Production company Chile Fantástico has a new film in development called Sino (Fate). Previously I had written about Abandonados, another genre movie they made. I still haven’t seen Abandonados- am patiently waiting for the DVD. Sino is set in Chile and follows a young couple of professors who go on winter break and are faced with “extraordinary events.” Although it’s hard to tell what the movie is about from the description, we can probably piece it together from the movie blog and the trailer.  The Sino blog talks about two life philosophies: sino, or having a destiny, and the other point of view- that we make our own destiny. The trailer asks if love can conquer death. So the film is related to love, tragedy, and if it’s possible to change your destiny.

Check out their blog and Facebook Page for production stills and “making of” pictures. The trailer is on YouTube. If you hate trailers that give away the plot, well, you’re in luck because you can’t tell much with this one other than the winter mountain setting is beautiful.

Thirsty?

Recently premiered in Chile, Abandonados (The Abandoned) presents a dystopian Chile after World War III. Based on the short Calor 2052,  survivors try to live on despite their memories, loneliness, and ensuing madness. The young director is David Contreras Silva, fellow genre geek and comic book artist, who previously directed gore film Demencia (Dementia). Looks like he has a theme going! Despite a low budget, Contreras had the support of the community including local firefighters and the army along with private and public funds from Los Ángeles (Chile) institutions.

Here’s a link to their movie blog (in Spanish) and the production company Chile Fantástico‘s Facebook Page. Hopefully we will get to see it soon in the northern hemisphere.

The Abandonados trailer looks great!  It is in Spanish but you can get the gist of it. It has a voiceover of a reporter talking about the war for water resources, and how it came to Chile along with Christmas 2049.

In the Beginning: The Visionaries

1. The Distant Future by Juan Nepomuceno Adorno (Mexico, 1862). A treatise on what the author, an inventor and philosopher, thought the future would be like. He cites a philosophy called Providentiality, which sounds like Communism enhanced with literal brainwashing, all based on “moral science.” Racial differences literally disappear. Women’s rights are honored (sort of). Nature is submissive. Telegraph and trains link all parts of the globe like one big city. Neighborly aliens of our solar system also communicate with humans via telegraph. War has been eradicated. Medicine is highly advanced. Carnal pleasures are of limited use and sexual love isn’t a “frenzy of anguish and jealousy.”  The rare case of crime is a result of mental disorders which barely exist. People live in sparkling, safe, portable, and sometimes floating homes called social nuclei along with their local workers guild. In the social nuclei, men and women sleep separately. When their bodies develop, young women are presented at a Festival of Virgins in a kind of talent show.  The young men submit a formal request to a council of elders when they see someone they like. The women are then given the young men’s file and they decide who to marry at the Festival of the Adults. Women can be married for as long as they wish, and can separate easily at the same Festival of the Adults (hopefully away from all the marriages). When they return to the nuclei, the man goes to the men’s sleeping area and the woman gets a marriage chamber where her husband can only go by request.

2.  On the Planet Mars by Nilo María Fabra (Spain, 1890). Fabra, a journalist and a main force behind the creation of Spain’s first news agency, envisions a world where people no longer read but listen to all their news via paid in-home or street phonographs. People no longer write, but communicate via telephone. Only diplomats are taught to read and write. All streets are moving platforms at different speeds with hotels above them for travelers.  Canals crisscross the continents to allow for the melting of the polar icecaps and also for fast electric ships.  There is political, linguistic, and religious uniformity. Martians boast of synthetic clothing and food, free travel via an unnamed “vital fluid,” weather control, teaching via hypnotic sleep, telefoteidoscope (similar to TV and videophone). Mars discovers that their blue planet neighbor is inhabited, and the main news program Universal Resonance tells its listeners all about it. The story is a thinly veiled critique of Earth’s state of societal and scientific backwardness with a smugness in Mars’ superiority. Reports from Earth show mistreatment of women, excessive animal sacrifice, war, and general barbarity. The report starts talking of Earth but then ignores it in its insignificance to exalt Mars’ superior virtues. It is disheartening to read about an 1890 Earth that sounds a lot like what we have more than a hundred years later.

Speculating on a New Genre: SF from 1900 through the 1950s

3.  Mechanopolis by Miguel de Unamuno (Spain, 1913). Mechanopolis is the story of a traveler that comes upon a highly advanced city devoid of humans or animals and ruled by unseen machines that regard the man as a curiosity since humans have become extinct.

4. The Death Star by Ernesto Silva Román (Chile, 1929). In 2035, the radiation wave of a star passing near Earth causes all living things including humans to grow exponentially the closer it gets.

5.  Baby H.P. by Juan José Arreola (Mexico, 1952). Hilarious advertisement, directed to exhausted moms, of a contraption to harness the energy of children and put it to use in the home and even market any surplus.

The First Wave: The 1960s to the Mid 1980s

6.  The Cosmonaut by Ángel Arango (Cuba, 1964).  On an alien planet with sociable creatures of tentacles and pincers, a human visitor faces well-intentioned yet confused inhabitants. Interesting use of dark humor and authentically alien creatures.

7.  The Crystal Goblet by Jerônimo Monteiro (Brazil, 1964). The founder of the first Brazilian sci-fi club writes a story of Miguel, a former political prisoner, who rediscovers a crystal device from his childhood that shows disturbing scenes from a people unknown to himself and his wife.

8.  A Cord Made of Nylon and Gold by Álvaro Menén Desleal (El Salvador, 1965). At the height of the space race and the Cold War, an American astronaut, frustrated with humanity (especially his cheating wife), cuts the cord that tethers him to his orbiting space vessel with an unexpected result.

9.  Acronia by Pablo Capanna (Argentina, 1966). P. lives in a bureaucratic state, manned by robots but supervised by humans. The construct of time doesn’t exist, just the Plan, which tells everyone what they should be doing at a determined moment. Architecture and transportation are radically different: homes, shopping centers, and workplace quadrants orbit and intersect according to Plan. Due to “errors” in his education that were never fixed, P. starts to question and deviate from the Plan, a condition called oneiromancy that could result in exile from society.

10.  The Last Refuge by Eduardo Goligorsky (Argentina, 1967). A man persecuted by an authoritarian regime because he possesses photographs of the outside world seeks salvation from a nearby spaceship grounded due to mechanical difficulties.

11.  Post Boomboom by Alberto Vanasco (Argentina, 1967). Dark comedy about three not so bright men gathering to write the history of mankind that has all but disappeared after a cataclysmic event.

12.  Gu Ta Guttarrak (We and Our Own) by Magdalena Mouján Otaño (Argentina, 1968). Comedy of a family of Basque geniuses that develops time travel to discover the origin of their people.

13.  Future by Luis Britto García (Venezuela, 1970). A humorous depiction of the future of humanity and what happens when it finally reaches all its goals.

14.  When Pilate Said No by Hugo Correa (Chile, 1971). Humans travel to the planet of the Sumis, a “savage” race of smelly cave dwellers that look like insects. A Sumi prophet born on the night of a shining nova causes unrest among his people, and is brought before the human conquerors. The captain of the starship must decide the prophet’s fate.

15.  The Falsifier by José B. Adolph (Peru, 1972). Story based on a native legend about a white man who appears and performs miracles before he continues his journey, and the royal chronicler who in the 1600s feels obliged to change the tale to avoid heresy.

16.  The Violet’s Embryos by Angélica Gorodischer (Argentina, 1973). A mission to the planet Vantedour to discover what happened to a previous mission’s crew finds them alive and wielding seemingly infinite power.

17.  Brain Transplant by André Carneiro (Brazil, 1978). One of the founding fathers of Brazilian sci-fi presents a bizarre story of a future classroom in which the professor uses every one of his students’ senses to teach a lesson about the history of human brain transplants and reality.

18.  The Annunciation by Daína Chaviano (Cuba, 1983). Founder of Cuba’s first sci-fi writers’ workshop and host of genre-related television and radio programs before emigrating to the U.S., Chaviano presents an alternate and humorous view of the immaculate conception.

19.  A Miscalculation by Federico Schaffler (Mexico, 1983). A little fanboy lying in his back yard is dreaming of the stars when he suddenly sees a bright object come towards him.

Riding the Crest: The Late 1980s into the New Millennium

20.  Stuntmind by Braulio Tavares (Brazil, 1989). Roger Van Dali is chosen to be the first of several human contacts for a race of alien visitors, changing his life from simple bookkeeper to fabulously rich, but with severe physical and mental consequences. The contacts, called Stuntminds, provide a wealth of alien knowledge to the world.

21.  Reaching the Shore by Guillermo Lavín (Mexico, 1994). On Christmas Eve, a little boy dreaming of a new bicycle runs to greet his father at the end of his factory shift but his dad, a pleasure microchip addict, just wants his next fix.

22.  First Time by Elia Barceló (Spain, 1994). In a decadent world, a teenager writes excitedly about her first time in her diary while doing her best to ignore her computer teacher and parents that force her to socialize.

23.  Gray Noise by Pepe Rojo (Mexico, 1996). A reporter with a camera in his eye, embedded audio links and a direct line to the news center, roams the city in search of the best news. The more his items are viewed the better he gets paid, and violence always gets the most attention. Meanwhile anti-media extremists use the panic caused by a new illness called Constant Electrical Exposure Syndrome to advocate a radical change in society.

24.  Glimmerings on Blue Glass by Mauricio-José Schwarz (Mexico, 1996). An office full of detectives is addicted to the adventures of Jacknife, a fictional private eye. In real life however, their main job is to certify the mental retardation of assembly line applicants.

25.  The Day We Went through the Transition by Ricard de la Casa and Pedro Jorge Romero (Spain, 1998). The GEI Temporal Intervention Corps protects the pre-2012 historical timeline from those who would benefit from illegal time travel in Spain. In this particular story, the Corps intervenes in the post-Franco transition to democracy (1975-1981).

26.  Exerion by Pablo Castro (Chile, 2000). A metaphor for Chile’s brutal Pinochet period, this story is about a man traumatized by his father’s kidnapping who tries to escape the authorities himself years later by preserving his memories virtually. As he awaits the police, he attempts to break the record of his favorite videogame, Exerion.

27.  Like the Roses Had to Die by Michel Encinosa (Cuba, 2001). Encinosa tells the story of a world with millions of exotics- humans with extreme animal, vegetable, or synthetic implants. The Walled Zone inside an unfinished Olympic stadium is a market and center of a city filled with violence perpetuated by power struggles, virus-laden Skaters and the police.  Here the Wolf, a former space fighter pilot, awaits her friend the Wizard, a techno-alchemist. She recruits the Wizard to help free her husband Mastín from a group of mercenaries. The Wolf stumbles upon a war against exotics led by fanatical pure humans.

The only ones I found to be a chore to read were The Violet’s Embryos and Brain Transplant which were a bit too “out there” for me. My personal favorites were Baby H.P. and The Annunciation for making me laugh; Acronia and The Day We Went through the Transition for the worlds they create; Like the Roses Had to Die and Gray Noise for their fast-paced action; and Reaching the Shore for its tenderness. I will definitely be looking for more from these authors- any recommendations are appreciated!

Chile Con Zombie Hunters

Blind Dead (Muerte Ciega, 2009) is an independent horror film from Chile. It is a near-future zombie movie in which a virus spreads and transforms humans into violent and territorial fiends after a mining incident. The area is quarantined and after some time is subject to incursion and investigation by a team of paramilitaries and scientists. As you can expect, there will be blood. The team itself starts to fall apart as the violence and betrayal escalate.

The trailer shows a band of soldiers escorting scientists to ground zero and all hell breaking loose. Looks like an extremely violent film, almost the guerilla-war type. I do like the look of the film- the muted colors look fantastic, especially considering the movie’s low budget of $2,000.

Written and directed by Cristian Toledo and Lucio Rojas, the film gets its inspiration from such genre classics as 28 Days Later, Stalker, Apocalypse Now, Mad Max, and cowboy Westerns.

Muerte Ciega’s official Facebook fan page includes production images. Looks like they had a good time filming! No word yet on when this movie will be available. I will keep you posted.

There’s a trailer with English subtitles but it doesn’t have the same quality of the Spanish trailer below. There is also a 20 minute preview you can check out here.

UPDATE 2/4/10: There is a new trailer with English subtitles, and it looks like their English title has changed to Blind Death. No release date yet, besides the “first semester of the year.”

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Santos movie poster

Santos is a Spanish and Chilean comedy wrapped in a superhero movie.  Writer/director, Nicolás López, has created a film that satirizes the comic book based genre while simultaneously drawing you into a world that is oddly believable.

In the not-so-distant future, Salvador Santos (Javier Gutiérrez) is about as unlikely a candidate for saving the world as anyone could be.  Nine years earlier his obsession with becoming a successful comic book writer combined with a freak accident caused Salvador to lose everything.  Not only was his warehouse destroyed just days before the release of his first graphic novel, but his childhood sweetheart, Laura Luna (Elsa Pataky), tired of being second to Salvador’s dreams, had left him for his best friend and multimillionaire, Arturo Antares (Leonardo Sbaraglia).  Now, just days before his 33^rd birthday, Salvador is a fat, balding man waiting tables dressed as his favorite superhero.  But life is beginning to look up for Salvador.  His old friend Arturo is ready to invest once again in Salvador’s comics and it even seems that the lovely Laura Luna might still have feelings for him.  Unfortunately the reality of his dreams goes even deeper than he ever imagined. Oh, and by the way, it’s also three days before the end of the world.

One fateful night Salvador encounters Anthropomosco (Guillermo Toledo), a character straight out of Salvador’s own comic.  As it turns out, the comic book is simply his subconscious interpretation of the Doubleverse, an alternate universe where superheroes, called Santos, live under the tyranny of the evil hybrid, Nova, who is hell bent on becoming a full Santos by absorbing the powers of other Santos.  An unfortunate side effect of this is that Nova will also destroy the Doubleverse and the Universe if he attempts to return to his own reality.  Salvador discovers that he too is a Santos who has been hidden in the body of a normal human all these years.  It just so happens that his best friend, Arturo, is sharing his body with the evil Nova.

Though plot has been made humorously predictable and the themes of love and tragedy are as basic as they can be, the characters themselves pull the movie up to the level of real people thrown into fantastical situations.  This is especially true with Salvador Santos who is so self-centered and cowardly that he is reluctant to help the people around him, even when they are not in mortal danger.  He seems to have more flaws than a hero from a Greek tragedy yet he is destined to save the universe.  This alone should leave the viewer on the edge of their seat, even through the cornball themes of love and the crude bodily function jokes.

-K. Shanti Fitch

Check out the trailer: