FILMS OF JUANMA CALDERON
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 8PM
JuanMa Calderon (Writer and Director) (Perú,1967)
Independent video producer/director, he began his artistic career during the 1990s by creating portraits of the alternative rock scene and documenting the major dance and theatre troupes in Lima, Calderón established his career with personal works of video art and experimental shorts that clearly reflect his inter-relation with different artistic media. In 2001 he travels to New York where he develops a project with the Brooklyn Public Television channel and forms the collective “Spanic Attack”, created to support, divulge and promote Latin American art in New York. With “Hot Potato Productions” he begins his trilogy “Reasons, Motives and Circumstances for Exile”, feature-length comedy films dealing with notions of exiles throughout the world. Razones was completed in 2004, Motivos was completed in 2008, and his most recent film, Amores Gatos, was completed in 2015. He shares his experiences through teaching and workshops in public schools in New York, Texas and Peru. He is co-founder of Concepcion 41, an experimental artist residency program in La Antigua, Guatemala, established in 2013. He currently lives in Cambridge, MA.
Razones para el Exxxilio (2014), 75 minutes
Gabriel (Giovanni Ciccia) is a young man who arrives in New York with the dreams of pouring his heart into his great passion, cinema. After many failed attempts, Gabriel feels he has finally written the script that will make a difference, a story that is genuine and heart-felt; an original porn film. With an excellent script-in-hand, and a producer in-tow, what could possibly go wrong? A story that seemed to be slated for success, turns into the nightmare of his existence. Gabriel has risked everything to make his film, and he who risks all… can lose it all…!
Karnaval (2011), 10 minutes
KARNAVAL is a short comedy film set in Peru during the month of February when local traditions celebrate Carnival throughout the entire month in a strangely ritualistic event of mud baths and water-splashing throughout the city. Using both earnest and overwrought dialogue and humor, the story takes place during a neighborhood party, where the “foreigner” prepares an earnest speech to address this strange local custom, but finds herself pummelled by water-filled ballons. The film ends in an unexpected ballad as she retaliates and takes justice in her hands.
Amores Gatos (2015), 71 minutes
Amores Gatos is an experimental tragicomedy about a quasi-poet dilettante that earns his living as a cat-sitter in NYC, and on this raucous night-on-the-job he manages to lose the same cat three times only to realize, when the owners unexpectedly return, that their cat has been replaced by another! This story of love and cross-stories is an adventure, a tragicomedy of love, death, and many lives.
Discussion to follow
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