The Rooftop Films 2008 Summer Series

Beginning with ruminations on the Peruvian soccer team’s overturned victory in the 1936 Olympics, Juan Alejandro Ramirez’ mesmerizing documentary intertwines multiple themes—personal, political, historical and anthropological—and creates a uniquely magical tapestry, shaded in the hues of his native countryside. This group of seemingly unrelated vignettes are always intensely emotional in tone: the ill-feeling after the stolen victory; a moody cab driver's blind faith for a better future; the emptiness of a discovery that was never recognized; the alienation of an outsider in a remote Amazonian town; and the determination of a trio of waiters aboard a train that runs across the barren Southern Andean tundra. Altogether, these episodes run together like a narrated home movie for a meandering pilgrimage in pursuit of answers that ultimately unravel.