LOS OLVIDADOS, 1950, Luis Buñuel, Mexico

Spanish exile and surrealist Buñuel joined the then burgeoning Mexican film industry in the late Forties and soon created perhaps its unquestionable masterpiece. A searing, revealing look at a group of street kids in Mexico City, LOS OLVIDADOS went beyond the neorealist aim of exposing poverty and injustice to include a powerful and shocking portrait of the deeper emotional lives of these young men.

EARTH ENTRANCED, 1967, Glauber Rocha, Brazil

Internationally, the Sixties featured a number of "new wave" film movements, composed of young filmmakers who challenged cinema establishments with their new, radical approaches to filmmaking and politics. Perhaps none of these "new waves" was more remarkable than Brazil's "Cinema Novo," (New Cinema); Glauber Rocha's EARTH ENTRANCED is perhaps the quintessential Cinema Novo work, a vibrant, emotional portrait of an artist who throws himself into the political maelstrom of his times.

PORTRAIT OF TERESA, 1979, Pastor Vega, Cuba

Cuba created the region's first fully nationalized cinema, one that saw itself as having a key role in the creation and education of a revolutionary society. Pastor Vega's PORTRAIT OF TERESA tackles one of the Cuban's most troublesome topics--the role of women and the changes that had been wrought on gender roles by the Revolution--with a complexity and insight that had Cuban audiences erupting into passionate debates after many screenings.

LA CIENAGA, 2001, Lucrecia Martel, Argentina

After practically disappearing in the early Nineties, Latin American cinema triumphantly re-emerged by the end of the decade. Argentina led the charge, with a movement of young filmmakers working largely in digital formats and who offered not only a host of new cinematic approaches but also revelations of totally new regions and subjects. Lucrecia Martel's LA CIENAGA (THE SWAMP) was hailed as that movement's first great masterpiece, an unsparing look at the disintegration of middle-class family spending its summer in the lush, almost jungle-like region that separates Argentina from Bolivia.

RODRIGO D. -- NO FUTRE, 1990, Victor Gaviria, Colombia

By the Nineties, filmmaking had become a truly regional phenomenon, with many new countries, and new filmmakers, emerging to add their voices and reveal their experiences. The drug war then raging in central Colombia inspired one of the era's true masterworks, Victor Gaviria's RODRIGO D -- NO FUTURE, a breathtaking, punk-flavored chronicle of a group of young men living on the fringes on the fringes of the narcotics trade.

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