South American music and culture magazine

Pablo Larrain’s latest release, Post Mortem (reviewed separately here) frames a dark and twisted story of obsession and lust in amongst the chaos of the 1973 coup in Santiago, Chile. Morgue worker, Mario Cornejo, ends up being present at the dubious autopsy of Salvador Allende, but not before he manages to indulge a fantasy for a dancer called Nancy. With Haneke-like bleakness and very little mercy, Larrain shows how the bodies pile up and the love story disintegrates even further from its shaky beginnings. Continue Reading

“Despite the many similarities to reality, this film is a work of fiction”

There is something about Rio de Janeiro’s favelas which makes for cinematic gold. Brazil’s writers and directors seamlessly combine well-stylised action with documentary-grade realism and biting social relevance to produce a franchise of hits in their own little universe, which please home audiences as much as foreign ones. Continue Reading

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

A Useful Life is a new Uruguayan film that continues an aesthetic started by Whisky and 25 Watts, two classic Latin American films directed by fellow Uruguayans Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll. The dry humour is there, as is the unlikely choice of leading actors and use of black and white, as well as a story that revels in everyday life. It shouldn’t be too surprising then that the director Federico Veiroj worked as a scriptwriter on those films. 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

Las Acacias is a film in which the plot alone does not represent the film. Which is a good thing, as the story of an Argentine truck driver who gives a Paraguayan women and her child a lift to Buenos Aires does not in itself sound too promising. Where Las Acacias succeeds is in the moments and relationship that builds during this journey, and which results in the film being one of the most charming of the year. Continue Reading

I’m not convinced Pachamama – meaning Mother Earth – is an apt title for this film. There are certainly many glimpses of nature, and the relationship between man and nature on this road trip through Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, but it’s the sense of political unrest in the last two of these countries which really has the greatest impact. Continue Reading

The element that unites all the best music documentaries – a pack led by Stop Making Sense and The Last Waltz – is a feeling of experiencing a moment of music at it’s creative zenith. Our Latin Thing must therefore join this illustrious company. It’s documentation of a performance from the Fania All-Stars in a New York club in 1974, captures some of the Latin world’s musicians at the top of their game. Continue Reading

Karen Cries On The Bus starts off as a story about independence, and remains defiantly so throughout. Continue Reading

Hard Labour (Trabalhar Cansa) is the debut feature from Brazilians Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra. It’s billed as part social commentary, part horror, and this is exactly how it pans out. Continue Reading