The MFA Film Program is delighted to present New Cinema from Spain, a 13-film series running June 19-29 that celebrates the broad range of today’s Spanish cinema. Highlights include:
- June 19: Director Julio Medem present with his latest feature, Chaotic Ana.
- June 20 & 22: The first Boston screenings of Rodrigo Cortes’ satiric comedy, The Contestant.
- June 21 & 28: La Zona, a joint Spanish and Mexican production from director Rodrigo Plá.
- June 22 & 29: Jaime Rosales’ acclaimed exploration of solitary lives, Solitary Fragments
- June 29: Mercedes Álvarez’s returns to her village in the award-winning documentary The Sky Turns.
Tickets: Members, seniors and students $8; general admission $9. Discount matinee prices (weekday until 5 pm; weekends until 12:30 pm) are $6, $7. To purchase please call the box office at 617-369-3306 or online at www.mfa.org/film.
All films in Spanish with English subtitles, unless otherwise noted. This festival is presented in conjunction with the MFA exhibitions «El Greco to Velázquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III» and «Antonio López García,» both on view throughJuly 27. The Boston Festival of New Cinema from Spain is made possible with support from the MFA Associates and from the Consul General of Spain in Boston.
Chaotic Ana
Thu, Jun 19, 7:45 pm
Sat, Jun 28, 7:20 pm
Chaotic Ana by Julio Medem (Spain, 2007, 114 min.). Another highly ambitious and provocative film by veteran director Julio Medem (Vacas, and Sex and Lucia). Ana is a beautiful eighteen- year-old free-spirit living in Ibiza who pours her passion for life into her naive paintings. When a cosmopolitan patron of the arts invites Ana to explore her work further by moving to Madrid, she embarks on a physical and emotional journey to uncover, through hypnosis, her past lives that crossed centuries of remote myths, which challenges Ana to break the chain of ancestral violence that lingers in her chaotic soul. «Expect the unexpected in his tale about an artist exercising pure, life-affirming creative freedom…I find myself, once again, captivated in Medem’s web» (Diana Sanchez, Toronto International Film Festival). Discussion with director follows June 19 screening.
The Heart of the Earth
Fri, Jun 20, 4 pm
Sat, Jun 28, 1:15 pm
The Heart of the Earth (El Corazón de la tierra) by Antonio Cuadri (Spain/UK, 2007, 100 min.). A story of action and emotion, this passionate tale combines drama, love, ambition, and power. The stunning scenery of the world’s largest opencast mine forms the backdrop to this epic tale. Based on Juan Cobos Wilkins’ best-selling novel of the same name, and inspired by a true story set in a British outpost in Andalusia a century ago, The Heart of the Earthhas all the excitement of a great epic, while conceived and produced from a modern perspective. «Politics and passion unite in time-honored style in Antonio Cuadri’s sweeping historical yarn…[about] the tragic, real-life nineteenth-century suppression of a Spanish copper miners’ rebellion by their British employees»(Jonathan Holland, Variety).
DarkBlueAlmostBlack
Fri, Jun 20, 6 pm
Sun, Jun 22, 8 pm
DarkBlueAlmostBlack (Azul oscuro, casi negro) by Daniel Sánchez Arévalo (Spain, 2006, 105 min.). «An assured and captivating drama that combines grit and grace into a distinctive, character-based whole»(Variety). When his father suffers a debilitating stroke, Jorge is forced to put his life and career on hold to take over his father’s janitorial position, care for his father, study at n
