El Limón’s 2011 International Film Fest

My cineclub dressed in red for Valentine's Day the night we watched Todo Sobre Mi Madre.

A few months ago I watched Pedro Almodovar’s Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother), a surprising tale of a woman whose son’s death leads her to revisit her past as the wife of a transsexual and in the process meets a nun who bears the same man a child.

He is an incredible director and it’s an incredible film. Imagining how Dominican youth would react to its eye-opening illustrations of gender issues, HIV and drugs inspired me to start El Limon’s first and probably last International Film Festival, a grandiose name for a simple once-a-week film screening held in a crammed little room at the community center where I work.

My criteria for movies is A) it has to be good and B) it has to be originally in Spanish. People here watch so many crap movies that have terrible dubbing that I thought it would be a worthwhile cultural experience to show films that came out of related cultures to the DR’s, ie, Spain and Latin America. So far it’s already one of my favorite projects. I don’t have to struggle for attendance (we fill the tiny room with the flat screen with about 15 youth) and get to use my literary analysis skills as a former English major. Dominican culture has precious little (if any) art, and it’s gratifying to bring a little into the community. It’s also amazed me to realize when looking at it all together what a rich cinema culture Spain and Latin America have.

So far we’ve seen (spoiler alert):

Maria Llena Eres de Gracia (Maria Full of Grace) – A Colombian movie about a poor rural 17-year-old pregnant girl who risks her life to become a drug mule, then decides to stay in the US to raise her child. We talked about Colombia’s role as the largest drug producer in Latin America, the US war on drugs, and how critics argue it’s the United States’ responsibility, rather than Colombia’s, to curb drug trafficking since that’s where the demand comes from. I picked it to start off the screenings because the protagonist’s life is very similar to that of the Dominican youth.

El Orfanato (The Orphanage) – A Spanish suspense movie by the director Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) about a woman whose mission to help disadvantaged children extends to the haunted. In the end, the teens had to piece together all the clues from the movie to understand what happened.

El Crimen del Padre Amaro (The crime of Father Amaro) – A Mexican film about a young idealistic priest who enters a corrupt parish and falls to temptation after meeting the head priest, who keeps a woman and takes money from drug traffickers. But the young Amaro turns out to be the most corrupt after he gets an abortion for his girlfriend that kills her. This film also has a character who represents Liberation Theology, the liberal movement in the church to fight for the rights of the poor. The teens were surprisingly accepting that the story is representative of what really goes on and knowledgeable about the priest abuse scandal in this officially Catholic country.

El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) – This heavy, fascinating movie also by director Guillermo del Toro takes place in Franco’s Spain after the Civil War, where guerrillas are fighting the fascist army. A little girl enters a fantasy world whose horrors parallel her reality. Based on the concept of a fairy tale, this movie’s complexity opens it to a lot of interpretations, including that it is a fable about Christian faith in the afterlife.

Still to come:

Todo Sobre Mi Madre, Volver, Hable con Ella, Abrazos Rotos, (all by genius Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar), Amores Perros, Abre Los Ojos, Fresa y Chocolate (about a Cuban gay man who struggles to live freely under Castro’s regime), Como Agua Para Chocolate, Mar Adentro (Based on the true story of a Spanish paraplegic who fights for his right to kill himself), the Motorcycle Diaries.