Tuesday, March 5, 6:30 pm
I Forgot, I Don't Remember /
Del olvido al no me acuerdo Juan

Juan Carlos Rulfo, Documentary, 1998, 75 min.

Filmmaker Juan Carlos Rulfo is searching for his father, and on his investigative journey he encounters numerous people whom remember the man by name. Sadly, however, they cannot remember anything else about him. The son of the late Juan Rulfo, a renowned Mexican writer and poet, sets out in this “docu-fiction” to capture his father’s life through the eyes of a group of senior citizens in the southern state of Jalisco. Although they can remember Juan Rulfo’s name, they cannot remember any details about his life or who he really was. Instead, as they struggle to recall memories, they reveal more about themselves in intimate detail, painting a vivid montage of the lives they lived. Nevertheless, Rulfo’s memory is eclectically composed with the unspoken details and interviews with his wife and well-known writers.

Tuesday, March 12, 6:30 pm
Ruins

Jesse Lerner, Experimental Documentary, 1999, 78 min.
Presented in association with Subcine*

Counterfeiting is a practice with broad and devious implications, from the merest of fake objects to entire histories shaped as facsimile. The prologue to this wizardly jumble of newsreel snippets, travelogia, and stagy rants collates early colonial misconceptions of Mexico's populace, a stewpot of ethnographic and political distortions. From there, Lerner charts the rarefaction of this process that recontextualizes archeological objects as art. In this cultural valuation, Maya and Aztec objects are severed from their origins and further rarified within the confines of museums. At the center of Ruins is Brigido Lara, a master forger whose pre-Columbian objects have been exhibited in major (and unwitting) museums throughout the U.S. and Europe. Is this the final subterfuge of the colonial projects--the real and the fake indistinguishable? - Steve Seid, Pacific Film Archives

Bulmaro Osornio and Matías Meyer, 2001, 40 min.

A documentary about Chupaderos, a set built outside Durango, Mexico, where many a Hollywood action film fabricated the myth of the lawless West. Starring John Wayne and the recollections of Durango vaqueros who remember the silver screen days of the open-air set, now a ghost town of facades. The dignity and resilience of these real life characters is contrasted with screen stereotypes of “The Mexican” and set against the barren landscape of the now defunct set.

Preceded by:
Road Coffee
Ricardo Benet, Documentary, 2000, 8min.
A portrait of a 70-year old woman who sells coffee to passing travelers in a lonely and desolate town. In her old age, she strengthens her roots to a town that once flourished with over a hundred families but is now reduced to only a few inhabitants.

Tuesday, March 26, 6:30 p.m.
El Dorado: The Myth of the North
Presented in association with Subcine*

The lure of the North: skyscrapers, Hollywood, TV, and fields of gold. Film and video makers explore the politics and fantasy surrounding the US-Mexico border in the age of globalization. Short works by Alex Rivera, Rita Gonzalez, Felipe Galindo, and Cristina Ibarra.

The Manhatitlan Chronicles
Felipe Galindo, 1999, 7 min.
The Manhatitlán Chronicles is an animated flight of fancy that transposes elements of Mexican culture onto the cityscape of Manhattan. A humorous view on how Mexican and American cultures playfully intertwine. The Manhatitlán Chronicles celebrates New York’s great ethnic diversity, paying homage to the people who constitute its ever-changing population. The film consists of 5 humorous segments that underscore ethnic tradition in this era of multiculturalism and globalization.

The Assumption of Lupe Velez
Rita Gonzalez, Experimental, 2000, 28 min.
The Assumption of Lupe Velez starts with a reproduction of an Andy Warhol film entitled "Lupe." Warhol's film is loosely based on the last night of the famous Mexican star Lupe Velez' life. The Assumption of Lupe Velez utilizes accounts and renditions of Velez's last night in Hollywood to examine the her portrayals in the mainstream entertainment press (accounts by Hedda Hopper) as well her transformation into underground cult icon (by Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol and the little known Puerto Rican experimental filmmakers Jose Soltero)

Dirty Laundry: A Homemade Telenovela
Cristina Ibarra, Narrative, 2000, 15 min.
An experimental narrative that weaves together fictional footage, home movies, and images from real-world telenovelas to tell the story of Sandra, a young girl caught on the border between her family's Mexican traditions, and her devious, American instincts. Dirty Laundry is set literally on the US/Mexico border, in the largest border town in the world: El Paso, Texas. In El Paso, the traditions of Mexico and America coincide, combine, and clash, like nowhere else. A humorous look at border culture, Catholicism, puberty, and the hidden pleasures of the spin cycle.

Las Papas Del Papa
Alex Rivera, Narrative/Animation, 2000, 8 min.
In 1999 Pope John Paul II visited Mexico. In true end-of-the-millennium style, the visit was not only the visit of Mexico’s most revered living religious figure, but also an opportunity for product placements and corporate tie-ins. In one case, promotional stickers of the Pope (El Papa) appeared in bags of potato chips (Las papas). This short narrative follows the confusions of a young boy who searches for a shortcut to heaven, in the media saturated world of the Pope’s 1999 visit to Mexico. "Las Papas del Papa" is a wicked commentary on faith, free markets, and the surreal by-products of the New World Order.

Why Cybraceros?
Alex Rivera, Mockumentary, 1997, 5 min.
Tele-commuting migrant farm workers realize the American Dream - the importation of pure labor. Using incisive political satire and footage from the 1940s promotional film produced by the California Growers Council entitled “Why Braceros,” video Artist Alex Rivera introduces a futuristic model for the perpetuation of labor exploitation and xenophobia. The Cybracero program controls the threat of “unwanted” immigration AND supplies cheap labor the US farms using high-speed Internet connection.

“This dystopic concept, of a world in which immigrants can labor in America but never live in, or become the responsibility of American society, is to me not only a bizarre twist on the American Dream; in some ways this is the realization of the American Dream… The Cybracero is the hi-tech face of the age-old American Dream.” - A. Rivera

Dia de la Independencia
Alex Rivera, 1998, 2 min.
A satirical movie trailer that mimics the cinematic obsession with "alien
invasions."

SubCine is the foremost distribution source for Independent Latino Film and
Video. The artist-run and artist-owned collective handles some of the most
challenging, experimental, and progressive film and video work being done
today by Latino issue film and video makers.

Special thanks for Latin American Video Archives. Additional support for the
Video Screenings at Americas Society provided by the Mexican Cultural
Institute.