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Films & DVDs on Latin America  Text Size Increase Font Size Decrease Font Size
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    A

  • Agustin's NewspaperAgustin's Newspaper - Journalism students at the University of Chile embark on an investigation of El Mercurio, the oldest newspaper in Chile.

  • Al Otro Lado (To the Other Side) - An aspiring corrido composer faces two life-changing choices: to traffic drugs or unlawfully cross the border into the United States. Directed by Natalia Almada.

  • All Water Has a Perfect Memory - A poignant experimental documentary that explores the effects of tragedy and remembrance on a bi-cultural family.

  • Americas in Transition -

    A concise and fast-paced history of the volatile forces at work in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua in the 1980s

  • B

  • The Battle of Chile (Part 1 and Part 2)The Battle of Chile (Part 1 and Part 2) - The epic chronicle of Chile's open and peaceful socialist revolution, and of the violent counter-revolution against it in 1973. Judy Stone of the San Francisco Chronicle called it "a landmark in the presentation of living history on film."

  • The Battle of Chile (Part 3) - Deals with the creation by ordinary workers and peasants of thousands of local groups of "popular power."

  • The Battle of Chile - The epic chronicle of Chile's open and peaceful socialist revolution, and of the violent counter-revolution against it in 1973, now on a special edition 4-DVD set.

  • Beauty Parlor in Rio - Meet Dr. Pitanguy, the "Golden Scalpel" at a leading Brazilian plastic surgery clinic.

  • A Better LifeA Better Life - Returning to Todos Santos after 30 years, a look at the profound economic and social changes that have transformed this Guatemalan Mayan village.

  • Beyond My Grandfather Allende - Director Marcia Tambutti Allende seeks to understand the man behind the legend that was her grandfather, Salvador Allende.

  • C

  • Café - This intimate documentary follows an indigenous Mexican family through one critical year of life.

  • Can't Do It In Europe - Some people travel to Bolivia to go down the dangerous silver mines, to see the medieval work conditions. Are they crawling through the contaminated tunnels to learn about a foreign culture, or to escape boredom?

  • Chicago BoysChicago Boys - After the coup in 1973, Chile was turned into a laboratory for the world's most radical neo-liberal experiment.

  • Chile, Obstinate Memory - Patricio Guzmán's landmark film The Battle of Chile(1976) documented the "Popular Unity" period of Salvador Allende's government, the tumultuous events leading up to the 1973 coup, and Allende's death. Guzmán has returned to show The Battle of Chile in his homeland for the first time, and to explore the terrain of the confiscated (but reawakening) memories of the Chilean people.

  • Codigo Color, Memorias - An exploration of racism and skin color in Cuba during the 1950s.

  • The Cordillera of Dreams - Patricio Guzmán's latest film completes a trilogy on his native Chile, and the lasting impact of Pinochet’s coup d’état.

  • D

  • December DaysDecember Days - Between 1975 and 1991, Cuba sent more than 400,000 soldiers and civilians to Angola to support of the country's left-wing government. Two thousand of them never returned.

  • Devils Don't Dream! - Analysis of the CIA-sponsored 1954 coup in Guatemala.

  • E

  • El General - The filmmaker reflects on her great-grandfather, who was a revolutionary general and then president of Mexico.

  • El Sicario, Room 164 - The story of a hitman for the drug cartels, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

  • El VeladorEl Velador - From dusk to dawn Martin watches over the extravagant mausoleums of Mexico's most notorious Drug Lords.

  • Elena - Follows several residents in the "Elena" building, located in Central Havana, over a three-year period.

  • The Embassy - In one of Chris Marker's few fiction films, political dissidents seek refuge in a foreign embassy after a military coup d'état in an unidentified country.

  • F

  • Five Films by Patricio Guzman - Five of the master documentarian's seminal works in an 8-disc boxset, with a 24-page booklet and bonus film about Guzman.

  • From The Other SideFrom The Other Side - Using technology developed for the military, the flow of illegal immigration into San Diego has been stemmed. But for the desperate, there are still the dangerous deserts of Arizona, where Chantal Akerman shifts her focus.

  • G

  • Gabo: The Creation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Meet the Nobel Prize-winning author of works including One Hundred Years of Solitude.

  • Gringo Trails - A global survey of the impacts on cultures, economies, and the environment of the most powerful globalizing force of our time: tourism.

  • H

  • H2Omx - Can a mega-city mobilize its 22 million citizens to become water-sustainable?

  • HousemaidsHousemaids - Seven Brazilian teenagers film their housemaids, exposing issues of class, race, and gender in their families, and in their country.

  • "Housemaids" book - A book companion to the film "Housemaids" by Gabriel Mascaro

  • The Human Zoo - The story of 25 people from four Chilean indigenous groups who in the 19th centry were exhibited as attractions across Europe.

  • I

  • Impunity - What is the cost of truth for families damaged by Colombia's violent past?

  • In the Intense NowIn the Intense Now - A meditation on 1968 political uprisings in France, Czechoslovakia, China, and Brazil.

  • The Inheritors - At early age children begin to work in the Mexican countryside. This is a portrait of theirs lives and their daily struggle for survival.

  • L

  • La Sierra - Tracing a year in the life of a neighborhood in Medellin, Colombia ruled by a paramilitary gang, this is a searing exploration of three lives defined by years of overwhelming violence.

  • Las Leonas - Following the lives of immigrant women on a soccer team in Rome.

  • LemebelLemebel - Writer, visual artist and pioneer of the queer movement in Latin America, Pedro Lemebel shook up conservative Chilean society during Pinochet’s dictatorship in the 1980s.

  • Lucanamarca - In the Peruvian Andes, in the town of Lucanamarca, old wounds are re-opened when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission arrives to investigate a massacre from 20 years ago.

  • M

  • Machito - The Cuban band leader Frank "Machito" Grillo.

  • Major Leagues? - Profiles members of the Cuban National women's baseball team, who pursue their passion in a soceity filled with machismo and prejudice.

  • A Massacre ForetoldA Massacre Foretold - Chronicles the historic events surrounding the 1997 massacre of 45 pacifist supporters of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation who were massacred while seeking refuge in a church.

  • A Mayan Trilogy: Life, Death & Migration - Now on one DVD, Olivia Carrescia's three films on the Mayan Indians of Guatemala preserve a record, and provide an acute observation on how the indigenous culture has been affected by, yet survived, that country's tumultuous history.

  • Metal and Melancholy - Roving the city of Lima, Peru, Heddy Honigmann meets teachers, actors, professionals, civil servants and many others who have turned to taxi driving to earn enough to get by.

  • My Imaginary Country -

    An explosive social revolution brought 1.5 million Chileans to their feet. It was the event Patricio Guzmán had been waiting for.

    N

  • Nostalgia for the Light - In Chile's Atacama Desert, Patricio Guzman studies distant galaxies, ancient civilizations, and the remains of the disappeared.

  • O

  • Oblivion - Heddy Honigmann's latest film focuses on Peru's capital city of Lima, revealing the contrasts of wealth and poverty, and how its poorest citizens have survived decades of economic crisis and corruption.

  • P

  • The Pinochet Case - The story of the landmark legal case against General Augusto Pinochet of Chile, before and after his arrest in London in 1998.

  • Presumed Guilty - A searing examination of the Mexican criminal justice system through the case of one man, wrongly accused of murder.

  • R

  • Rethinking Cuban Civil SocietyRethinking Cuban Civil Society - Unveils the complexities of a Cuban society frequently misrepresented by the media.

  • Roque Dalton - It was once illegal to read books by Roque Dalton, one of El Salvador's most celebrated poets, in his own country.

  • S

  • Sacred Soil - The Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation exhumes up to 1,000 bodies a year to identify them, and return the remains to their families.

  • Salvador Allende - Patricio Guzmán (The Battle of Chile) tells Allende's story, from his youth in Valparaiso and his early career, to his presidency of Chile and death during the coup of September 11, 1973.

  • Santiago, ItaliaSantiago, Italia - Told through the testimonies of those who were there during Chile's military coup, Santiago, Italia is a chilling depiction of living under junta rule and an ultimately inspiring expression of hope amidst dire circumstances.

  • Scars of Memory - An oral history of the 1932 massacre of 10,000 El Salvadorans, a trauma that has resonated through six decades of military rule, until the 1992 peace accords ended a brutal, 12-year civil war.

  • The Search (La Búsqueda) - Thirty years after civil war in Peru, three people go on a quest to recover from loss and heal the wounds left by violence.

  • Silvestre Pantaleon - The story of an elderly man from the Nahuatl-speaking village of San Agustin Oapan, Mexico.

  • The Singular Story of Unlucky JuanThe Singular Story of Unlucky Juan - A comprehensive, accessible examination of the particularities of the Cuban economy.

  • Stolen Land - Illustrates the decades-long often violent resistance movement of the indigenous Nasa people of Colombia over rights to their native land.

  • Suspension - Deep in the misty jungle of southern Colombia, between treacherously steep mountain slopes, stands an unfinished concrete bridge as an absurd symbol of human folly.

  • T

  • 10th Parallel - A voyage deep into the Amazon to explore the implications of Brazil's policy on uncontacted indigenous tribes.

  • TierralismoTierralismo - An in-depth portrait of a Cuban agricultural collective that has drawn international acclaim for its sustainable practices.

  • The Tiniest Place - The story of a small village in El Salvador, destroyed during the country's civil war, and its remarkable rebirth today.

  • U

  • Users -

    Cinematic meditation on technology and motherhood.

More Films & DVDs on Latin America
  • Awakening from Sorrow: Buenos Aires 1997 - Documents the power to transform pain into action and to lift the veil of repression that has gripped a generation of young people orphaned by Argentina's 'Dirty War.'

  • Choropampa - When a devastating mercury spill by the world's richest gold mining corporation hits a quiet peasant village in the Peruvian Andes, a courageous young mayor emerges to lead his people on a quest for healthcare and justice.

  • The Comrade - The story of Luiz Carlos Prestes, legendary leader of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) for over 35 years, who died in 1990.

  • Death Squadrons - The previously untold story of how the French military trained Latin American death squads in the 60s and 70s (and even U.S. Special Forces in the early days of our Vietnam War).

  • Denial - A long overdue investigation into the 1981 El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, and the Reagan administration's cover-up of it.

  • Don't Threaten Me -

  • FALN - A remarkable time capsule of Venezuelan political and social history, and valuable background to the ongoing social conflicts in that country.

  • Fernando is Back - Documents the workings of Chile's Forensic Identification Unit in its quest to reclaim the identities of those 'disappeared' and killed during the Pinochet dictatorship.

  • Fire in the Andes - Tells the story of the conflict in Peru which left over 10,000 dead or quot;disappeared." through an investigation into the killings of eight journalists.

  • Five Centuries Later - Examines the current status of Central American aboriginal civilizations, five hundred years after they were "conquered" by European invaders.

  • Flower in Otomi - Tells the story of Deni Prieto Stock, killed by the Mexican army in 1973.

  • Guanape Sur - A barren rock island off the coast of Peru. Every eleven years hundreds of men come here, to dig up guano, the shit the birds leave behind.

  • In the Name of the People - Four filmmakers travel with guerrillas into combat in El Salvador.

  • Justice - Takes a camera where few have been, a criminal courtroom in Rio de Janeiro, to record the social theatre, the structures of power, what is usually invisible.

  • Justice and the Generals - Investigates the human rights and legal issues involved when two Salvadoran generals are sued in an American court for atrocities (such as the murder of four American churchwomen) committed during El Salvador's civil war.

  • Killer's Paradise - Since 1999 more than two thousand women have been murdered in Guatemala. Yet law enforcement and government turn a blind eye.

  • Mayan Voices: American Lives - Contrasts the experiences of Mayan families who came to Indiantown, Florida as refugees fleeing the violence in Guatemala in the early 1980s, with the struggles of those continuing to arrive in search of better lives.

  • The Other Day - Filmmaker Ignacio Aguero's gentle exploration of home, family, history and Chilean society.

  • The Passion of María Elena - Following the hit-and-run death of her son, Maria Elena, a young woman from Mexico's Raramuri community, embarks upon an eye-opening journey from grief to unexpected spiritual resolution.

  • People Power - The first in depth look at non-violent revolutions around the world.

  • Rapayan - High in the Andes mountains of Peru, above a small village that scarcely seemed to notice, archaeologists have found the ruins of an indigenous settlement that predates the Incas.

  • The Real Thing -

  • Tambogrande - Follows the efforts of a small Peruvian town over five years as they fight government efforts to sell the mineral rights under their homes to a multi-national mining company.

  • Under Construction - In Santiago, Chile, a neighbor lives through the demolition of the house next door and the construction of a large building in the same place, over a two-year period.

  • The World's Next Supermodel - Asia, Brazil or Western Europe - which will be the world's next economic superstar?