Running April 4-7, the Iff Panama brings to this year’s edition a rich mix of standout director driven titles from Europe, the Spanish-speaking world and beyond, spangled by highlights from Central America, including Panama:
“Bila Burba,” (Duiren Wagua, Panama)
Documentary. Wagua’s debut feature. The Gunadule nation’s ties with the Panamanian government were fraught with territorial and cultural disputes. In 1925, leaders Simral Colman and Nele Kantule, inspired by their warrior ancestors, joined forces to unite their communities in the ‘Dule Revolution’ against police brutality. Today, their descendants honor this legacy through street theater, transforming community streets into stages to commemorate their ancestors’ struggle.
Bila Burba
“Brown,” (Ricardo Aguilar, Panama)
Penned by Aguilar’s regular collaborator, Manolito Rodríguez, the story centers on Teófilo Alfonso, also known as “Panamá Al” Brown, the first Latin American World Boxing Champion. After a fixed fight costs him his title, he retires to Paris.
“Bila Burba,” (Duiren Wagua, Panama)
Documentary. Wagua’s debut feature. The Gunadule nation’s ties with the Panamanian government were fraught with territorial and cultural disputes. In 1925, leaders Simral Colman and Nele Kantule, inspired by their warrior ancestors, joined forces to unite their communities in the ‘Dule Revolution’ against police brutality. Today, their descendants honor this legacy through street theater, transforming community streets into stages to commemorate their ancestors’ struggle.
Bila Burba
“Brown,” (Ricardo Aguilar, Panama)
Penned by Aguilar’s regular collaborator, Manolito Rodríguez, the story centers on Teófilo Alfonso, also known as “Panamá Al” Brown, the first Latin American World Boxing Champion. After a fixed fight costs him his title, he retires to Paris.
- 4/3/2024
- by Anna Marie de la Fuente
- Variety Film + TV
While a number of films have been made about Panama’s Indigenous communities, few are by native filmmakers themselves. To date, perhaps only three Indigenous Panamanian filmmakers have ventured into filmmaking. Duiren Wagua, whose documentary feature debut “Bila Burba” plays at this year’s 12th Panama International Film Festival (Iff Panama), running April 4-7, is hoping to change the status quo.
Wagua and the company he co-founded with his brother Orgun, Wagua Films, have provided production and consulting services to companies seeking to film in Panama’s Indigenous territories. Orgun Wagua is also an editor and has worked on the projects of Ivan Jaripio, who hails from the Emberá community of Piriati.
The Wagua brothers also provided production services to the second Indigenous-themed docu at the fest, “God Is a Woman” by Swiss-Panamanian Andres Peyrot, where they also feature among the talking heads. In it, Duiren notes that in the past,...
Wagua and the company he co-founded with his brother Orgun, Wagua Films, have provided production and consulting services to companies seeking to film in Panama’s Indigenous territories. Orgun Wagua is also an editor and has worked on the projects of Ivan Jaripio, who hails from the Emberá community of Piriati.
The Wagua brothers also provided production services to the second Indigenous-themed docu at the fest, “God Is a Woman” by Swiss-Panamanian Andres Peyrot, where they also feature among the talking heads. In it, Duiren notes that in the past,...
- 4/3/2024
- by Anna Marie de la Fuente
- Variety Film + TV
Who does a documentary truly belong to — the people who make it, the people who fund it, or the people it depicts? On the face of it, the answer seems obvious: At a spiritual level, if not always a corporate one, we tend to think of art as the property of the artist. Yet in dusting off a long-languishing nonfiction feature from the 1970s that was taken from its stymied director by his bankrollers and sent to the vault, Andrés Peyrot’s thoughtful, mirror-holding doc “God is a Woman” makes a compelling case for the third option. With the old project terminally abandoned and its helmer no longer alive, it’s the Indigenous Panamanian community filmed in the first place who believe themselves the heirs to footage they’ve patiently waited half a century to see. In empathetic, increasingly poetic ways, Peyrot’s film finally presents it to them.
A...
A...
- 8/31/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Tomorrow the Venice International Film Festival sets its sails on its 80th edition and among the treasures in the Venice Critics’ Week we find a film about a hidden (does it still exist?) film in the out-of-competition opener God Is a Woman (Dieu est une femme) by Swiss-Panamanian filmmaker Andrés Peyrot. Also selected for the upcoming Toronto Intl. Film Festival, Peyrot sets off to discover the importance of this document. In 1975, the renowned French Oscar-winning director Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau (Sky Above and Mud Beneath was the first ever doc awarded for the category) embarked on a journey to Panama with the purpose of documenting the Kuna community, a place where women hold a sacred status.…...
- 8/29/2023
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
Two UK features play in competition at event’s 38th edition.
Venice Critics’ Week has selected seven features for its main competition, including two from the UK - Hoard by Luna Carmoon and Sky Peals by Moin Hussain.
Scroll down for full line-up
Hoard is the debut feature from Carmoon, a Screen Star of Tomorrow 2022,. It is produced by Loran Dunn (Screen Star of Tomorrow 2017), Helen Simmons (Screen Star of Tomorrow 2018) with Andy Starke, and stars Hayley Squires, Joseph Quinn (Screen Star of Tomorrow 2018) and Saura Lightfoot Leon.
Hoard is backed by the BFI and BBC Film, which also supported development,...
Venice Critics’ Week has selected seven features for its main competition, including two from the UK - Hoard by Luna Carmoon and Sky Peals by Moin Hussain.
Scroll down for full line-up
Hoard is the debut feature from Carmoon, a Screen Star of Tomorrow 2022,. It is produced by Loran Dunn (Screen Star of Tomorrow 2017), Helen Simmons (Screen Star of Tomorrow 2018) with Andy Starke, and stars Hayley Squires, Joseph Quinn (Screen Star of Tomorrow 2018) and Saura Lightfoot Leon.
Hoard is backed by the BFI and BBC Film, which also supported development,...
- 7/24/2023
- by Tim Dams
- ScreenDaily
“God Is a Woman,” a doc by Swiss-Panamanian filmmaker Andrés Peyrot about Pierre Dominique Gaisseau’s 1975 journey to Panama to make a film on the island-dwelling Kuna people — whose women play a unique and sacred role — will open the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week.
The section’s out-of-competition opener reconstructs the legend of this film that was passed down from the elders to the new Kuna generation, but never made it to the screen. Gaisseau, a French explorer and filmmaker who won an Oscar in 1961 for the doc “The Sky Above, the Mud Below,” lived with the Kuna people on a Panamanian island for a year and filmed their most intimate ceremonies. He then promised to return with the film, but never did. He ran out of funding and a bank confiscated his reels, which Peyrot unearthed 50 years later.
Films in the Venice Critics’ Week competition comprise “About Last Year,...
The section’s out-of-competition opener reconstructs the legend of this film that was passed down from the elders to the new Kuna generation, but never made it to the screen. Gaisseau, a French explorer and filmmaker who won an Oscar in 1961 for the doc “The Sky Above, the Mud Below,” lived with the Kuna people on a Panamanian island for a year and filmed their most intimate ceremonies. He then promised to return with the film, but never did. He ran out of funding and a bank confiscated his reels, which Peyrot unearthed 50 years later.
Films in the Venice Critics’ Week competition comprise “About Last Year,...
- 7/24/2023
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Producer Arthur Cohn was first mentioned in Variety on Feb. 20, 1962, when the documentary he produced, “Sky Above, Mud Beneath,” was nominated for an Oscar. The doc, “Le Ciel et la boue,” directed by Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau, underwent a few title changes over the years, and ended up winning the prize for 1961. Cohn has continued to flourish, winning Oscars for two more documentaries — “One Day in September” and “American Dream” — and producing numerous other films, including “The Etruscan Smile,” released this year in the U.S. by Lightyear Entertainment. Cohn also produced three films that won the foreign-language Academy Award: “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” “Black and White in Color” and “Dangerous Moves.” The Swiss-born Cohn worked as a journalist, saying that career taught him how to spot original and special stories unfolding in everyday life. He says his films were inspired by current events and his Jewish heritage.
What attracted you...
What attracted you...
- 1/4/2020
- by Lorraine Wheat
- Variety Film + TV
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