San Diego Latino Film Festival's Monthly Film Series presents

MACHUCA

August 5-11, 2005 - BACK IN SAN DIEGO FOR ONE MORE WEEK!
Call movie theaters listed below for screening times and ticket prices!

Chile/Spain, 115 min., 2004, For Mature Audiences, In Spanish WITH English
subtitles

"TENDER, FUNNY, SMART...A REAL DISCOVERY." - Joe Morgenstern, WALL STREET JOURNAL

"GRABS OUR HEARTS." - Russell Scott Smith, NEW YORK POST

"PROFOUND...INTENSELY HUMAN." - Kenneth Turan, LOS ANGELES TIMES

* See the trailer on-line:

* Official Selection in the Director’s Fortnight at the 2004 Cannes Film
Festival & Chile's Official Selection for the 2005 Oscars!

NOW SCREENING IN DEL MAR & SAN DIEGO:
Ultrastar Flower Hill
2630 Via De La Valle
Del Mar, CA. Showtimes: (858) 646-9425

Mann Theatres Hazard Center
7510 Hazard Center Dr., Suite 100
San Diego, CA 92108
Showtimes: (619) 574-7849

* To view more photos, visit:

Santiago, Chile, 1973: Pedro Machuca (Ariel Mateluna) is a poor boy of
tribal descent, brought into an upper class private school during Chile’s
brief socialist era. Gonzalo (Matias Quer), the well-to-do boy seated a row
ahead, befriends Pedro against the bullying will of his classmates. In so
doing, he discovers a raw, thrilling but wildly complicated world outside
his own previously sheltered homelife. Pedro’s fierce, attractive young
neighbor Silvana (Manuella Martelli) by turns mocks Gonzalo’s pampered
background, only to fondly lead both boys in a number of kissing games. All
around them, Chile drifts toward civil war. Protest marches fill the
Santiago streets with zealots of the right and left. At school, their humane
headmaster Father McEnroe (Ernesto Malbran) comes under an hysteria-driven attack by parents for his charity toward poor students.

Amid so much public turmoil, little Gonzalo must also contend with more
intimate kinds of upheaval. His sexy, melancholy mother (Aline Kuppenheim)
is having a love affair with a wealthy older man (Federico Luppi). His
father (Francisco Kings) is sweet but ineffectual, and lacks the fire to
fight for his marriage. Thus Gonzalo’s household seems headed for a regime
change as unwelcome as the one brewing in the streets.

He therefore escapes into his friendship with Pedro, and for a time the two
boys become witnesses to each other’s lives. Pedro gets a look at the
intense dysfunctions in Gonzalo’s life, and Gonzalo in turn is immersed in
Pedro’s world of extreme poverty. The two boys share a love of comic books
devoted to the Lone Ranger. With Sylvana’s encouragement they also take part in protest marches -- selling cigarettes and flags to demonstrators on the right as well as the left, but chanting with committed vigor when marching
with the left.

The already enormous rift between Gonzalo’s comfortable household and
Pedro’s hard-scrabble life a few miles away in an illegal shantytown
ultimately becomes impossible to bridge, once the bloody military coup of
September 11, 1973 erupts and capsizes the nation. All three children
suddenly face moral tests far beyond their young capacities. As they do,
Machuca inevitably surges to a heartbreaking, insightful finale. Click here
to read Spanish synopsis:

Official website (in Spanish): www.machucacine.cl

ANDRÉS WOOD -- DIRECTOR, CO-WRITER
Born 1965, Andrés Wood is of Irish and Scottish descent, and was educated in an English school in his native Santiago, Chile -- exactly as are the young
friends in MACHUCA. He later trained as an economist at the Catholic
University of Chile, from which he graduated in 1988, followed by a course
of study at NYU Film School in 1991. His previous features, have received
widespread acclaim at a variety of international festivals -- including Best
New Director at San Sebastián in 1997. MACHUCA was an Official Selection in the Director’s Fortnight at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

FILMOGRAPHY:
2004 MACHUCA
2001 LOCO FEVER (director, cowriter)
1998 REVENGE (TV miniseries; director, cowriter)
1997 FOOTBALL STORIES (director, cowriter)
1994 FAMILY REUNION (short film; director)
1992 IDYLL (short film: director, producer)

PRINCIPAL CAST:
Matias Quer
Ariel Mateluna
Manuela Martelli (B - HAPPY)
Ernesto Malbrán (CHILE -- THE OBSTINATE MEMORY, MINEFIELD, aka NOBODY
RETURNS INTACT, SUBTERRA)
Aline Kuppenheim
Federico Luppi (Cronos, Men With Guns, Lugares Comunes)

Tickets:
Call movie theaters listed above for new ticket prices!

Distributed by:
M e n e m s h a F i l m s, inc.
Neil Friedman, President
213 Rose Ave. / 2nd Floor
Venice, CA 90291
Tel: 310.452.1775 / Fax: 310.452.3740
neilf@menemshafilms.com

Presenting sponsor:
Santana's Mexican Grill


Sponsors for Cinema en Tu Idioma include:

* Univision KBNT-TV Ch. 17


* El Latino San Diego


* Radio Latina


* EL SOL


* El Mexicano


* San Diego Aerospace Museum


* 105.7 La Pantera


* Yolanda S. Walther-Meade


* Telemundo 33