BITE ME: Cinema Mentiré’s Anniversary ft. Pure Blood + DJ Benzo

Cinema Mentiré’s first-anniversary screening & party presents:

PURE BLOOD | PURA SANGRE By Luis Ospina, 1982, Colombia, 98min. 

+

LATIN MIXTAPE PERREO PARTY By DJ Benzo

Doors open 6pm

DJ til 11pm

Price £9 standard / £6 for SET members /  Pay forward £12

One year and one week since the birth of Cinema Mentiré, the Latin American film club want to celebrate in the most traditional Latin American style: a wonderful film followed by sweaty dancing!

Join Cinema Mentiré at SET Social Peckham. Come down for a drink and screening of Luis Ospina’s classic Pure Blood, the first Colombian vampire film seminal to the tropical gothic genre. Released in the 1980s, its (then) commercial failure would give ground to a Latin American cult, whose restored copy in 2K is being shown in the UK for the first time.

A message from Cinema Mentiré:

Pure Blood is a biting satire on vampirism at the heart of capitalism in Colombia, made in the guise of a B-movie and mixing references that go from Citizen Kane to Murnau, George Romero, Howard Hughes, Dracula, and local urban legends. Horror, exploitation, and comedy are blended in this portrait of an old and bedridden sugar tycoon stricken by a rare disease that requires him to undergo an increasing number of blood transfusions, which will be obtained through aberrant stratagems.

Luis Ospina is very close to the hearts of the Cinema Mentiré team and are named after a concept he created: in opposition to cinema verité (truthful cinema), he advocated for a cinema mentiré (lying cinema). For Ospina, cinema is telling a bunch of lies to reveal one truth, playfully disrupting any certainties and making us suspicious of what images offer us.

Born in Cali in 1949 and educated in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, he was a self-styled cinematic punk rocker who blazed a revolutionary trail through Latin American cinema. Founder of the Cali Group and an exponent of independent cinema in Colombia, Ospina is among the central figures of the creative and political upheaval that took over that city and reverberated worldwide in the 1970s, including a film production so intense that the nickname Caliwood was coined. His accurate and humorous vision, reflected in over 30 brazen films made over 50 years, and his fierce commitment to preserving Latin American film heritage, have made the director (who passed away in 2019) a key figure in film history.

The evening follows with the peachy DJ Benzo (made in Brazil, mad in Britain). DJ Benzo has an interest in diverse dance scenes across London, especially the techno queer one, Benzo started to miss their Latin roots and music and decided to become a DJ to express themselves and celebrate the contrasts of the worlds they coexist musically, the electronic and the baile funk.

We are deeply grateful to some people who have been fundamental in making this screening happen: Amanda Garay, from Zona A, the holder of the film’s rights; Lina González, for her unwavering support; and Karen Lamassonne, for her beautiful video introduction.

Also, huge thanks to our friends and audience who have been enjoying Latin American films with us this year. Gracias, obrigada <3

@cinema.mentire

@benz0xx