Growing Up in Latin America and Spain Film Series Presents 'Machuca'

Join us for a screening of "Machuca" (Andrés Wood, 2004).

Machuca, the first film in the series, is about coming of age in a country where a dictatorship is taking hold of power and society. It is, in more than one sense, allegorical: the loss of innocence is both the children’s and Chile’s.

In this series, we wish to show how varied the experience of growing up in Spain and Latin America can be, and how film can touch on matters both intimate and public to teach us about cultural differences and commonalities. Each film represents a different country (Chile, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico/US), a particular tone, and a different mode of representation. 

Other films in the series will be:

• Estiu 1993 (Carla Simón, 2017): Wednesday, Feb. 23, 7 p.m. in Carpenter Library B21. Estiu 1993 (Summer 1993) narrates a different kind of trauma. This is a poetic film about growing up in Catalunya in the aftermath of the aids epidemic.
• El Futuro Perfecto (Nele Wohlatz, 2019): Wednesday, March 16, 7 p.m. in Carpenter Library B21. El futuro perfecto follows the difficulties and language barriers that a recent Chinese immigrant faces as she navigates her new life in Argentina.
• Alice Júnior (Gil Baroni, 2019): Wednesday, March 30, 7 p.m. in Carpenter Library B21. Alice Júnior deploys a TikTok-style editing and rhythm to tell the story of a trans protagonist who moves from a progressive city in Brazil to a conservative, rigid new environment in the countryside.
• Los Lobos (Samuel Kishi, 2019): Wednesday, April 13, 7 p.m. Carpenter Library B21. Los lobos looks at migration from the perspective of two boys, revealing to what degree fantasies and realities are mixed and hard to discern at their age (and possibly later in their lives.) 

Cosponsored by the Department of Spanish; Film Studies; LAILS; Comparative Literature; and with the support of Pragda; the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports of Spain; and SPAIN Arts and Culture.