Cuchillo de palo - 108 (): VIDEOS

When Rodolfo Costa was found naked on the floor of his home in Paraguay, he had been dead for days. Though ostensibly jobless, he had mysteriously amassed a small fortune. He also had a secret alias—Héctor Torres—and a secret life. At the time, Renate Costa Perdomo was a young girl. Asked to select her uncle's burial garb, she found his closet empty. Surely the lively, colorfully-dressed Rodolfo she knew could not, as those around her claimed, have died of sadness. In her powerful debut feature, which unfolds like a mystery novel, Costa Perdomo investigates the shadowy circumstances of Rodolfo's death. Witnesses and clues gently reveal Rodolfo's true identity as a persecuted gay man and the terrifying "108" homosexual blacklists that ruined lives, careers, and families. The film is also a fascinating portrait of the relationship between the filmmaker, who has left Paraguay and now lives in Spain, and her now-divorced father, Pedro Costa, who remains in the family blacksmithing shop. 108 is a moving illustration of the impact that the right-wing dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989, had on the so-called "108"s living in the country as experienced by a single Paraguayan gay man and his family. "Full of quiet artistry...A personal [documentary film] with a broad scope, '108' is Renate Costa's gently probing exploration of her late gay uncle's life under the Paraguayan dictatorship. Alternately straightforward and impressionistic, Costa's moving take on homosexuality in a tyrannical country encompasses the aftermath of such repression on society at large [and] picks up textures and details that reveal as much as the spoken word. "'108' is the derogatory moniker Paraguayans use for homosexuals, a term stemming from the first of many lists of arrested (and frequently tortured) gay men that political strongman Alfredo Stroessner had posted in public places as a way of intensifying their humiliation. The docu's original-language title, 'Cuchillo de palo,' translates as 'useless knife,' an insulting phrase directed at Costa's uncle Rodolfo and, presumably, other gay men considered ineffectual members of society. "Costa understands the power of awkward silences, holding the camera to explore discomfort and her own accusatory gaze. Even when discussing the horrors of the dictatorship, she maintains an unwavering calm that cuts through the hedging and the calculated avoidance of larger issues -- hers is a selfless righteousness that nevertheless confronts her personal history." —Jay Weissberg, Variety "[Pedro Costa is] a tangle of contradictions: warm, engaging, and somewhat childlike, but also maddeningly evasive, wielding a great arsenal of rationalizations and smokescreens, and using Catholic non-sequiturs as his final line of defense. [Director Renate Costa Perdomo] herself cuts a powerful figure, her determined, laser-beam stare demanding nothing short of the full truth. She masterfully weaves together the personal and the political, and eventually finds a few simple but powerful words that sum up the need for her father and his generation to come to terms with their personal responsibility for colluding with the government, but also for her own generation's need to find understanding, compassion and forgiveness." —Paul Sbrizzi, Hammer to Nail World Premiere, 2010 Berlin Film Festival Winner, Best Film, Buenos Aires Human Rights Film Festival Winner, Best Film, 2010 One World Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Prague Official Selection, 2010 Documenta Madrid Official Selection, 2010 Festival de Cannes Winner, Best Ibero-American Documentary, 2010 Guadalajara Film Festival Official Selection, 2010 Espoo Ciné International Festival, Finland Official Selection, 2010 États Généraux du Film Documentaire, Lussas Official Selection, 2010 Latin Beat Film Festival, The Film Society of Lincoln Center Official Selection, 2010 Viennale Official Selection, 2010 Vancouver Film Festival Official Selection, 2010 Two Riverside Film Festival, Poland Official Selection, 2010 Bergen International Film Festival, Norway Official Selection, 2010 Miradas Doc, Spain Official Selection, 2010 CPH:DOX, Copenhagen Official Selection, 2010 IDFA Amsterdam Official Selection, 2010 Festival International du Film de Belfort Official Selection, 2010 Mostra de Cinema e Direitos Humanos na América do Sul, Brazil Official Selection, 2010 BOZAR, Palais des Beaux Arts de Bruxelles, Belgium Official Selection, 2011 Zinegoak Bilabao Official Selection, 2011 Göteborg International Film Festival, Sweden Official Selection, 2011 Docs Barcelona Official Selection, 2011 IF Istanbul Film Festival Official Selection, 2011 Black Movie Geneva Film Festival, Switzerland Official Selection, 2011 Muestra de Cine Realizado por Mujeres de Zaragoza y Huesca Official Selection, 2011 San Diego Latino Film Festival Official Selection, 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival http://icarusfilms.com/new2012/108.html