Film Screening:

Tony Manero

(Pablo Larraín, 2008, 97 min, Chile/Brazil, in English and Spanish w/ English subtitles, Color, Digital)

-- Introduced by Jaime Acosta Gonzalez (Graduate Program in Literature)

-- Response by Jake Soule (Graduate Program in Literature)

-- In-depth discussion to follow!

-- Dinner provided for audience members who plan to participate in the post-film discussion, and who RSVP in advance to laura.jaramillo@duke.edu. A brief reading for the event will also be distributed over email.

As Augusto Pinochet holds Chile in the grip of dictatorship, a 50-year-old man obsessed with John Travolta's character from Saturday Night Fever imitates his idol each weekend in a small bar on the outskirts of Santiago. Each weekend, Raúl Peralta and his friends -- a devoted group of dancers -- gather in a small bar and act out their favorite scenes from Saturday Night Fever. Raúl longs to become a showbiz superstar, and when the national television announces a Tony Manero impersonating contest it seems like he may finally have a shot at living his dreams. But as Raúl is driven to commit a series of crimes and thefts in order to reproduce his matinee idol's persona, his dancing partners (also underground resistance fighters who rail against the regime) are persecuted by the secret police.

-- Winner of 15 Film Awards!

"Larrain's (literally) dark, edgy movie is a precise artistic commentary on Augusto Pinochet's miserable regime, which was under way while Travolta gyrated." - Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

"Shot with a hand-held camera and presented in a fragmented scenario, Tony Manero is the director's compelling attempt to find parallels between the Pinochet reign of terror and Raúl's scruple-less antics." - V. A. Mosetto, New York Post

“More than an indelible portrait of a sociopath with the soul of a zombie, Tony Manero is an extremely dark meditation on borrowed cultural identity.” – Stephen Holden, New York Times

About the introducer and the respondent:

Jaime Acosta Gonzalez is a PhD candidate in the Program in Literature at Duke University.  He is interested in contemporary literature and neoliberalism. 

Jake Soule is a PhD candidate in the Program in Literature at Duke. His teaching and research interests include cultural theory, urban studies and Marxism.

Cost: Free and open to the public.

Sponsors: The Graduate Program in Literature and the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI). Film in Theory is generously funded by the Mellon Humanities Futures Initiative.