Blue Is The Warmest Colour
The case for a colourful January
Dry January, Veganuary or Blue Monday, there are plenty of reasons why January feels like the hardest month of the year. Not to mention the fact that images of pools and parrilas in Argentina -where summer is in full swing - are now flooding our social feeds.
But in London this month, Latin American offerings bring some much needed colour, and dare we say, joy, to this bleakest of months. From a Bolivian film season, or an Andean-inspired art exhibition full of mythical creatures, to the new Brazilian blockbuster art show at the Royal Academy, there are plenty of reasons to avoid a winter hibernation. Or if that sounds like a bit too much effort right now, you could take a Mexican road trip, or come face to face with Pablo Escobar's hippo, right from the comfort of your own home .
2025 also kicked off with some good news…
HONOURS AND AWARDS FOR LATIN AMERICAN ARTISTS
Amongst the King's New Year's Honours, Argentina's Marianela Nuñez, a Priincipal at the Royal Ballet, was awarded an OBE for her services to dance.
Nuñez left her family in Argentina and aged 15, moved to the UK to join the Royal Ballet School, before being accepted into the company a year later, and then working her up to become a Principal Dancer in the company.
She spoke to Lauren Laverne for the BBC´s Desert Island Disks, where she reminisced about her country and family, and shared her passion for dance.
Shortly after, at the Golden Globes, Fernanda Torres became the first Brazilian to win Best Female Actor when she beat off competition from Nicole Kidman, Kate Winslet and Angelina Jolie to receive the award for her role in Walter Salles´ I'm Still Here. She dedicated the award to her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, who also received a Golden Globe nomination 25 years ago for her part in Salles´ Central Station.
I’m Still Here is also nominated for Best International Film at the BAFTA’s and will be released in the UK next month.
CELEBRATING BOLIVIA’S BICENTENARY: FILM AND ART
This year will see Bolivia celebrate the Bicentenary of its independence. To mark the occasion, film club Cinema Mentiré have put together Echoes and Horizons, a season of contemporary Bolivian films at London’s Garden Cinema.
Highlights include the UK premiere of Puerto Escondido on Jan 25th: a playful meditation of Bolivia’s relationship with a lost sea, as well as a programme of family-friendly shorts on 8th Feb, showcasing the work of the Bolivian female animators who make up Bomba Animada Collective.
Over at London gallery Waddington Custot, Bolivian textile artist Kenia Almaraz Murillo presents Andean Cosmovision, her first London show. Murillo rethinks weaving in a meeting between two culture: the Andean traditions of her ancestors, with modern technology, and the Parisian influences she’s grown up with since her late teens. She blends French gold threads from the 1920s with alpaca from Bolivia, links thread and light, and ‘zigzags across mediums and references’, as a way to highlight the past by making it alive in the present.
“In my work, each piece bears witness to a specific encounter, whether it be with an animal, a landscape, a star, a myth, a legend, a story.” Murillo told Wallpaper in a recent interview.
Don’t miss the Temple of Dreams in which slumbering mythical creatures explore different ways of sleeping.
The exhibition is free to view and runs until 6 Feb. Details here.
BRAZIL AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY & SADLER’S WELLS
Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism opens on 28th January and is the Royal Academy’s biggest Latin American focus in over a decade. The majority of works have never before been exhibited in the UK and come from both Brazilian private and public collections. Spanning the period from the 1910s to the 1970s, the exhibition features over 130 works and offers an expanded view of Brazilian Modernism, including pieces by Anita Malfatti, Tarsila do Amaral, Djanira and Ruben Valentin, artists who have historically received less exposure in the UK.
Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Brazilian Modernism is on show in the Main Galleries at the Royal Academy from 28th January until the 21st April.
Lia Rodrigues’ Encantado brings a carnival of enchanted and magical beings to the stage at Sadler’s Wells this February, and is amongst the four shortlisted pieces competing for the Rose International Dance Prize this year.
Rodrigues is celebrated as one of the leading figures in the Brazilian dance scene; her show emerged from her work in Rio de Janeiro’s Maré favela, in which she has based her company for over twenty years. One hundred and forty blankets carpet the stage in colour, where eleven dancers turn into hundreds of spirits, invoking the animated beings from Afro-indigenous culture that have the ability to transform rocks, forests and rivers into sacred places.
Encantado at Sadler’s Wells, 7-8 Feb – Stay tuned for our interview with Rodrigues in our next newsletter.
STREAMING THIS MONTH: OUR TOP RECOMMENDATIONS
Y Tu Mamá También, Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico, 2001
It’s been more than twenty years since Alfonso Cuarón´s Y Tu Mamá También burst onto the big screen, heralded, along with Amores Perros, as ‘another trumpet blast that there may be a New Mexican Cinema a-bornin’. The coming-of-age road movie saw Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna take to the road with the alluring, and older, Maribel Verdú, in what would become a journey of discovery for them all, instantly becoming a Mexican classic.
Y Tu Mamá También is available on Netflix
Pepe, Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias, Dominican Republic, 2024
Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias invites us into the mind of Pepe, a hippo once owned by Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar and kept on his estate, but who escaped into the Colombian jungle with dozens of others following Ecobar´s death. The hallucinatory docufiction takes us on a journey through Southwest Africa, to Colombia´s Magdalena River, and into the mind of the hippo himself, speaking from the grave. The film won de los Santos Arias the Best Director award when it premiered at the Berlin Film Festival last year.
Pepe is now available on Mubi
Wishing you all the best for the year ahead,
¡Saludos!
The Argentine Film Festival Team