Caótica Ana

Chaotic Ana
a film by Julio Medem

The story of Ana during four years of her life, from age 18 to 22. A countdown, ten, nine, eight, seven... until zero, like in hypnosis, through which Ana discovers that she does not live alone, that her existence seems like a continuation of other lives of young women who died in a tragic way, all at the age of 22, and who live in the abyss of her unconscious memory. This is her chaos. In this feminist fable, Ana is the princess and the monster of the story against the tyranny of the white man; a tyranny of gender, male against female, the first cause of the misfortunes of mankind. On her journey Ana will attempt to break this chain of violence.

Ana is a naive young artist who has known only the natural world, living a secluded bohemian existence with her German father, Klaus, in a cave high above the sea on Ibiza. Ethereal and free-spirited, she supports herself and her father by selling her colourful paintings at various arts and craft fairs across the island. Ana is then discovered by a French woman, Justine, and lured away to her workshop in Madrid, to live and work with other young artists in complete creative freedom, the only commitment being to study.

Once there, Ana is confronted with a life she has never even imagined – a life that reveals both profound love and near-unbearable pain. As she takes her first step towards womanhood, Ana gradually discovers that life is more than a geographical and linear journey; it is also temporal and cyclical as evidenced by the many lifetimes she has lived before her current existence. Justine recognises Ana's chaos, a chaos which can also inspire the imagination – creativity through disorder – and she becomes her guide on the journey into the abyss.

Eventually, in a transcendental bid to explore her many past lives and deaths, Ana turns to regressive hypnosis to open the doors. It is this journey that reveals to Ana the source of her chaos – the hideous commonality that has followed her from her very first journey. Instilled with the wisdom of her many past experiences, Ana is propelled ever further back in time and across the continents, knowing that one day the time will come for her to use this power to create life.

An intimate and sensual tale of personal transformation. The film is visually stunning, with dynamic cinematography and editing, and a magnificent score by Jocelyn Pook. It is also a searing indictment of masculine aggression that has led to a legacy of warfare, occupation, terrorism, and subjugation. Writer/director Julio Medem dedicates this work to his younger sister Ana, who died tragically at the age of 22 – the striking and vibrant artworks that appear throughout the film are hers. It is jointly dedicated to his daughter, also named Ana.

Ping Guo

Lost in Beijing
a film by Li Yu

Every year, China's turbulent economic expansion tempts thousands of impoverished peasants to the prosperous region surrounding the capital. The promise of higher wages and an attractive modern lifestyle prompts many migrants to burn their bridges. Set against the frenzied backdrop of Beijing, where a fast growing economy has created a new class of urban socialites and nouveau riche, the film follows a struggling young couple whose indiscretions and greed ultimately threaten the future of their relationship.

One of the two million people who have recently moved to the area is the pretty Liu Ping Guo and her husband An Kun. Having both found a job, they now earn enough to lead a modest life, even managing to save a little. Ping Guo works as a masseuse at Gold Basin Foot Massage Palace owned by Lin Dong and his wife, Wang Mei, a childless couple who are desperate to have a baby. Ping Guo's boss, Lin Dong, shows her all the right moves to please her upwardly mobile clients and get better tips. During a party with her colleagues, Ping Guo drinks too much, and taking advantage of her drunken state, Lin Dong rapes her.

An Kun, who works as a window cleaner, observes the assault. His jealousy and rage soon dissipates however when he hits on the idea of blackmailing the rapist. As long as Lin Dong pays him and lets him sleep with Lin Dong's wife, he promises to remain silent. When Ping Guo falls pregnant, her husband suspects Lin Dong to be the father. His attempt to squeeze more money out of his wife's employer ends in a fateful deal by which An Kun will get the money he demands and Lin Dong will get the child. Their wives are not consulted.

Shortly after the birth, Ping Guo starts working in Lin Dong's household as a nanny for the child she has had to give up. Seeing how happy Lin Dong is with the baby, An Kun grows increasingly jealous and before long the situation involving the ménage-à-quatre escalates dramatically. In a brokered deal, the fate of the child will join the two couples in an emotional game of tug-of-war, where the sides will split over money and revenge, but where love and redemption will eventually rise above them all. Quietly, Ping Guo gathers the money and taking her child, walks out the door.

Li Yu's third feature, her most high profile film yet, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival 2007. The result was over a year of controversy with the Chinese Film Bureau concerning both the appropriateness of that screening and of the content of the film. Though briefly screened in a heavily edited state, the film was eventually banned outright.

The Motorcycle Diaries

Diarios de motocicleta
a film by Walter Salles

Based on the journals of both Alberto Granado and Ernesto Guevara, the man who would later become 'Che', the film follows a journey of self-discovery, tracing the origins of a revolutionary heart. With a highly romantic sense of adventure, the two friends leave their familiar surroundings in Buenos Aires on La Poderosa, 'The Mighty One', a rickety 1939 Norton 500. Although the bike breaks down during the course of their eight month journey, they press onward, hitching rides along the way. As they start to see a different Latin America in the people they meet on the road, the diverse geography they encounter begins to reflect their own shifting perspectives. By the end of their journey the two are questioning the value of progress as defined by economic systems that leave so many people beyond their reach – and their experiences awaken within them the men they will later become.

In December 1951, 23-year-old medical student Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, 'Fuser' to his friends, one semester away from graduation, decides to postpone his studies to accompany his 29-year-old biochemist friend Alberto Granado, 'Mial', on a projected four month, 8,000 km long dream motorcycle trip throughout South America, starting from their home in Buenos Aires. Their quest is to see things they've only read about in books about the continent on which they live. Their planned route is ambitious, taking them first south into Patagonia, then north across the Andes, along the coast of Chile, through the Atacama Desert and into the Peruvian Amazon in order to reach Venezuela in time for Granado's 30th birthday. However, due to La Poderosa's breakdown, they are forced to travel at a much slower pace, taking a further three months to arrive in Caracas, and covering a total distance of 13,240 km.

During their expedition, Guevara and Granado encounter the poverty of the indigenous people, and begin to gain a better sense of the disparity between the "haves" (to which they belong) and the "have-nots" (who make up the majority of those they encounter). In Chile they meet a penniless and persecuted couple forced onto the road because of their communist beliefs. Guevara and Granado ashamedly admit that they are not out looking for work as well. They then accompany the couple to the Chuquicamata copper mine, where Guevara angrily witnesses the treatment of the workers. Later, there is also an instance of recognition when Guevara, on a luxurious river ship, looks down at the poor dark-skinned indians on the small wooden boat hitched behind.

However, it is a visit to the ancient Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru that solidifies something in Guevara. His musings are then sombrely refocused to how an indigenous civilisation capable of building such beauty could be destroyed by the creators of the now decaying and polluted urban sprawl of nearby Lima. His reflections are interrupted by Granado, who shares with him a dream to peacefully revolutionise and transform modern South America, to which Guevara quickly retorts: "A revolution without guns? It will never work."

Later, in Peru, they volunteer for three weeks at the San Pablo leper colony. There, Guevara observes both literally and metaphorically the division of society between the toiling masses and the ruling class, as the staff live on the north side of the river, separated from the deprived lepers living to the south. To demonstrate his solidarity, Guevara refuses to wear rubber gloves during his visit choosing instead to shake bare hands with the startled leper inmates.

On their last evening at San Pablo, spent celebrating with the staff, Guevara confirms his nascent egalitarian, anti-authority impulses, while making a birthday toast, which is also his first political speech. In it he evokes a pan-Latin American identity that transcends both the arbitrary boundaries of nation and race. His encounters with social injustice transform the way Guevara sees the world, and by implication motivate his later political activities as a Marxist revolutionary. He makes his symbolic 'final journey' that night when despite his asthma, he chooses to swim across the river separating the two societies of the leper colony, to spend the night in a leper shack, instead of in the cabins of the doctors. This journey implicitly symbolises Guevara's rejection of wealth and aristocracy into which he was born, and the path he would take later in his life as a guerrilla, fighting for what he believed was the dignity every human being deserves.

A beautiful and tender insight into the early life of Che Guevara, one of the most memorable and iconic figures of the 20th century. The film closes with an appearance by the real 82-year-old Alberto Granado, along with pictures from the actual journey and a brief mention of Che Guevara's eventual 1967 CIA-assisted execution in the Bolivian jungle.