Film series brings little-known stories to light

Is Juan Orol really Mexico's answer to Ed Wood, the maestro behind “Plan 9 from Outer Space”? That's how some have described his career, but not so fast. Where Wood made cheap, incompetent movies about vampires and cross-dressers, Orol made cheap, incompetent musicals about gangsters.

He also was more prolific and successful in directing movies from the 1930s through the '60s, when one of his last films was “The Fantastic World of the Hippies.”

That's what we learn in “The Fantastic World of Juan Orol,” a weird and affectionate movie playing at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

While Wood was played by Johnny Depp for director Tim Burton in the film “Ed Wood,” Orol is incarnated by actor Roberto Sosa, who looks like a scrappy little heartsick Napoleon under the guidance of first-time director Sebastián del Amo.

This movie is in lovely black-and-white flashbacks until Orol discovers washed-out Kodak color in the 1950s, somewhere among his five marriages. With his gift for careless errors and wild ideas — such as a film about cowboys vs. gangsters — the notes call him an “involuntary surrealist.”

Orol's story (at least as pictured here) is no less mighty and colorful than that of Global Lens Initiative, the San Francisco-based firm responsible for SAMA's yearlong film series. In conjunction with many venues, including the Museum of Modern Art, 10 films are traveling the country at the rate of one a month.

Global Lens is now in its 10th year of using film to promote cross-cultural understanding.

“We took a look at the landscape here and abroad and felt that the least understood or exposed populations of the world had wonderful stories to tell,” says chairman and co-founder Susan Weeks Coulter. “Filmmakers from the developing world lack not only a platform, but they lack in many instances finishing funds for their films.

“When we started, things were only being produced on 35mm, so you can imagine the expense and time in a place like Angola. One of the first films we brought to the marketplace was from Angola, and having been in 20 years of civil war, it had taken this young woman eight years to make her film. But when it was finally released, Angola was allowed to participate on a world stage. ... It was not a forgotten entity anymore.”

Having a movie is one thing but finding audiences is another, so funding was only the beginning. Global Lens brings films to festivals, helps find distributors, develops classroom showings and film clubs (like book groups, but for movies), and provides programs for art houses, museums and other exhibitors.

The company's growth has been phenomenal, Coulter says.

“It has been expanding and adjusting to market conditions,” she says. “Way back to 2003, screeners for preview films were all conducted on VHS, so we're talking about a marketplace in which there have been rapid, rapid changes.”

Coulter points to such measures of success as a robust new film industry in Chile, the first indie movie (“Soul of Sand”) to be distributed in Bollywood-dominated India and many films that became their countries' Academy Award submissions. It sounds like an ad hoc international studio for the social media era.

“We make grants so that there's always content in the pipelines,” she says. “Then we acquire rights to films to offer a platform. And those films — we've taken up to 10 a year — are combined in a series called the 'Global Lens,'” she says. “We've made it a policy not to select a film made by a German about what it is to live in Africa. The films we select are made from and for the country of origin.”

Global Lens considers about 350 to 500 titles a year.

“We whittle it down and try to create a smorgasbord of 10 films that are regionally balanced, stylistically interesting, and topically important or have something to say,” she says.

SAMA is the only venue in Texas for this series.

“Since we have a very global collection as well, we feel this is a great pairing,” says Katie Erickson, the museum's director of education. “We often show films that match up with our permanent collections and special exhibitions, and we like how this series explores themes and cultures from all over the world.”

“The Fantastic World of Juan Orol” screens at 7 p.m. Friday (with discussion by UTSA professor Steve Kellman) and 3 p.m. Sunday. It's free with museum admission.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/article/Film-series-brings-little-known-stories-to-light-4436034.php#ixzz2QezGhXpN

***Any student planning on attending please email Mr. Calvo. Please research the film and make sure it is age appropriate***