Breaking the Silence: Can the Spanish Genocide Speak?
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2019
7:00-9:30pm
Wells Hall B122 (MSU)
For directions, please click HERE
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
The Silence of Others
Friday, November 15, 2019 7:00-9:30PM Wells Hall B122 (MSU)
For directions, please click HERE
Genre: Documentary
A conversation with co-director Almudena Carracedo led by Sebastiaan Faber (Oberlin College) and Cristina Moreiras-Menor (University of Michigan) will follow the screening.
ABOUT THE FILM
Almudena Carracedo & Robert Bahar/2018/96 min
https://thesilenceofothers.com
The Silence of Others reveals the epic struggle of victims of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Franco, who continue to seek justice to this day. Filmed over six years, the film follows victims and survivors as they organize the groundbreaking “Argentine Lawsuit” and fight a state-imposed amnesia of crimes against humanity, in a country still divided four decades into democracy.
The film premiered in Spain theatrically in November 2018 where more than 25,000 people saw it in theaters. It went on to win the Goya for Best Documentary Feature and numerous other prizes, and was broadcast on Spanish public television’s La 2 in April 2019 where a record of nearly 1 million people saw it on television. Executive produced by Pedro Almodóvar, the film was shortlisted for the Oscars.
For more context on The Silence of Others & the 2019-20 Global Perspectives Series, “Breaking the Silence: Can the Spanish Genocide Speak?,” please see: http://globalstudies.msu.edu/events/contexts-can-spanish-genocide-speak/
The Other September 11th
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019
12:30-7:00pm
MSU Broad Museum
For directions, please click HERE
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
The Battle of Chile
In Latin America, September 11th is remembered as a dark day for democracy. On that day in 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led a U.S.-backed military coup in Chile to overthrow the democratically elected Popular Unity government led by Salvador Allende. The first Marxist to be elected president in a liberal democracy, the aim of the coup was to crush the emancipatory processes Allende’s election had set in motion. The results were devastating: Allende’s suicide while Chile’s presidential palace was under siege, the detention of 13,500 Chilean citizens – many of whom were taken to Chile’s National Stadium where they were interrogated and tortured – summary executions, terror. Once in power, Pinochet ruled Chile with an iron fist until 1990. During that time Chile became a laboratory for the implementation of neoliberalism under the guidance of “the Chicago Boys,” Chileans who had studied economics with Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. While privatization replaced the nationalization of industries and socialist reforms, Chilean security forces and secret police agencies detained over 30,000 Chileans – many of whom suffered electric shock torture and rape – and murdered at least 3,197 Chilean citizens, of whom at least 1,100 were forcibly disappeared, their remains dumped in secret mass graves, scattered in the Atacama Desert or thrown out of military helicopters into the Pacific Ocean.
The Battle of Chile, directed by Patricio Guzmán, documents the political tensions and social struggles during the dramatic months leading up to the September 11th coup, beginning with the March 1973 congressional elections. It is widely considered one of the greatest political documentaries ever made and its very existence is a testament to human courage in the face of organized violence and fascist repression. Not only was filming under such conditions risky – Part I ends with footage of an Argentine cameraman’s murder while he’s shooting the gunman who kills him – film stock was scarce after the U.S. pulled Guzmán’s supplies due to ideological differences. The French filmmaker Chris Marker sent him film stock instead. On September 11th, physical possession of the film reels was dangerous. While Guzmán was detained and taken to the National Stadium, his uncle managed to get the film canisters smuggled out of Chile on a ship bound for Europe – the remarkable story is recounted in detail in Guzmán’s later film Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997) – and Guzmán later edited it in exile, where he has remained ever since, having settled in France after living in Spain for several years. Tragically, Jorge Müller, the film’s director of photography, never saw his celebrated cinematography on the big screen. A few months before the first part of the film was released in Cuba in 1975, Müller and his girlfriend Carmen Bueno had been forcibly disappeared after suffering brutal torture by the Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia (DINA), Pinochet’s version of the Gestapo.
Reimagining the Border/Reclaiming Sanctuary
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2019
4:30pm Session
Through the Repellent Fence
Panel discussion
7:30pm Session
The Wall
Dangerous Times | Rebellious Responses
Walking for Ded
Q&A with filmmakers
MSU RCAH Theater (Snyder-Phillips Hall)
For directions, please click HERE
Light refreshments will be provided from 6:30-7:30pm between sessions. Dining options available at The Gallery in Snyder-Phillips Hall.
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
The U.S.-México border and the sanctuary movement in Michigan. Two topics inextricably linked by immigration policies, state violence and imperialism, but also through attempts to resist xenophobia, contest coercion and transform the way we think about land, migration and human dignity. Two topics with shared themes: ONE NIGHT ONLY!
In the wake of the historic government shutdown, LxFF is proud to bring two highly acclaimed feature documentaries on the U.S.-México border to MSU for their mid-Michigan premieres: Through the Repellent Fence (MoMA/SXSW) and The Wall (2018 Pulitzer Prize).
We’re also happy to present two short films on the sanctuary movement in Michigan by emerging filmmakers: Dangerous Times|Rebellious Responses and Walking for Ded.
Scroll down for the trailers and more details on the films – and see you there!
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Through The Repellent Fence
Friday, Feb. 22, 2019 4:30 P.M. MSU RCAH Theater (Snyder-Phillips Hall)
For directions, please click HERE
Genre: Documentary
A panel discussion with Miguel Cabañas (Spanish), Delia Fernández (History) and Carla Acevedo-Yates (MSU Broad Museum) will follow the screening.
ABOUT THE FILM
Sam Wainwright Douglas/2017/74 min
https://fencefilm.wixsite.com/fencefilm
Through The Repellent Fence follows art collective Postcommodity as they strive to construct Repellent Fence, a two-mile long outdoor artwork that straddled the U.S.-Mexico border. Postcommodity consists of three Native American artists who “put land art in a tribal context.” Aided by the communities on both sides of the border in 2015 the artists installed a series 28 huge inflatable spheres emblazoned with an insignia known as the “open eye” that has existed in Indigenous cultures from South America to Canada for thousands of years. The spheres were evenly spaced apart and extended north and south of the border a mile in each direction. “It’s a metaphorical suture stitching together cultures that have inhabited these lands long before borders were drawn.”
The film provides an intimate glimpse into the arduous process behind creating an ambitious artwork that will give voice to the shared history and enduring culture of Indigenous societies that have made the region their home for thousands of years before a border ever divided it. Interwoven with this thread are lush scenes using stunning cinematography to absorb viewers into striking land art environments that have preceded Post Commodity’s work. Scenes with other artists and intellectuals working in the land art realm provide context and insight as well. These include scenes with Chris Taylor of Texas Tech University’s Land Arts of the American West program, writer Lucy Lippard and Matt Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation.
Sam Wainwright Douglas is an editor and director, known for Through the Repellent Fence (2017), No No: A Dockumentary (2014) and Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio (2010).
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The Wall
Friday, Feb. 22, 2019 7:30 P.M. MSU RCAH Theater (Snyder-Phillips Hall)
For directions, please click HERE
Genre: Documentary
A Q&A with filmmakers Brian Kauffman and Kathy Kieliszewski (The Wall) and Alicia Díaz (Dangerous Times | Rebellious Responses) hosted by Oscar Castañeda (Action of Greater Lansing) will follow the screening.
ABOUT THE FILM
Brian Kaufman/2018/80 min
https://borderwallmovie.usatoday.com
A documentary from the Arizona Republic and USA TODAY NETWORK. Part of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting package, “The Wall: Untold Stories, Unintended Consequences”
With rare footage from some of the most remote reaches of the U.S., The Wall explores the impact, reveals unknown issues and details the unintended consequences of President Trump’s $20 billion promise to build a wall from the Gulf to the Pacific.
Watch as journalists travel the length of the U.S.-Mexico border – by land and air – documenting the possible effects of a wall on security, life, commerce, the environment, smuggling and property rights.
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PRECEDED BY
Dangerous Times | Rebellious Responses (Alicia Díaz & Consuela López/2018/13 min) is a documentary film in progress that traces the 1980’s rise of the Sanctuary Movement in Detroit from the perspective of Latinx exiles and activists and the movement’s legacy within present-day resistance by area Latinx, African Diaspora and Middle Eastern migration activists. Co-Executive Producers Alicia Díaz (Wayne State University Instructor in Latinx Studies) and Consuela López (Human Trafficking-Performing Arts Activist) collectively facilitate de-colonized learning and creative spaces and are dedicated to crafting narratives where Latinidad is central to the story of America.
Walking For Ded (Scott Boehm & Peter Johnston/2018/8 min) is a short documentary on the 90-mile “Pilgrimage to Keep Families Together” from Detroit to Lansing organized by Michigan United and allied immigrant communities in May 2018 to seek justice and a stay of deportation for Ded Rranxburgai, who who took sanctuary in Detroit’s Central United Methodist Church along with his Albanian American family in January 2018. Scott Boehm (Writer, Director & Producer) is Assistant Professor of Spanish & Global Studies at MSU and Peter Johnston (Cinematographer, Editor & Producer) is the Digital Media/Film Production Manager in the Film Studies Program at MSU. This is their second film together, following What Happens To A Dream Deferred: A Short Film About DACA (2018).
MSU Latinx Film Festival 