Browse Items (16 total)
-
A orillas del mar
Es la historia de Pedro, un niño que vive en Samaná y que emprende la búsqueda de su padre, un pescador que se fue hacia Santo Domingo. Allí se encontrará con el más triste panorama de desolación y peligro que un adolescente puede enfrentarse cuando no tiene nada. (Dominican Cinema) -
Espejos del corazón
Lourdes Portillo is a filmmaker of undoubted importance for Latin American nonfiction cinema. Her lucid filmography oscillates between documentary, experimental film and video art. Astutely inscribing herself to the genealogy of Third Cinema, she became a pioneer in the exploration of Latin American identity within and outside of the United States. Dealing with themes of extreme sociopolitical complexity and exploring them through a meticulous investigation guided by intuition and feeling, Lourdes’ work – which has documented situations from Argentina to California – carefully highlights the postcolonial relationalities that have emerged in the various societies that reside in the continent commonly referred to as the “Americas”. [...] This is a film in which Lourdes rerouted her experimentation towards the task of informing audiences in the United States about Bolivian, Dominican and Haitian societies and cultures. Portillo weaves together a documentary that is at once formally conventional while also defiant of the model in which it was produced due to its insightful social, political and aesthetic study. This documentary directly speaks of the consequences and changing contradictions that have occured in these territories due to European colonization and the neo-colonial process coming from the United States. Making use of a procedural approximation, she shows us the crystallized elements but also a point of demonstrating that we are witnessing cultures in the process of transformation and hybridization: presenting traits and fragments of who they were and who they will become. (Portillo, Lourdes. Interview with Eduardo Makoszay. Corrientes, Nov-Dec 2020, www.corrient.es/portillo-makoszay-eng) -
Documentary as Civic Engagement in Latin American and Latinx Film
In this course we examine the documentary genre in film and its participation in the public sphere as filmmakers and their audiences demand or create justice in pursuit of participation in Latin America and among Latinx communities. We see how a range of documentarians and their subjects use film to not only hold their communities and governments accountable, but also surface buried stories, and serve as alternative public platforms to reframe memory. We see how, in some communities, through the use of small screens and phone cameras, people write themselves into a more plural and inclusive history. We will examine the theoretical frameworks and documentaries coming from Latin America and Latinx communities on the topic of documentary as justice, while analyzing key documentaries that have used the genre to reveal and remember buried stories. This course and the documentaries analyzed will be in Spanish and as such we recognize our privilege interacting with these materials as Spanish-speakers and students of Spanish as another level of engagement, activism, and community.
As we examine the voices captured in these texts celebrating, narrating, criticizing, and challenging terms such as the limits of the documentary genre, democracy, nation, sovereignty, racism and gender, we too will continue to develop our own voices using the written word scaffolding our writing through a low-stakes and higher-stakes on-going practice. We will use writing throughout the course to think through texts, shape our own voices in Spanish as well as respond to each other to foster a supportive community of thinkers, writers, and Spanish-speakers.
-
Apátrida
In 1937, tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were exterminated by the Dominican army, based on anti-black hatred fomented by the Dominican government. Fast-forward to 2013, the Dominican Republic’s Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929. The ruling rendered more than 200,000 people stateless, without nationality, identity or a homeland. In this dangerous climate, a young attorney named Rosa Iris mounts a grassroots campaign, challenging electoral corruption and advocating for social justice. Director Michèle Stephenson’s new documentary Stateless traces the complex tributaries of history and present-day politics, as state-sanctioned racism seeps into mundane offices, living room meetings, and street protests. Filmed with a chiaroscuro effect and richly imbued with elements of magical realism, Stateless combines gritty hidden-camera footage with the legend of a young woman fleeing brutal violence to flip the narrative axis, revealing the depths of institutionalized oppression. (Film's Official Website) -
Indigenous & Afro-descendant Representation in Contemporary Latin American Film
This course serves as an introduction to film analysis by studying Latin American cinema, with a focus on Afro-descendant and indigenous communities. We will analyze the representation of indigenous people in contemporary Latin American cinema, and highlight the contributions of indigenous media to current discussions about indigeneity and decolonization. In addition, we will examine the cinematic representa-tion of Afro-Latin Americans and explore the cultural legacy of the African diaspora through Latin American film. The course will highlight important social and political issues concerning historically marginalized voices in Latin America, as well as how cinematography, as an artistic medium, grapples with questions of representation, identity, memory, and activism. Movies will be screened in Spanish (in some cases, Portuguese and indigenous languages, with Spanish subtitles). Class conducted in Spanish.
-
Hispanic Film (*modified for remote learning, fall 2020)
In our Hispanic film course we examine diverse cinemas made in the region and how Latin American filmmakers represent, reject, reconstruct, maintain or challenge their realities. We look at how films are made, how they are funded, and how films reach audiences to question which films we see, and which ones are hidden from our view. The most accessible films available on major US platforms such as Netflix and Hulu do not begin to represent the diversity of world cinema, nor that of even US cinema.
In this course we examine works from the region to see how artists use cinema to challenge, break with, or redefine their realities sharing complexities beyond the limited roles of Latin Americans in Hollywood film. In these examples of more nuanced representations of Latin Americans, we see the crucial importance of self-representation, and diversity in front of and behind the camera.
-
Migrations and Immigrations
To learn about the main events and historical characters that have forged the development and the evolution of the Latin-American culture(s) , arts and literature from Pre-Columbian times to the present. To address social-cultural and political issues derived from the tutelage of the Spanish Empire. -
Nana
El largometraje Nana retrata a la nana o la niñera, esa que sin que los padres lo adviertan y reconozcan, pasa a convertirse en la persona más importante en la vida de sus hijos. Crudamente se presenta el trabajo doméstico, por lo general feminizado, desde una realidad que se suele invizibilizar. Mujeres mal pagadas, mal comidas, que dejan a sus hijos para irse a cuidar y dar amor a los hijos de otros, sin saber si los suyos comen o no. (Diario Digital RD) -
Cocote
Alberto is returning home from Santo Domingo for the funeral of his father, killed by a local loan shark who is untouchable thanks to his police-force position. The son arrives to find that his old man has already been put in the ground. He is expected to stay on, however, for the nine nights of novena, or rezos de los nueve dias, a prospect that disturbs him, though it’s not immediately clear why. In time we gather that there is a gulf between Alberto’s faith and his family’s – while both evoke the name of Jesus, the similarities don’t go much further. With his pressed white shirts, humble comportment and Bible tucked at his side, Alberto is the very picture of the clean-living evangelical, dismissing talk of a curse on his father as so much “nonsense”. But back home they practise their own indigenous strain of Christianity, one heavily streaked with Catholic pomp and influences from West Africa, known as Los Misterios. At the centre of Cocote is this push-pull between Alberto’s Christianity, of the pacific and turn-the-other-cheek variety, and the more fervid, half-pagan beliefs of his extended family, particularly his adoptive sister Karina (Judith Rodríguez), in whose minds the crime that has been committed demands repayment in blood. Source: Pinkerton, Nick. "Cocote." Sight and Sound, vol. 28, no. 8, 2018, p. 54-55. -
Tú y yo
The Mrs., an old widow, and Aridia, a young maid, live together in a house filled with orchids in the center of Santo Domingo. Aridia cleans, the Mrs. gardens, and when work is slow, they can share some gossip. But sometimes, the atmosphere gets too tense: the Mrs. wakes up grumpy, she blames Aridia and when Aridia tries to defend herself, the Mrs. has to remind her "where her place is"; in time, they end up not talking to each other. But the hours pass by, the soap appears on TV, something happens in the neighborhood, and, out of nowhere, the Mrs. and Aridia come close again, ending the day sharing some laughs. The film is an excuse to watch their relationship closely, to perceive what happens when the border seems to diffuse itself in a place where difference of social class and race remain deep in the culture. (Cinema Tropical) -
La isla rota
Guy, un niño haitiano que huye de la pobreza, presenció el asesinato de sus padres mientras cruzaba la frontera dominicana. Años más tarde, se enfrenta a los asesinos, enredados en una vorágine de venganza, amor, odio racial y un futuro incierto. (Parada RD) -
Miriam miente
El tranquilo mundo de una familia pequeñoburguesa comienza a desmoronarse a partir del momento en que Miriam (Dulce Rodríguez), de 14 años, conoce a su novio de Internet. Mientras sus amigas preparan con entusiasmo la tradicional fiesta de los quince años, Miriam no sabe cómo explicar a su familia que su novio es negro. (Parada RD) -
Dólares de arena
Noelí, una joven dominicana, viaja todas las tardes a las playas de las Terrenas. Allí, junto con su pareja, busca la manera de sacar ventaja y ganar algunos dólares a costa de alguno de los centenares de turistas que rondan el lugar. Entre sus clientes ocasionales, Noelí mantiene uno fijo: Anne, una francesa de edad madura que con el paso del tiempo ha encontrado en la isla un refugio ideal donde pasar sus últimos años. El novio de Noelí se hace pasar por su hermano y elabora un plan en el que Noelí viaje a París con la francesa y le envíe dinero todos los meses. Para Noelí, la relación con Anne se basa primordialmente en la conveniencia, aunque los sentimientos se tornan ambiguos a medida que el tiempo de partir se avecina. Adaptado de la novela “Dólares de Arena” de Jean-Noël Pancrazi. http://cinelatinoamericano.org/ -
Flor de azúcar
República Dominicana 1948-49, en los campos de caña de la isla, la vida de 2 parejas campesinas, una dominicana y otra de proveniente de Haití se entremezclan en esta interesante historia de época. Samuel un joven campesino dominicano de firmes principios se enfrenta a la hostilidad e injusticia de la dictadura de Trujillo, el gobernante de la época. Indignado por el abuso de un grupo de guardias del opresivo régimen da muerte involuntariamente a uno de sus miembros, viéndose obligado a huir y abandonar a su esposa Elena y a sus hijos. Durante todo un año se oculta en una apartada isla de pescadores en el mar Caribe donde conoce a María Fernanda, una hermosa nativa viuda y su pequeña hija María y ante la amenaza de comenzar una nueva relación, decide volver a su familia sin sospecharse el terrible desenlace que le esperaba. https://dgcine.gob.do -
Hispanic Film
This course examines film by Spanish and Latin American directors. Students study films as an independent genre using specific structural forms as the means of analysis (close-up, soundtrack, frame, etc.). Students will formulate interpretations that move between the formal, technical composition of films and the concrete socio-historic and cultural reality to which each film refers and shapes. Course activities include screening of films, discussion of articles that focus on literary theory and film analysis, and writing short papers. -
Cultura Hispanoamericana
"El curso se enfoca en procesos de cambio cultural en comunidades hispanohablantes de las Américas. Las metodologías empleadas incluyen la histórica (a base de la organización en forma narrativa de evidencia documentada), la transcultural (a base del estudio de las interacciones dinámicas entre perspectivas culturales) y la comunitaria (a base de experiencias vitales de participación comunitaria). "