OVID.tv, the curated streaming destination for documentary and art-house films from around the world, has announced the exclusive streaming premiere of the complete filmography by the late Mexican filmmaker Eugenio Polgovsky starting Thursday, May 13. Hailed as "one of the best documentary filmmakers of his generation" (Film at Lincoln Center) and a major figure of recent Latin American cinema, Polgovsky's work was screened at numerous film festivals and prestigious institutions including Cannes, Venice, Sundance, Berlinale, Cinéma du Réel, Morelia, the Museum of Modern Art, the Flaherty Film Seminar, and Film at Lincoln Center.
An influential and accomplished director, photographer, and cinematographer, Polgovsky focused attention on issues of social justice, environmentalism, and class inequality. He used innovative and lyrical visual language combined with an intricate sound design and a masterful use of editing to construct powerful narratives, exploring new possibilities of expression in cinema.
Polgovsky's 2004 debut documentary Tropic of Cancer, won prizes around the world, including an Ariel for Best First documentary by the Mexican Academy of Film, the Joris Ivens Prize at Cinema du Réel, Best Documentary in Lebanon, Korea, Morelia, Mexico City Contemporary Film Festival (FICCO) and more. It also had a special screening at Cannes Critics' Week and was part of the Frontier selection at the Sundance Film Festival. The Museum of Modern Art in New York presented the film as one of the region's most innovative contemporary films as part of the series "In Focus: Cinema Tropical."
Polgovsky's feature The Inheritors (2008), which he directed, photographed, and edited, made its world premiere at the 65th edition of the Venice Film Festival and was the first documentary to compete in the Generation Kplus section at the Berlinale. The film, which chronicles the exploitative labor of children in the Mexican countryside, was the winner of two Ariel Awards for Best Documentary and Best Editing, as well as the prizes for Best Documentary at the Havana Film Festival and the Chile's FIDOCS festival. A New York Times Critics' Pick, the film was hailed as "a dusty poem... [an] unvarnished portrait of the rural poor in modern-day Mexico."
Polgovsky's 2012 medium-length Mitote is a playful portrait of Mexico City's main square, contrasting a shaman's mystical invocations, a protest of angry electricians on a hunger strike, and a euphoric football crowd watching the World Cup games. His last two productions, A Leap of Life (2013), winner of the Ariel Award for Best Short Documentary Film, and the feature length
RESURRECTION (2016), were about the rescue of a polluted river in Mexico and the survival of a contiguous village, respectively. He also worked as one of the cinematographers on Hubert Sauper's award-winning documentary We Come as Friends (2014).
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