Admission is free and open to the public. All films will be in Spanish with English subtitles.
Sponsoring Department/Organizations: Department of World Languages and Cultures | Elon’s Schools of Arts and Sciences and Communications | Gender and LGBTQIA Center of Elon University | Pragda | Spain-USA Foundation | Secretary of State for Culture of Spain.
September
Friday, Sept. 12
Las Analfabetas (Illiterate), Dir. Moisés Sepúlveda (Chile, 2014)
LaRose Digital Theatre, Koury Business Center, 6 p.m.
Ximena is an illiterate woman in her fifties, who has learned to live on her own in order to keep her illiteracy as a secret. Jackelin, is a young unemployed elementary school teacher, who tries to convince Ximena to take reading classes. Persuading her proves to be an almost impossible task, until one day, Jackeline finds something Ximena has been keeping as her only treasure since she was a child: a letter Ximena’s father left when he abandoned her many years before. Thus, the two women embark on a learning journey where they discover that there are many ways of being illiterate, and that not knowing how to read is just one of them.
Friday, Sept. 26
¿Quién es Dayani Cristal? (Who is Dayani Cristal?), Dir. Marc Silver (México, USA, 2014)
LaRose Digital Theatre, Koury Business Center, 6 p.m.
Deep in the sun-blistered Sonora desert beneath a cicada tree, Arizona border police discover a decomposing male body. Lifting a tattered T-shirt they expose a tattoo that reads “Dayani Cristal.” Who is this person? What brought him here? How did he die? And who—or what—is Dayani Cristal?
Following a team of dedicated forensic anthropologists from the Pima County Morgue in Arizona, director Marc Silver seeks to answer these questions and give this anonymous man an identity. As the forensic investigation unfolds, Mexican actor and activist Gael Garcia Bernal retraces this man’s steps along the migrant trail in Central America. In an effort to understand what it must have felt like to make this final journey, he embeds himself among migrant travelers on their own mission to cross the border. He experiences first-hand the dangers they face and learns of their motivations, hopes and fears. As we travel north, these voices from the other side of the border wall give us a rare insight into the human stories, which are so often ignored in the immigration debate.
Winner of the Sundance 2013 Cinematography award and nominated in the World Documentary Competition, Who Is Dayani Cristal? shows how one life becomes testimony to the tragic results of the U.S. war on immigration.
October
Friday, Oct. 3
(Bad Hair), Dir. Mariana Rondón (Venezuela, 2013)
LaRose Digital Theatre, Koury Business Center, 6 p.m.
A nine-year-old boy’s preening obsession with straightening his hair elicits a tidal wave of homophobic panic in his hard-working mother, in this tender but clear-eyed coming-of-age tale from Venezuelan writer-director Mariana Rondón.
The slippery nature of identity — how it forms in us, the ways it tells us how we might want to look or who we desire — is at the heart of this third feature from Venezuelan writer-director Marina Rondón. At times harsh but often tender, Bad Hair exudes compassion for all involved, even Marta, whose concerns may be grounded in homophobic panic but whose desperation is almost palpable. This is a story of people doing what they feel they have to, partly out of fear, but also out of love.”- Diana Vargas, Toronto International Film Festival.
November
Friday, Nov. 7
Arrugas (Wrinkles), Dir. Ignacio Ferreras (Spain, 2014)
LaRose Digital Theatre, Koury Business Center, 6 p.m.
Based on Paco Roca’s National Award-winning graphic novel, Wrinkles illustrates the visual beauty and tender emotion that can be created by traditional animation, as it tackles a universal subject matter with humor and acerbic wit.
The story opens with former bank manager Emilio being dispatched to a retirement home by his family. His new roommate is a wily, wheeler-dealer named Miguel, who cheerfully swindles small amounts of cash from the more befuddled residents but is also full of handy insider tips that are crucial to survival. Like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in an old folks home, we are introduced to daily pill regimens, electric gates, and an eccentric cast of characters who rebel against institutional authority, while doing everything in their power to avoid being assigned to the dreaded top floor assisted living wing – a dwelling place for lost souls from which there is no return.
The hand-drawn animation style allows the film to move freely between the reality-bound daily lives of the ‘inmates’ and their more colorful dementia-induced fantasies, leaving plenty of room for both tears and laughter and pulling no punches in its critique of society’s attitude towards the elderly. Wrinkles was dubbed by Martin Sheen and Matthew Modine in its English version.
Friday, Nov. 21
Zona Sur (Southern District), Dir. Juan Carlos Valdivia (Bolivia, 2012)
LaRose Digital Theatre, Koury Business Center, 6 p.m.
La Paz’s Zona Sur neighborhood is Bolivia’s most exclusive enclave and has housed the country’s affluent elite for generations. Here, in an adobe-tile-roofed castle, a statuesque matriarch reigns over her spoiled offspring and indigenous servants. Social change, however unwelcome, is on its way. As the mother squabbles with her self-indulgent, oversexed teenage son and clashes with her petulant daughter, her 6-year-old boy wanders the rooftops unsupervised. The scent of impending decline permeates the air, and the threat of aristocratic privileges quickly changing hands heralds a new era in a seemingly interminable class war.
Bolivia’s official entry for the Academy® Awards foreign-language film race, this searing portrait of a patrician family in flux eloquently chronicles their final days during a time of intense social change and cogently exposes the bubble of decadence in which they exist.