London’s leading Latin American film festival will open its door to the public for the 6th time in 2007, featuring internationally acclaimed films, documentaries, and directors to celebrate ethnic diversity and help projects to tackle poverty in Latin America. The Festival will take place between 22nd November and 2nd December, in four of London’s main venues, Odeon Covent Garden, Odeon Panton Street, Ritzy and Tate Modern.

The public will have the opportunity to see recent productions, some of these UK premieres, such as the award winners XXY (Argentina/France/Spain, 2007) and Suely in the sky (Brazil, 2006), and also Mauricio’s diary (Cuba, 2006), Happy desert (Brazil, 2007), The night buffalo, featuring Diego Luna (Mexico, 2007), and Crossing a shadow (2006), Peru’s candidate for the Oscar of Best Foreign Film.

Film lovers will also be able to enjoy internationally acclaimed works such as City of God (Brazil, 2002), Secuestro express (Venezuela, 2005), and Central station (Brazil, 1998).

Among the documentaries, the highlights are the award winner Santiago (Brazil, 2006), Maquilapolis (Mexico/USA, 2006), co-presented with the Human Rights Watch Festival, and Fabricating Tom Zé (Brazil, 2006), which sketches a consistent portrait of this controversial and genial Tropicalist musician.

Those interested in diving deeper into Latin American cinematography will have the possibility to attend Q&As with acclaimed Brazilian director Paulo Caldas and with BBC producer Richard Collins, and also the Film & Culture event at the Tate Modern, named Film Synergies: Latin American and European Co-productions, a panel discussion, with special focus on the film Black butterfly, by Francisco Lombardi (Spain/Peru, 2006).

The 6th Discovering Latin America Film Festival is organised by the London-based charity Discovering Latin America, aimed at promoting Latin American culture in the UK and raising funds to social projects in Latin America. All the proceeds from this year’s festival will go to Task Brasil Trust – The Abandoned Street Kids of Brasil Trust (Reg. no. 1030929). The charity’s main objectives are to provide high quality care for children, to train and educate them in useful and beneficial skills through its own programmes, and follow with state education. It is also their aim to promote the importance of family planning, the dangers of drug use and sexually transmitted diseases, as well as help increase awareness and change attitudes of the Brazilian and British public towards streets children, and therefore raising the funds necessary to continue with their work.
To find out more about Task Brasil Trust and their objectives, please visit http://www.taskbrasil.org.uk.


For more information, please visit http://www.discoveringlatinamerica.org or contact any member of our press team.

30.10.2007 at the Odeon Covent Garden
17h – Press launch
18h – Pre-screening of XXY