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FILMS ABOUT ART & CULTURE
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Frida
(Frida Kahlo)
Julie Taymor
USA -
2002 |
"Frida" chronicles the life Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek) shared
unflinchingly and openly with Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), as the young
couple took the art world by storm. From her complex and enduring
relationship with her mentor and husband to her illicit and
controversial affair with Leon Trotsky, to her provocative and romantic
entanglements with women, Frida Kahlo lived a bold and uncompromising
life as a political, artistic, and sexual revolutionary. |
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Bodas de Sangre
(Blood Wedding)
Carmen
(Gypsy Flamenco Dancer)
Nominated
El Amor Brujo
(A Love Bewitched)
Carlos Saura
Spain -
1983 - 1986 |
(Blood Wedding),
Bodas de
Sangre, Based on the play by Frederico Garcia Lorca. Groom’s
mother prepares him for his wedding, but the bride is secretly in love
with another. The bride flees her own wedding party and the groom gives
chase. The conclusion is a knife fight between her husband and her
lover. The dances use the expressive gestures and motions of cabaret
flamenco, choreographed for single dancers, pairs and groups. The
mother's pride in her son is heartwarming, but the savage cultural edge
shows when she sends him to bring back his bride -- she personally gives
him his knife. Carmen (Gypsy Flamenco Dancer), Based on
the opera by George Bizet. Never before has the art of flamenco dance
been so pulsatingly sensual. Or a love so treacherously obsessive. In
this explosive interpretation of the classic opera "Carmen", the lines
between passionate illusion and real life become intricately entwined.
Your senses will be aroused like never before.
El Amor Brujo (A
Love Bewitched), Based on the ballet by composer Manuel de Falla.
Candela marries Jose; soon after he is stabbed to death in a brawl over
another woman. Every night, Candela is compelled to arise from her bed
and dance with the ghost of Jose. Candela eventually marries Carmelo,
who has loved her since they were children, but she is not yet free of
her dead husband. |
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Flamenco
(Musical of Spain's National Art)
Carlos
Saura
Spain -
1995 |
As a hall fills with performers, a narrator says that flamenco came from
Andalucia, a mix of Greek psalms, Mozarabic dirges, Castillian ballads,
Jewish laments, Gregorian chants, African rhythms, and Iranian and
Romany melodies. The film presents thirteen rhythms of flamenco, each
with song, guitar, and dance: the up-tempo bularías, a brooding farruca,
an anguished martinete, and a satiric fandango de huelva. There are
tangos, a taranta, alegrías, siguiriyas, soleás, a guajira of patrician
women, a petenera about a sentence to death, villancicos, and a final
rumba. |
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Tango, no me Dejes Nunca (Tango, Never Leave Me) |
Set in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the film tells the story of director
Mario Suarez's quest to make the ultimate tango film. Lonely after his
wife (one of the film's stars) has left him, Mario must find the themes
that will hold the film together, while simultaneously permitting his
musicians and dancers the freedom of expression that is necessary to
satisfy the tango-hungry Argentine audience. Things become complicated
when Mario falls in love with Elena, a beautiful and talented young
dancer who is the girlfriend of the powerful and dangerous Angelo
Larroca, an investor in the picture. And Mario's creative vision is
challenged by his investors when he plans a scene that recreates
Argentina's dark years of political suppression and "disappearances". |
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Carlos
Saura |
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Spain –
1998
Nominated
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