Altiplano: A Black Madonna revealed! 2009

Directors:
Peter Brosens
Jessica Hope Woodworth

Writers:
Jessica Hope Woodworth
Peter Brosens

Cast: (Credited cast)
Magaly Solier ... Saturnina
Jasmin Tabatabai ... Grace
Olivier Gourmet ... Max

The icon of Western culture is very tangible in this intense reality drama,Altiplano, set in rural Peru. The scenery, the depiction of the terrain, the intimate understanding of Peru's native people: the clothes they wear, and their holiday and wedding and funeral services, give understanding of unique groups of people. This is the focus of the film's narrative. The antagonist is the threat to their existence by the on-slought of corporate forces robbing the resources of their land and compromsing the peoples health.

The story is all the more compelling because of the music. It brought goose bumps to my skin, as it rose up to fill my ears, my senses with its power, its beauty.

Altiplano will bring a new world experience into your cultural life and bring out the fighter within you. Save the past. Save the native Peruvian life style, embrace the forces of the young soon to be married girl as she becomes a modern day Joan of Arc, a symbolic Virgin Mary, a hero for millions world wide who cherish the world they live in and don't want to give it up for the sake of the almighty dollar.

Altiplano is an interesting film for those who love films. It tells an unusual story punctuated with beautiful scenery and wonderful music. What else can you ask for?


Opens this Friday at New York’s Village East Cinema.

CATFISH: A love story about you, me and the Internet

Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman

Five years ago, before Facebook and Twitter, and before cell phones came into the hands of ordinary people who want to be “connected”, Catfish could not have been made. Before animation was reintroduced into the tent-pole films of today, Catfish would have been something less than it is.

The plot is a simple take on man meets girl/woman:
Megan, Abby’s older sister, and Nev, age 24, meet on the internet. Abby is an eight year old girl who does drawings of Nev’s photographs. Megan and Nev talk intimately on their cell phones and form a strong emotional bond without ever actually meeting.

When they go face to face the film turns from the ordinary to the extraordinary. It is when the inner life of an emotionally repressed woman, Abby's mother Angela, comes to the fore despite the lack of imaginative strivings of her seemingly practical-minded husband who hasn’t a clue about his wife - how she thinks, feels, nor how she spends her time when she is not tending to his needs and the special needs of their children.

The image of Angela sitting in a chair looking at Nev, the film’s hero - her smile, her love, the very fiber of her emotional wealth, so tangible - is heart wrenching.

Oh..............

when the beauty within is perceived........that is what makes this documentary so compelling, so beautiful, so extraordinary.


For me Angela is a hero extraordinaire!

Catfish opens this fall. Watch for it!


Linda Zises
WBAI Radio