Guest Director: Arturo Ripstein

		Film director Arturo Ripstein with screenwriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego at the 2000 San Diego Latino Film Festival. Photo by Nic Paget-Clarke.

SDLFF 2004 is excited about starting a new tradition of annually invited an acclaimed filmmaker to be our "Guest Director". Every year, the festival will invite this individual to curate a sidebar of three films that either have influenced his/her career in a profound way and/or that may have been overlooked in some way. This year's Guest Director is the legendary Mexican filmmaker, Arturo Ripstein. Don't miss this amazing opportunity to meet Arturo Ripstein and see the classic films that he has chosen to screen at the 2004 San Diego Latino Film Festival.

• Arturo Ripstein will be present for the screening of
  La Virgen de Lujuria
  Friday, March 19, 7:00 pm

He'll also be present before and after the films he has curated:

• Nazarin
  Thursday, March 18, 6:00 pm
  
• The Seven Samurai
  Sunday, March 21, 12:00 pm
  
• La Dolce Vita
  Saturday, March 20, 12:00 pm

The Director's Chair: Arturo Ripstein

Acclaimed Mexican film director has made a phenomenal contribution to Mexican film. Having grown up around movie sets, Ripstein had a rare vantage point from which to observe the growth of modern cinema. As a young man, he served as assistant to Luis Buñuel during the filming of The Exterminating Angel. Ripstein's own directorial debut, a western feature called Tiempo de Morir, was co-written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Carlos Fuentes. His latest film, La Virgen de la Lujuria, is a dark and sultry work of erotic noir that is both visually stunning and unsettling.

As a director, Ripstein has influenced a generation of Latin American filmmakers. We were curious to know which films influenced him. So we asked Arturo Ripstein to select three films which he felt changed his life and to tell us why. These are the three films he chose. All three will be screened as part of the 2004 San Diego Latino Film Festival.

The Seven Samurai (1954)

I used to go to the movies constantly, and I had heard about Kurosawa, of course, and I had seen a couple of his films, which were marvelous for me. But at the time I had forgotten completely about it, so one day I had this chance to take a girl to a movie. I was a young kid, a girl from class, so I said I'll choose the longest film possible in order to try to be bold enough to fondle her. So I took the girl, she was there with me. I started to watch the movie, and it was so absolutely fascinating that I forgot I was with the girl. Never touched her. Never did anything. And she never talked to me again. But the movie became a prize in my adventures as a film watcher, which were constant. It completely destroyed my social intercourses at that point and gave me the notion that I liked films much better than anything else.

It was a mostly visual experience, an entirely fascinating visual experience based of course on John Ford as Kurosawa used to admit. Like it's never been done again.

Nazarin (1958)

I am the son of a producer, so I used to go to the movies with my father a lot and used to go to the shoots of his films constantly, and I thought there was only one kind of movie that could be done at all. That was the sort of commercial stuff my father used to do. One day he took me to the movies and we saw Nazarin by Luis Buñuel, and I was absolutely flummoxed, flabbergasted. And then, I was about fifteen or less, and I understood that there was an alternative option, that not all movies had to be done the way normal commercial movies were done, that there was an alternative road, and it was absolutely fascinating and surprising and frightening to discover that. And I decided to take that path. So that was the important part.

With this film by Buñuel, the very last shot of the film, and a few others, when I saw it I decided I wanted to be a director just like this guy. He creates a world, and I always thought that would be a fascinating challenge.

La Dolce Vita (1960)

La Dolce Vita came with a lot of press before it. I mean it had had a lot of problems in Europe being shown. It was a film that had a lot of censorship around it and a lot of comings and goings about its matter. So when it got here, everybody wanted to see this film. I mean pleasure at that point was not instantaneous like it is now. You need instant gratification. At that point you had to have a little anticipation, so we waited and waited for that film to be shown. I remember the day it was released in Mexico. We were masses outside of the movie house wanting to see a film that was supposed to be grand. Of course the experience was certainly marvelous, because it was a difficult film.

It was one of the first films that I saw that was complicated, that you had to have a film culture, that you had to have a few references in order to grasp it fully. Of course I didn't. I was a young man at that point. I was a kid at that point, so I had to read about these things in order to appreciate exactly what they were talking (about). I mean it was one of those films that if you didn't have some substance, you couldn’t grasp. So that was marvelous, because films then, at that point, I knew included mystery.