{"id":10304,"date":"2015-07-20T12:49:32","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T12:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.giff.mx\/?p=10304"},"modified":"2015-07-20T12:49:32","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T12:49:32","slug":"critic-la-obra-del-siglo-the-project-of-the-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/giff.mx\/en\/critic-la-obra-del-siglo-the-project-of-the-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Critic: La Obra del Siglo\/ The Project of the Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dir. Carlos Quintela<\/strong><\/p>\n

Official Selection International Feature: Cuba<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>The Richter Scale says<\/strong>: There\u2019s nothing more infuriating than an unrealized future. It\u2019s frustrating to remember that there was once was a promise that things were going to be one way and now, years later, all you can see is how that promise was broken. Carlos Quintela tells the story of how Cuba was once going to be the Nuclear Center of the Soviet Union in the Caribbean and how that island was going to provide a point of encounter for the fight against capitalism. It was the Project of the Century, but the project got out of their hands and before they could figure out how to move forward with it, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union came apart, leaving this thing that was going to be the \u201cNuclear City\u201d as an unfulfilled promise.<\/p>\n

Otto and Rafael, a father and a son, live under the melancholic shadow of this broken promise in a city that no longer seems to have a purpose other than bringing in a mosquito plague. Rafael, the son, was an engineer trained by the revolution, but now he lives with his father, an old man who won\u2019t stop reminding him of everything they will never get back. One day Leo, Rafael\u2019s son, arrives with his own sorrow: he just ended a relationship and the only way he expresses himself is through his tattoos, an ancient cell phone and by masturbating. Through these three men, the filmmaker explores masculinity and what happens when a man feels defenseless towards life: he\u2019ll try and prove his worth to the world any way he can.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>Like many independent filmmakers, Quintela chose to film this in black-and-white, inserting archival footage of the construction of the Nuclear City, in color. The archival footage is in a small square in the middle of the screen as a symbol of how far away this dream feels now that it\u2019s gone, while the scenes with Otto, Rafael and Leo fill the screen fully in a depressing and hopeless black-and-white. Not the most subtle of contrasts, but it works, because it\u2019s a visual way to bring the audience into these men\u2019s view that once they were part of a future that promised everything and now they\u2019re in a present that promises nothing. Many in Mexico may identify.<\/p>\n

This film screened yesterday at Bellas Artes and will screen at Guanajuato City on Friday, July 24th at 2:00 pm at the Auditorium at the University of Guanajuato.<\/p>\n

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INSTAGRAM: giffmx<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dir. Carlos Quintela Official Selection International Feature: Cuba The Richter Scale says: There\u2019s nothing more infuriating than an unrealized future. It\u2019s frustrating to remember that there was once was a promise that things were going to be one way and now, years later, all you can see is how that promise was broken. Carlos Quintela […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sin-categoria-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/giff.mx\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/giff.mx\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/giff.mx\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giff.mx\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giff.mx\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/giff.mx\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giff.mx\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/giff.mx\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giff.mx\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giff.mx\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}