Here are the opening lines to the email I just received about the brand-spankin’-new First Annual Portland Latin American Film Festival:

I know, I know! Portland has almost as many film festivals as strip clubs.

True! So, so true. But apparently, that’s not stopping local organizers from continuing to put together as many film fests as possible. (Me, I’d like to see both of Portland’s big fests—the Portland International Film Festival and the Portland Lesbian & Gay Film Festival—get a lot more consistent and accessible before our city gets any more fests, but maybe that’s just me. Also, Platform should come back.)

My cantankerous early-morning grumbling aside, two things: As far as I know, there’s not any existing Portland film festival dealing solely with Latin American-centric films, so the fact that the awkwardly-abbreviated PDXLAFF will now fill that unique niche is a good thing. And also, there are definitely some films that sound interesting that’ll be playing at the fest, which is another good thing. (Antonia—which the above image is from—and Crossing Arizona and To the Other Side sound the most intriguing to me.)

The festival runs from September 20 to September 23, kicking off at the Whitsell before moving to the Living Room Theaters. Hit the jump for a complete list of films and synopses; while the fest doesn’t have a website or schedule yet, I’ll let you know when they do.

Antonia (Brazil, 2006)

90 min
Language: Portuguese / English subtitles
Director: Tata Amaral
Writer: Tata Amaral and Roberto Moreira
Genre: Drama / Musical
Awards: Best Fictional Film from Sao Paulo International Film Festival 2006, Best Score in Havana Film Festival 2006
Plot Synopsis: On the outskirts of Sao Paulo, four black young women who have been singing together since young fight to fulfill their dream of making a living off their music. For their rap group “Antonia”, they find a manager and begin to perform in bars and at parties. But just as the dream seems to be coming true, their hopes are dashed by the daily events which accompany poverty, chauvinism and violence which threaten the group and jeopardize their friendship.

El Benny (Cuba, 2006)
132 min
Spanish / English Subtitles
Director: Jorge Luis Sanchez
Writers: Abraham Rodriguez and Jorge Luis Sanchez
Genre: Drama / Musical
Awards: Nominated for the Cartagena Film Festival Award, Cartagena Film Festival 2007; Nominated for the Golden Leopard Award, Locarno International Film Festival 2006.
Plot Synopsis: El Benny, the first full feature motion picture based on the life of Benny More, the greatest Cuban musician of all time, who profoundly changed the course of Latin music forever. More famous during his lifetime in Venezuela and Mexico than in his home country of Cuba, he was asked in 1957, not long before he died, to play at the Oscars in Los Angeles. Never having formally studied music, he arranged big band orchestras and combos from the music he heard in his head and felt in his soul without being able to read or write music, a true musical genius. Benny was a man of supreme charisma and passion, but his excess of the night life, the women and the partying led to his untimely death. His legacy is still felt today in most contemporary Latin music. The movie is a co-production between Coral Capital Entertainment and the Cuban film Institute ICAIC. Benny has become one of the most popular films in Cuba in the last fifteen years. It’s Cuba’s entry to the 79th Academy Award nominations.

To the Other Side (Al Otro Lado) (Mexico, 2004)
90 min.
Spanish / English subtitles
Director: Gustavo Loza
Writers: Gustavo Loza
Genre: Drama
Awards: Won Audience Award, Best Actress (Vanessa Bauche) and Best Film from Lleida Latin-American Film Festival 2006.
Plot Synopsis: A fictional feature film made up of three short stories dealing with the issue of migration, but from the viewpoint of those left behind. Three countries, three cultures, three different realities that serve as background for the stories of the lives of three children (a Mexican boy, a Cuban boy, and a Moroccan girl) who share the same feelings: the absence of a father who has emigrated searching for a better living standard and the need to bring him back home.

My Best Enemy (My Mejor Enemigo) (Chile/Argentina/España, 2004)
100 min.
Spanish / English subtitles
Director: Alex Bowen
Writers: Alex Bowen, Jorge Duran
Genre: Drama
Awards: Best Screenplay in Cartagena Film Festival 2006
Plot Synopsis: December 1978. Chile and Argentina are about to engage in an armed confrontation on their Southern Border. In Patagonia -a Chilean platoon accidentally breaks its compass and the platoon is lost on the immense Pampa. They dig their trenches without knowing whether they are in a Chilean or Argentinean. A long waiting starts that is interrupted by an Argentinean platoon deployed in front of them. Both platoons await the war to start but the tense wait allows friendship to arise among human beings that are enemies, but confused by the solitude of the Pampa. They cross the fragile line between duty and sentiment thus telling a deep human story.

Erendira Ikikunari (Mexico, 2006)
104 min
Purepehpecha language / English subtitules
Director: Juan Carlos Mora Catlett
Writer: Juan Carlos Mora Catlett
Genre: Adventure / Drama / Fantasy
Awards: 4 nominations for the Ariel Awards, Mexico (Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Make up and Best Special Effects)
Plot Synopsis: Erendira Ikikunari is an action film about the conquest of Mexico by the Europeans in the 16th century. It tells the story of a young Indian woman who stole a horse from the Spanish conquerors, and used it against them, defending her people. An exceptional girl, she showed astounding uprightness and courage in face of the invasion of her land. As warrior woman she fought to attain the dignity and respect that her culture only granted men. This still is, unfortunately, a very common situation today. The dialog is spoken in Purhepecha, 16th century Spanish and Latin. In order that the Purepehpecha language could be used fluently, the actors were mostly authentic Indians. The music was made from the sound recordings of the scenes. Human voices, sounds of nature, conches and drums, were used to digitally create the music.

Crossing Arizona (Cruzando Arizona) (USA, 2006)
132 min
Language: Spanish/English
Director: Joseph Mathew
Writer: Laurie MacMillan
Genre: Documentary
Awards: Winner-one Future Prize 2006, Munich Film Festival; Winner-Best Documentary, Arizona International Film Festival, Audience Award; Audience Award, Cine Las Americas; Audience Award, Brooklyn International Film Festival
Plot Synopsis: With Americans on all sides of the immigration issue up in arms and Congress embroiled in a knock-down-drag-out policy battle over how to move forward, Crossing Arizona shows how we got where we are today. Heightened security in California and Texas has pushed illegal border-crossers into the treacherous Arizona desert in unprecented numbers- an estimated 4,500 a day. Most are men in search of work, but increasingly the border– crossers are women and children seeking to reunite with their families. Crossing Arizona examines the crisis through the eyes of those directly affected by it. Frustrated ranchers go out day after day to repair cut fences and pick up the trash that endangers their livestock and livelihoods. Humanitarian groups place water stations in the desert in an attempt to save lives. Political activists rally against anti-migrants ballot initiatives and try to counter rampant fear mongering. Farmers who depend on the illegal work force face each day with the fear that they may lose their workers to a border patrol sweep.

The Hands (Las Manos) (Italy, 2006)
119 min.
Language: Spanish/ English subtitles
Director: Alejandro Doria
Writer: Alejandro Doria & Juan Bautista Stagnaro
Genre: Drama based on a true story
Awards: The film won the Goya Award for Best Spanish-Language Foreign Film. Won the Golden Colon from the public in the Huelva Festival. Best Film in the Clarin Awards. Best Film in the Argentinean Academy Awards. Nominated for Best Latin American Film in Mexico; Won Best Spanish Language Foreign Film, Goya Awards 2007; Won Golden India Catalina for Best Supporting Actress (Graciela Borges), Cartagena Film Festival; Won OCLACC Award, Cartagena Film Festival 2007
Plot Synopsis: The Minister Mario Pantaleo is an Italian priest living in Argentina. Everything appears to demonstrate that he has a very special skill: to diagnose and cure illnesses with his hands and his faith. With help of people that believe in his skills and Perla, his collaborator, he builds his own church. Since that moment nothing will be easy for Minister Mario, he will have to struggle against the Catholic Church’s authorities, the government and also with the police force to continue with his building.

The Last Gaze (Le Ultima Mirada) (Mexico, 2006)
123 min.
Language: Spanish/ English subtitles
Director: Patricia Arriaga-Jordan
Writer: Patricia Arriaga-Jordan
Genre: Drama / Romance
Awards: Winner Best Film Prize 2006, Cairo International Film Festival; Winner Best Women Award 2006, San Francisco Bay Area International Latino Film Festival.
Plot Synopsis: If you could choose…what would be the last thing you ever say? A painter on the verge of blindness meets by chance a young girl hired as a maid in a remote brothel in the Mexican Desert. Two different but parallel lives intertwine in surprising twists and turns. A beautiful film chronicling the survival of the human spirit against all odds.

Machuca (Chile, 2004)
121 min
Language: Spanish / English subtitles
Director: Andres Wood
Writer: Eliseo Altunaga & Roberto Brodsky
Genre: Biography / Drama
Awards: Won Best Latin American Film, Ariel Awards Mexico 2005; Won Golden Best Film, Bogota Film Festival 2004; Won Best Spanish Language Foreign Film, Goya Awards 2005; won Elcine First Prize, Lima Latin American Film Festival 2004; won Best Narrative Feature, Mexico City International Contemporary Film Festival 2005.
Plot Synopsis: In 1973, in Santiago, Chile the first socialist president is democratically elected in a Latin-American country, President Salvador Allende. The principal of the Saint Patrick School there, Father Mc Enroe, experiments integrating students of the upper and lower classes. The bourgeois boy, Gonzalo Infante, and the boy from the slum, Pedro Machuca, become great friends, while the conflicts on the streets leads Chile to the bloody and repressive military coup of General Augusto Pinochet on 11 September 1973. This greatly affects the boy’s lives, their relationship and their country.

My Mexican Shiva (Morirse Esta En Hebreo) (Mexico/USA, 2006)
98 min.
Language: Hebrew - Spanish – Yiddish / English subtitles
Director: Alejandro Springall
Writer: Jorge Goldenber & Alejandro Springall based on a story by Ilan Stavans
Genre: Comedy
Plot Synopsis: Set in Polanco, a Jewish quarter or Mexico City, and spoken in Spanish, Yiddish and Hebrew, “My Mexican Shiva” is a dramatic comedy about how the death of a man results in the celebration of his life. According to Jewish belief, from the moment a Jew is born, he or she is accompanied by two angels: an angel of light and an angel of darkness. With the passing Moishe (75), his family and friends gather in Mexico City to sit shivah, the 7 day Jewish mourning ritual. The spirit angels, Aleph and Bet, as divine accountants only visible to the camera, watch over the family and calculate which angel will accompany Moishe’s soul to the afterlife. The odds are against Moishe from the beginning. Family dysfunction aside, Moishe’s friends are all attending for their own motives. If the shivah reveals anything, it’s that Moishe’s family and friends loved him with all his flaws and mystery, and most of all they loved his spirit.

The Sugar Curtain (El Telon de Azucar) (Spain/Cuba/France, 2005 [Released 2007])
80 min.
Language: Spanish / English subtitles
Director: Camila Guzman Urzua
Writer: Camila Guzman Urzua
Genre: Documentary
Awards: Won TVE Award, San Sebastian International Film Festival 2005
Plot Synopsis: An intimate portrait by Camila Guzman Urzua about growing up in Cuba during the '70s and '80s. She recalls Cuba seemed like a paradise, where the state provided everything: education, healthcare, housing, work. She was part of an idealistic generation of young “Pioneers” enthusiastically dedicated to building a new society. Camila left Cuba in 1990 shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, which for decades had assured the island nation’s economic survival, and the beginning of the “Special Period,” which by the mid-'90s saw the Cuban economy in ruins.

Drama Mex (Mexico, 2006)
105 min
Language: Spanish / English subtitles
Director: Gerardo Naranjo
Writer: Gerardo Naranjo
Genre: Drama / Musical
Plot Synopsis: Two interlaced stories unfold over the course of the same long, hot day in the once lush and now decadent resort town of Acapulco. The first involves the beautiful and cool Fernanda, who is forced to deal with the sudden emergence of her ex-lover, Chino. Her boyfriend, Gonzalo, must now compete with the intense sexual tension Fernanda and Chino share. The second story concerns Jaime, an office worker with hidden indiscretions, attempting suicide in a beach front hotel. A precocious and equally dishonest teenage girl disrupts his plan. They will all converge in a stark and harrowing portrayal of moral ambiguity.