Browse Items (5 total)

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  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. 

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  Angélica

  ANGÉLICA, tras una larga ausencia en Nueva York, regresa a Puerto Rico cuando su padre, WILFREDO, sufre un ataque cardíaco. La violencia de regresar, no por gusto, a la casa en la que creció, más la enfermedad de su padre, obligan a Angélica a reevaluar la relación con su madre, que siempre la ha menospreciado por su color de piel, con sus familiares cercanos, claramente racistas y finalmente con su pareja de Nueva York, que viaja a Puerto Rico para recuperarla. Esto la obligan a enfrentarse consigo misma y a descubrir que no sabe quién es ella, y más, qué quién quiera que sea, no se acepta. Tras la muerte de su padre, Angélica tiene que decidir si regresa al confort de su vida anterior, insatisfecha, pero segura, o se aventura al camino de redescubrirse como mujer independiente, moderna, fuerte, mulata y puertoriqueña, en este mundo globalizado en los comienzos del siglo XXI. (Programa Ibermedia)

  Tags Afro-Puerto Rican / afro-puertorriqueño
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  Miguelito: Canto a Borinquen

  Miguel Ángel Gonzáles Sánchez, apodado Miguelito, era un niño de Puerto Rico que ayudó a sostener a su pobre familia cantando en las calles. Allí fue visto por el legendario productor Harvey Averne, quien contrató al niño de once años, produjo un álbum titulado Canto a Borinquen (Elogio de Puerto Rico) y organizó un concierto de salsa en el Madison Square Garden. Esperando que sucedan grandes cosas, la familia se mudó a Nueva York con la esperanza de que despegue la carrera de Miguelito. Aunque sus canciones finalmente se convirtieron en éxitos de culto en toda Latinoamérica, el disco no tuvo éxito financiero. La familia regresó a Puerto Rico y Averne perdió de vista al niño que simplemente había desaparecido. El cineasta Sam Zubrycki quiso averiguar qué había sucedido realmente. (Revista Enfoque)
  

  Tags Youth / La juventud
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  Brincando el Charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican

  Refreshingly sophisticated in both form and content, BRINCANDO EL CHARCO contemplates the notion of “identity” through the experiences of a Puerto Rican woman living in the US. In a wonderful mix of fiction, archival footage, processed interviews and soap opera drama, BRINCANDO EL CHARCO tells the story of Claudia Marin, a middle-class, light-skinned Puerto Rican photographer/videographer who is attempting to construct a sense of community in the US. Confronting the simultaneity of both her privilege and her oppression, BRINCANDO EL CHARCO becomes a meditation on class, race and sexuality as shifting differences. (Women Make Movies)

  Tags Afro-Caribbean / afro-caribeño, Afro-Puerto Rican / afro-puertorriqueño
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  Latin American Women Writers and Filmmakers

  This course will provide students an introduction to the critical analysis of film and literature in Latin America (including Brazil) with a specific focus, particularly at the end of the course, on post-dictatorship film and literature from Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. This course is designed to give students an introduction of literary and filmic analysis at an advanced level as a means of building their speaking, reading, critical thinking, and writing skills in Spanish and English.