January 9: “MY BEST FIEND” (1999). An overview of Werner Herzog’s work in Guyana and Peru will be followed by a full screening of his mind-boggling documentary “My Best Fiend,” laying bare Herzog's exhileratingly tumultuous relationship with legendary actor Klaus Kinski, which involved the two literally plotting each other’s murder while attempting to haul a real 320-ton steamship over a mountain in the Peruvian Amazon amidst of a war between two indigenous Peruvian tribes attacking each other with poisoned spears. Our curator Steve Elkins will also show an excerpt from the rare documentary “Wings Of Hope” (2000), in which Herzog tracks down the lone survivor of a plane that crashed after being struck by lightning over the Peruvian Amazon, a flight which Herzog himself was supposed to be on. Surviving both the fall from the sky and blind navigation through the Amazon, this 17 year-old girl emerged from the jungle two weeks after the plane disappeared. Herzog takes her back into the jungle several decades later to retrace her path of survival, which it turns out nearly crossed paths with Herzog and Kinski’s production of “Aguirre, The Wrath Of God” (1972).
January 16: “THE TAKE” (Argentina, 2004). In the midst of global “occupy movement” protests, Argentines forged an alternative economy in which workers locked themselves in hundreds of abandoned factories expropriated from their bosses, restarted their operations (better than ever before), and in the process created a thriving participatory democracy from the lower classes upward, rather than imposed from on high by a socialist state, which was eventually approved by the official government for its benefits to the country, and deemed lawful. These events form the background from which the New Argentine Cinema was born, sparked by women like Lucretia Martel.
January 23: “THE MISSION” (Paraguay, 1986). An homage to priests who have fought for the rights of indigenous people, set in the Paraguayan jungle, focusing on the relationship between Jesuits and the native Guaraní tribe in the 1740s. Starring Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons and Liam Neeson. Featuring one of Ennio Morricone’s most legendary scores.
January 30: “STATE OF SIEGE” (Uruguay, 1972). The Tupamaros were a popular urban guerrilla group formed in Uruguay to protect the poor and combat the “law and order” policies of the United States (our long-term standard practice of violently overthrowing democracy throughout Latin America and replacing it with dictators and torture regimes trained on U.S. soil). “State Of Siege” is a classic examination of the long term effects of such policies, through a retelling of the 1970 kidnapping and execution of real-life CIA torture instructor Dan Mitrione by Tupamaros in Montevideo.
