South American music and culture magazine

The great split that carves through Chilean society is laid bare and brought to the surface in the documentary La Muerte de Pinochet (The Death of Pinochet), a film that depicts the different reactions to the news of the general’s death at 91 years old on 10th December 2006. From the crowds of pinochetistas who carried out a raucous vigilance outside the hospital where the old man lay dying to the spontaneous carnival that erupted on the Alameda, Santiago’s main thoroughfare, to celebrate the apparent closure of the most traumatic period in Chile’s history, the film portrays the various emotions unleashed at the time and as such serves as a social portrait of the polarising effect that Pinochet continues to have to this day. Continue Reading

Every once in a while, a film appears which seems to come out of nowhere, but which touches everyone who sees it. The way it happens is that usually the film festival circuit see it first: programmers, critics and those few lucky discerning members of the public who might rave about it to their friends without ever knowing if the film will see the light of day again. Las Acacias is one of these films. Continue Reading

We speak to New Jersey-born director Leon Gast about Our Latin Thing, a film documenting a Fania All-Stars concert and Latino life in Manhattan (New York) in 1971. The film was reissued earlier this year and is fast becoming known as THE definitive salsa documentary. In our opinion it is one of the finest music documentaries ever made, never mind just salsa. Continue Reading

We’re big fans of Vincent Moon here on Sounds and Colours. His Petites Planetes and Take Away Shows videos have featured some of our favourite musicians, people like Soema Montenegro, Ney Matogrosso, Fernando Milagros and Tom Zé, all filmed using Vincent’s distinctive style. Recently he has released Esperando el Tsunami, an astonishing journey through Colombia featuring Lulacruza and many of Colombia’s finest musicians. We’ve really fallen in love with the film and so decided the time was right to ask Vincent a few questions about his style of film-making and all of these projects that we love so much. Continue Reading

Luc Besson has something of a winning formula for action films. Take an unconventionally beautiful leading lady, give her some emotional problems, plenty of guns and loads of baddies to shoot at. Colombiana is no different: Catalaya’s parents are murdered by gangsters, but she manages to escape and grows up to become a competent assassin, one set on avenging her parent’s deaths. The main difference with Colombiana is that this has become Besson’s most controversial yet. Continue Reading

Recently released in Brazil, Elite Squad 2 (Tropa de Elite 2) has already become the most viewed Brazilian film in the country’s recent history (since the Retomada). With more than 8 million recorded spectators last Wednesday, 3rd September, the sequel of Tropa de Elite has also become the most viewed film of 2010 in Brazil and the first national production to appear in the Top 10 of the most watched films of all time in Brazil – all the other nine being American blockbusters such as Titanic, which was the most viewed film in Brazilian history with approximately 20 million spectators. Continue Reading

It’s always difficult to make a “best of all time” list. First, I had to decide which qualities were important when making the final choices of films to appear on the list. I decided to use three main factors: success with the public, historical importance and my personal preferences for some films. Here are my choices for best Brazilian films of all time. Continue Reading

We interviewed Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu on a promotional tour for his new film Biutiful, a dark personal journey in Barcelona’s underworld starring Javier Bardem. You can read our review here. Continue Reading

There is a fine line between very-realistic non-fiction films and documentaries. This is definitely the case with Birdwatchers, a film about an indigenous tribe set in the Centre-West of contemporary Brazil, in the state of Mato Grosso. Continue Reading

There are almost as many Argentine movies about the military dictatorship of the 70’s and the disappeared as there are Spanish movies about transsexuals. Granted, some of them are pretty good (Garage Olimpo, Chronicle of an Escape), but still, it’s a cliché I tried to avoid when compiling this list. I also purposely left out the blockbusters (Nine Queens, Burnt Money) and the Oscar winners (The Official Story, The Secret in Their Eyes) because I assume you’ve all seen them already. Still, choosing just five movies wasn’t easy, because having been born and raised in Argentina, I grew up watching a lot of local film and there’re so many that I love. So, what I did was select five movies that have something in common, at least for me.
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Rio Breaks week on Sounds and Colours ends with our final clip from the film, a documentary about a surf school based in Rio de Janeiro, where two students Fabio and Naama battle between life in the favela and the freedom of the beach. In this final clip Fabio has to prove himself against Rogerio, one of the older members of the group. Continue Reading

More for you today from Rio Breaks with our third clip from the movie. This is the scene in which the established members of the surf school decide that Fabio and Naama are finally ready to become “official” members of the school and need to be “christened.” You’ll need to watch the clip to understand what being “christened” actually entails at surf school! Continue Reading