two movies received the award for the best Film in the Ibero-American Fiction Feature Films Section — EL CUSTODIO by Rodrigo Moreno and CINEMA, ASPIRNAS E URUBAS by Brazilian Marcelo Gómes. Jury members of the Ibero-American Fiction Feature Film Section, decided to award the prize and $50,000 dollars to two “very different productions that illustrate the wide spectrum in the Ibero-American film production; two stories, apparently very different from each other, that explore man’s endless search for his identity and freedom, whether he lives in a city or the country, in the past or in the present times.” I don’t recall seeing either of these films at Sundance.

The jury members also determined to give a Special Nomination to the film MADEINUSA by Peruvian director Claudia Llosa. This film I saw and remember vividly! It was an amazingly beautiful film. Shot in a mountain village, the look of the film was rich and exotic. There was a powerful sense of altered time and place; we were all transported by this film. I also recall a man in the Sundance Press area commenting that MADEINUSA was “the find of the festival!” (Oddly disconcerting for me was how much the male lead resembled one of my students, Nick Marshall. It was a bit eerie.)

The prize for the best director was awarded to Isabel Coixet from Spain for her film LA VIDA SECRETA DE PALABRAS (The Secret Life of Words). Starring Tim Robbins and Sarah Polley, it’s the story of a woman who is trying to forget her past. She (Polley) is brought to an oil rig in the middle of the ocean to look after a man (Robbins) who has been temporarily blinded. A strange intimacy develops between them, a link full of secrets, truths, lies, humour and pain, from which neither of them will emerge unscathed and which will change their lives forever. Director Coixet says, “When you finish making a film, it’s always extremely difficult to talk about it. I feel that the words to describe what you’ve just done are never going to do justice to the adventures in which the actors, the crew and you have been involved.” Ironic for a film about words.

One of our favorite documentaries from Sundance 2006 was Juan Carlos Rulfo’s IN THE PIT (our videocast from Sundance). It was much recognized and honored in the festival. (Follow this link to a wonderful videocast of Rulfo recorded at Sundance). In the Ibero-American Documentary Feature Films Section Juan Carlos Rulfo with his film EN EL HOYO was unanimously selected first prize by the jury members. They said that the documentary recounting the construction of the second floor of the inner highway in Mexico City “made use of cinematography resources in a very creative way” and “was able to combine in an exemplary manner two languages: an epical account and an intimate vision of life that is treated with respect and affection”. Simultaneously, the journalists that recounted the Guadalajara International Film Festival gave the award Guerreros de la Prensa to the best Mexican films for Best Documentary to EN EL HOYO.