Juanicas is an intimate portrait of a Mexican immigrant family in Quebec affected by mental illness. Using material shot over almost 10 years, the filmmaker documents her complex relationship with her mother and brother, both suffering from bipolar disorder. She starts filming when Juan, her brother, returns to live in Canada after several years away in Mexico. At first the camera provides a distance that helps them reconnect with each other, but soon old patterns return.
DIS PLEIS
Canada, 2015
Spanish and English with English subtitles / 12 min
Director: Rosaura Lezama
A portrait of the complex relationship between two Mexican sisters living in Vancouver, as they struggle to mature and restore their lost bond.
DOUBLE EXPOSURE - A mixed media performance by Edgardo Moreno
Canada/Chile, 2014
English, 23 min
Director/Composer: Edgardo Moreno
Priests. Revolutionaries. Grandpas. In 1965, six young Spanish priests arrive in Bolivia as missionaries. Somewhat rebellious and anti-conformist, they think they will change mentalities. But they soon find that they will be the ones to be changed. Witnesses to historic Latin American social movements, they cannot help but become involved; they rub shoulders with Che Guevara’s guerrilleros, hide weapons, shelter wounded men. Kicked out of the country, expelled by the Church, eventually they end up having to disband.
How do people survive the terror and heartbreak of life under a brutal dictatorship? This hard-hitting film is a visual collage chronicling General Augusto Pinochet's reign of terror in Chile. The imagery speaks for itself, as the film presents a scathing tableau of military rule. The exclusive film footage comes from the personal archives of a news camera operator who worked in Chile for 17 years. Poignant and subversive, it recounts the brutal atrocities suffered by Chileans, while championing their efforts to regain their freedom.
Monday, Sept. 1, 2014
7:30PM | Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema
Goldcorp Centre for the Arts/ SFU
3rd Floor, 149 West Hastings Street (between Cambie and Abbott)
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The Free Screening Series at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1
is supported by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement.
The Palace follows the everyday life of seventeen women who live together in Mexico, sharing a large house for both emotional and financial reasons. They help each other train for various jobs as nannies, domestic workers and private nurses for elderly patients. Intimate and observational, the film is beautifully shot in a palette of muted blues and greys. Its pace reflects the pace of these women’s lives, vacillating between tedium and profundity. The Palace is an important addition to the oeuvre of one of Canada and Mexico’s most prolific avant-garde filmmakers.
Pachuca, 1956. Brothers Arturo and Gustavo Martínez leave their hometown in central Mexico with the desire to cross the continent on bicycles. Eighty-two days and 5,600 km later, they arrive in Toronto, not knowing that this journey will change the entire route of their lives. Ever since director Andrea Martínez Crowther can remember, stories of her father and uncle’s trip have formed part of her family’s folklore. Over half a century later, Arturo and Gustavo - now in their 70s - retrace that epic path, in an exploration of memory, the cycles of life and the unavoidable passage of time.
Stan Hunt is a red cedar wood carver, an art he learned from his father, Henry Hunt, and grandfather, Mungo Martin - master sculptors from the Kwakiutl First Nation from the northern side of Vancouver island. Stan is now working on the most significant piece of his life, a 42-foot totem pole carved from a 1500-year-old, 5-ton cedar tree, a project commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Public Spaces of the City of Buenos Aires. Once completed, his totem pole will travel 15,000 km by boat to reach Río de la Plata, Argentina.
