Happy Holidays, ¡Felices Fiestas!
Festive goodies inside.
Adios, 2024
This is our last free newsletter of 2024. As a bonus we’ve also decided to open up our archive and have made all our newsletters accessible to everyone until January so you have plenty to read over the holidays.
While putting together this newsletter we noticed a trend for big numbers amongst the usual tally of cultural output over the last 12 months.
Various outlets have published their ‘best films’ lists. The Telegraph has gone all out with its 100 Greatest Films of All Time (no Latin American-produced films included, sadly), while the 100 films of 2024 that Sight and Sound and The Guardian have rounded up between them do include two Latin American films mentioned in our previous newsletter, as well as a few others.
For our part we offer you some Latin American binge-worthy TV in the form of Gabriel García Márquez’s beloved One Hundred Years of Solitude which comes to the small screen, the centenary edition of the South American Handbook as the ultimate stocking-filler and a magical gift from Chilean artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña who this year is featured in ArtReview’s Power 100 List for the first time. There’s even what some have described as a turkey from Argentina….
We’ll be back in the New Year with more Latin American films and unmissable events. Thanks for reading us this year!
One Hundred Years of Solitude on Netflix
Netflix has adapted Gabriel García Márquez’s classic novel One Hundred Years of Solitude - which chronicles seven generations of the Buendia family in the fictional town of Macondo - in one of the most ambitious productions in Latin American history.
The first of the two-part series launched this month with eight episodes now available. Directed by the Argentine-born Alex Garcia Lopez and Colombia’s Laura Mora, the Spanish-language series spans 18 episodes in total and was filmed entirely in Colombia with approval from García Márquez’s family.
Dynamo Producciones (the team behind the hit series Narcos) partnered with Netflix on the production, shooting across 15 towns in Colombia and using over 20,000 extras. The crew built a life-size set of Macondo in Alvarada, Tolima, eventually constructing four versions of the town to show its expansion and the passing of the years. The initial script was written by José Rivera, the Oscar-nominates screenwriter of The Motorcycle Diaries, in collaboration with a team of Colombian writers who were brought in to capture the nuances of history, language and dialogue.
García Márquez had famously been reluctant to sell the film rights of his book worrying that it could not be made into a single film and that it would not be in Spanish. A long-standing supporter of Latin American cinema, he established and lead the New Latin American Cinema Foundation in Cuba, and was its president until his death in 2014.
'The idea of the foundation is to forge a unitary Latin American cinema, recognizing that each nation has its own characteristics and culture, but taking into account the common features,' García Márquez said in an interview with The New York Times in 1989. He used a musical analogy: '’The distance between the tango and salsa is enormous, but it's all recognized as Latin American music,'’ he said.
As a tribute to García Márquez, Havana Film Festival director Tania Delgado Fernández made an agreement with Netflix to screen the first two episodes of the new series as part of the festival, and they were shown at the Yara Cinema in Havana on 6 Dec with the official premiere in Bogota shortly after.
Since One Hundred Years of Solitude was published in 1967, it has sold an estimated 50 million copies and has been translated into 46 languages. The second part of the series will be made in Colombia next year.
One Hundred Years of Solitude- Part 1 can be seen on Netflix.
Camp Crasher (Campamento con Mamá, Dir Martino Zaidelis, Argentina 2024)
Number One Film On Netflix in Argentina
Camp Crasher (Campamento con Mamá) sees Uruguayan actress and singer Natalia Oreiro play Patri, a divorced and overbearing mother who won’t stop interfering in her 12-year old son’s life. When Patri accidentally discovers that Ramón wants to move in with her ex husband so he can get away from her, she has to find a way to reconnect with him and save their relationship. She gets her chance when the school’s end of year camping trip looks set to be cancelled without annyone available to drive the school bus. Patri steps in and offers to help, much to her son’s dismay. Not only will she drive Ramón and his classmates to camp, but she is determined to stay there until she can prove what a cool mother she really is.
Camp Crasher is currently the number one film on Netlfix in Argentina. Leer Cine summed up the film with the line: “The only thing this film has in its favour is that it lasts 95 minutes. Avoid at all costs.” While the kindest review described it as an “Argentine family comedy that is simple and relatively effective.”
Produced by Juan Jose Campanella’s 100 Bares, Camp Crasher’s success seems mainly down to its star, Natalia Oreiro who is “a charming actress who makes bearable this role of an overbearing mother.” Check out her snowy music video Me muero de amor, for some Last Christmas vibes here.
Camp Crasher is now on Netflix.
Legendary South American Travel Guide Celebrates 100
The South American Handbook was launched in 1924, a time when Baedeker guidebooks were still popular, commerce between Britain and South America was vigorous, and when Argentina had the largest population of British residents outside the empire or the United States. It quickly gained a reputation as a travel bible. Its original 700-page edition (with advertisements) even included advice on “the British status of Argentine-born children”, along with restaurant recommendations, tips on local customs and dress codes, and useful Spanish words to know.
One hundred years later and the publishers are about to launch a new edition of the legendary guide, with the 1,800-page book out next year, despite having to now compete with the TikTok for travel recommendations.
“The guidebook market has seen a decline since the late 1990s or early 2000s,” Adrian Phillips, managing director of Bradt Guides, which now publishes the South American Handbook recently told the FT, “But it has defied predictions that that it would be extinct by this time.”
The edition next year will feature 9,000 hotels, restaurants and other businesses, as well as “more than 1,500 never-before-included hotels and restaurants across the continent.” said Daniel Austin, its new Editor. It will not, however, feature a date on its cover, as was the tradition until the last dated edition in 2017. This means it will be easier to update in the future. The publishers have also confirmed that the 1,800 pages will not be increased. So if you’re willing to squeeze a copy in your hand luggage you may save on those roaming charges.
Did you ever own a copy of the Handbook? If so, we’d love to hear from you.
Cecilia Vicuña Amongst Most Influential Artists
Born in Santiago, Chile and now based in New York, Cecilia Vicuña is a visual artist, poet, activist and filmmaker. In this short film, Vicuña describes her Amazonian journey in the 1970s, her experiences at the 2022 Venice Biennale, her philosophy of arte precario, and gives an insight into her current exhibition La Migranta Blue Nipple on show in New York.
“When I was little, I understood that my thoughts were different, and I decided not to live colonised,” the Chilean artist told Casa Vogue this year.
Vicuña was recently named among “the most influential people in the contemporary artworld” in ArtReview’s Power100 List and you can here more about her extraordinary talent and vision in the Great Women Artists Podcast
That’s all for now. We’ll be back in 2025!
Saludos,
The Argentine Film Festival Team