The Rust by Juan Sebastián Mesa
The Museum of Modern Art will be screening the Chilean film The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future / La vaca que cantó una canción hacia el futuro by Francisca Alegría and the Colombian film The Rust / La roya by Juan Sebastián Mesa as part of the series ‘Movies from Earth,’ taking place May 6-26 and that will offer an opportunity to contemplate the future through the lens of 25 films created amid the environmental precarity of the past five years.
Screened in its New York premiere, The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future is a magic realist fable that contains lessons easily translated to our climate disaster: If we can change ourselves, we can change the future. In lush, small-town Chile, dead fish wash up on a riverbed, killed by factory runoff. Their lifeless bodies ask en masse: “Come close to us. Is the end nigh?”
As if summoned, family matriarch Magdalena (played by Argentine actress Mía Maestro) rises from the river, decades after her death by suicide. Magdalena, now mute, attempts to reconnect with her family, and each of them must navigate forgiveness. Alegría’s feature directorial debut, anchored by sensitive performances, contrasts environmental destruction with family trauma and healing. The Chilean director will be in attendance in the first showing of the film on Saturday, May 14.
Set in the mountains in Antioquia, Colombia, Mesa’s second featureThe Rust tells the story of Jorge, who works alone on the coffee plantation left to him by his parents. Though his friends have all left their rural hometown for the city, he stays behind to work the land and fight off a plague that threatens his crops, all the while questioning his place in a changing world. As he cares for his grandfather with dementia, Jorge’s past and future become slippery. Serenely photographed by David Correa Franco, The Rust astutely addresses questions of tradition and change, on both personal and global scales.
Additionally, ‘Movies from Earth’ will screen the 1975 short film Energy Charge by the late Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta, and the 2022 Colombian short film Invisibles by Esteban Garcia Garzon.
For more information visit: https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/7872
