Screen/Society--Latin American Film Festival--"Images of Decolonization": Rebel Shadows

Friday, November 5, 2010 - 12:30pm to 8:00pm

“Images of Decolonization” -- Program 1
(Short film/video works, DVD)

Part of the Latin American Film Festival.

– Curated and introduced by guest director Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet!

> El Silencio Imperial: Una opera Xican@/ Imperial Silence:  A Chicana Opera,  Act I and Act II  (2008).

John Jota Leaños + Colectivo Burning Wagon (Chicano/USA) 21 min.

Act I Los ABCs: is a five-minute Xicano docu-animation cataloguing the real-life testimony of skeletons that have returned to tell their stories of life and death at war. Sing along with this group of animated Mariachi social documentarians who will guide you through a history that will make you laugh, cry, and wonder why. Deadtime Stories with Mariachi Goose and his Friends is Act II in the animated Xican@ Opera, 'Imperial Silence’. It chronicles the longest day of the year in Muertolandia where dead nursery rhyme characters converge to attend the Gran Solstice concert where the overnight sensation, Humpty Mariachi Dumpty, was to perform his hit huapango, “Quisiera Vivir” at the fundraiser for the Great Wall.

More info at: http://www.leanos.net/projects.html

> Lix cua rahro/Tus tortillas mi amor/Your tortillas my love (2004). Sandra Monterroso (Guatemala) 12:30.

A Mayan women sits at the table chewing ears of corn as she performs a ritual pronouncing Mayan proverbs and spitting the corn into a mixing bowl.

> Inventario de Sombra/Inventory of Shadows (2007). Joeser Alvarez (Brazil) 12:56 min.

Brazilian artists from Porto Velho paint their own shadows.

> Roaming (2005). Nayda Collazo (Puerto Rico/USA) 5:18 min.

In Roaming we seem to travel though a web-like structure without any particular purpose or definite destination. It invites the viewer to visually navigate through a series of interconnected lines, not unlike the mental with its multiple hyperlink associations.

> Aguasmalas/ Bad Waters (2006). Patricia Villalobos (Nicaragua/USA) 6:20 min.

The single, isolated body drifts, unattached, at the edge of an unidentified coast, and is interspersed with footage from the 2007 presidential inauguration of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Clips of the recent uprising in Managua following municipal elections, and the bombing of Iraq, serve to reframe locally occurring issues within a transnational context.

> Much’tal Jedz (2009). Colectivo TURIX (Mexico), 35 min.

Much’tal Jedz focuses on the movement for Mayan autonomy in the 1930s, an era when the “rebel” Mayans spiritually, politically, diplomatically, and militarily resisted the low intensity war waged against them by the Mexican Army and rural schools. This is a counter-hegemonic story that questions the nation-state’s relationship to indigenous cultures within the national territory and it’s pre-Columbian past.

More info at: http://turix.yoochel.org/

– Discussion to follow!

Cost: Free and Open to the Public

Sponsors: Program in Arts of the Moving Image (AMI) and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies

White 107 (White Lecture Hall)