Through images deadpan, strange and surreal, Greek writer-director Christos Nikou posits a beguiling reflection on memory, identity, and loss, exploring how a society might handle an irreversible epidemic through one man’s story of self-discovery. Prescribed daily tasks on cassette tapes so he can create new memories and document them on camera, Aris slides back into ordinary life, meeting Anna (Sofia Georgovasili), a woman who is also in recovery. (DVD)Īmidst a worldwide pandemic that causes sudden amnesia, middle-aged Aris (Aris Servetalis) finds himself enrolled in a recovery program designed to help unclaimed patients build new identities. In the aftermath of an unimaginable tragedy, a basketball title has the ability to breathe new life back into this small town. Watch as two cousins lead their local High School team toward a shot at their first state championship in over 30 years. For hundreds of years two distinct traditions have defined their community-fishing and basketball. Metlakatla is Alaska’s last Native Indian reserve. While linking these seemingly disparate histories of violence, the film confirms Reyes as one of the most potent voices in American independent cinema. Provocative, unique, and strikingly cinematic, 499 mixes non-fictional and performative elements with elements of the road movie to show how past traumas continue to affect contemporary reality. As the anachronistic fictional character interacts with real-life victims of Mexico’s failed drug wars and indigenous communities in resistance, the filmmaker portrays the country’s current humanitarian crisis as part of a vicious and unfinished colonial project, still in motion, nearly five hundred years later. Through the eyes of a ghostly conquistador, the film recreates Hérnan Cortés’ epic journey from the coasts of Veracruz to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, the site of contemporary Mexico City. Its focus on modernity and on how the genre engages with modernist discourses will appeal to scholars working outside of film studies and will prove a valuable contribution to academic scholarship on Latin America.To reflect on the 500-year anniversary of the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 2021, director Reyes offers a bold hybrid cinema experience exploring the brutal legacy of colonialism in contemporary Mexico. “Lie’s book engages with recent scholarship on the road movie and complements existing bibliography through its in-depth and broad take on the road movie genre as it has appeared in Latin America. “A comprehensive study of the Latin American road movie, Lie's engaging and original book has expanded my understanding of the genre and its adaptibility, not least through the paradoxical but intriguing concept of the counter-road movie, the road movie where travel is impeded and the traveller gets stuck.” (Michael Chanan, Professor of Film and Video, Roehampton University, UK) This is an excellent, well-informed and insightful study that will be a key reference point for students and academics alike.” (Deborah Shaw, Reader in Film Studies, University of Portsmouth, UK) Expertly written and researched, it … references a wide range of films while providing close and original analysis of some of the most significant examples of the genre. “This is the most comprehensive study of the Latin American road movie to date. “Nadia Lie’s brilliant book demonstrates how reconsidering this film genre from the perspective of Latin American cinema allows us to enrich and refine not only our understanding of the road movie itself, but also the definition of modernity and of the ‘road’, as a way of transport and communication and as a metaphor for (modern) life.” (Sophie Dufays, Image & Narrative, Vol.
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