OVID is thrilled to announce a new collaboration with PRAGDA, which will add award-winning Latin American, Spanish, and Latinx films to its growing catalog of world cinema.
Founded in 2002, PRAGDA is a film company and cultural initiative devoted to programming, promoting, distributing, and exhibiting films from Spain and Latin America. In addition to being one of the most important and innovative promoters of Spanish cinema in the United States, PRAGDA’s growing catalog includes many award-winning Latin American documentaries on contemporary issues and inspiring, challenging, and entertaining feature films.
Among these new releases on OVID, there are many narrative features including Puerto Rican filmmaker Alex Santiago Perez’s COWS WEARING GLASSES and two works from Nicaraguan filmmaker Florence Jaugey: LA YUMA and THE NAKED SCREEN.
Also included are the documentaries GOYA: THE SECRET OF THE SHADOWS, a meditation on the art market, and THE METAL STORK on Salvadorian civil war survivors and their attempts to reconcile their pasts and bring peace to the present.
Stay tuned for more PRAGDA films coming to OVID in February, March, and April, 2020. More details on the initial releases below:
Tuesday, January 21st
La Soledad
Directed by Jorge Thielen Armand; Pragda, Narrative
José, a young father, discovers that the dilapidated mansion he occupies will soon be demolished. Desperate to save his family from homelessness, José begins a search for a cursed treasure that has long said to be buried in the house.
Won the Cinema Tropical Award for Best First Film.
La Yuma
Directed by Florence Jaugey; Pragda, Narrative
Selected as the Nicaraguan entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards, LA YUMA tells the story of a young woman who dreams of transcending her bleak life in the slums of Managua by becoming a boxer.
Winner, Best Actress, South American Film Encounters Marseille
Winner Jury Prize, Best Actress at Granado Film Festival Brasil
Winner, Best Actress, Guatemala Icaro Film Festival
Friday, January 24th
Andrés Reads and Writes
Directed by Daniel Peralta; Pragda, Narrative
Andres Centeno, a young factory worker, spends his nights working long night shifts, leaving him in a continuous state of drowsiness. Andres has lost its way and forgotten his teenage dreams. He realizes that although he hasn’t made the right choices, it’s not too late to make amends.
Nominated for Best Dramatic Feature at the Stockholm Independent Film Festival.
Cows Wearing Glasses
Directed by Alex Santiago Perez; Pragda, Narrative
Directed by one of the most talented emerging filmmakers coming out of the new wave of Puerto Rican cinema, COWS WEARING GLASSES uses a subtle sense of humor to touch upon issues of aging.
Extra-Terrestrials
Directed by Carla Cavina; Pragda, Narrative
Family members who live on a chicken farm in Puerto Rico have their secrets unveiled when a star makes them understand that we are all metaphorically extraterrestrials.
The Candidate
Directed by Daniel Hendler; Pragda, Narrative
A rich businessman running for president is groomed by his campaign team to become more palatable to the middle class.
The Naked Screen
Directed by Florence Jaugey; Pragda, Narrative
After Alex films an intimate encounter with his girlfriend, Esperanza, she pleads with him to delete the footage. When he loses the phone and the video shows up online, the entire community becomes involved in their lives.
Tuesday, January 28th
The Eternauta’s Wife
Directed by Adan Aliaga; Pragda, Documentary
Some time in 1957, Argentine writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld created a highly metaphorical and political graphic novel, El Eternauta.
THE ETERNAUTA’S WIFE follows Elsa Sánchez, Oesterheld’s widow. The daughter of immigrants from Galicia, her life is evidence of the cruelty of Argentina’s repressive dictatorship, which took the lives of her husband, their four daughters and their respective husbands.
Goya: The Secret of the Shadows
Directed by David Mauas; Pragda, Documentary
A photographer purchases an anonymous 19th-century portrait in Barcelona. He believes that it is an original Goya painting but is it real or fake? The acquisition of the portrait is the starting point of a journey d’auteur, a look into the authorship of his canvases and a reflection on art as a business.
Inner Borderlines
Directed by Luis Mancha; Pragda, Documentary
The film follows Alejandro Morales around Southern California as he explores a variety of topics that concern the Chicano/Latino community including: history, immigration, race relations, ethnicity, family, labor, education, religion, memory, gender, power, border, borderlands, and the fantastic.
The German Neighbor
Directed by Rosario Cervio, Martin Liji; Pragda, Documentary
Integrating impressive archival material, THE GERMAN NEIGHBOR follows the steps of Adolf Eichmann’s highly unusual life in Argentina after his escape from Nazi Germany, and his defense, which sparked international interest, at the Nuremberg trial in Jerusalem.
The Metal Stork
Directed by Joan Lòpez Lloret; Pragda, Documentary
During El Salvador’s civil war, rural kids Ana Lilian, Ricardo, and Blanca witnessed the murder of their families and grieved as a military helicopter determined their fate. Now, they try to reconnect with their long-lost families, hoping to reconcile their pasts and bring peace to the present.
Official Selection at the San Francisco Latino Film Festival.
Friday, January 31st
Return to Cuba
Directed by David Fabrega; Pragda, Documentary
After 18 years living in Italy, Barbara Ramos returns to live in Cuba, her homeland. In the town of Santa Clara and through the projects of family and friends, she discovers what has changed, what hasn’t, and what will likely never change in her country.
Shot over a period of three years – the time it took Barbara to build her dream house – RETURN TO CUBA chronicles her life after Fidel Castro’s era, in the wake of Raul Castro’s liberal reforms and the reconciliation with the United States of America.
Official Selection at the San Francisco Latino Film Festival.
The Offended
Directed by Marcela Zamora; Pragda, Documentary
An award-winning documentary on the legacy of the internal armed conflict in El Salvador, THE OFFENDED features the director’s charismatic father, Ruben Zamora, a key political leader and current Salvadorian Ambassador before the UN, who was captured and tortured by the National Police during the country’s civil war.
Illustrated with shocking archival footage, Zamora’s testimony, as well as that of others who suffered a similar fate, the film provides insight into the scope of this horrific war during which tens of thousands of people were murdered in shadowy circumstances.
Winner of a Jury Mention at the Havana Film Festival and an Audience Award at the Costa Rica Film Festival.
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