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05
May 16

HLBLL: Screening of the film Ella trabaja (She Works)

Film Screening: Ella trabaja

ABOUT THE FILM
Ella trabaja (She Works), a film by Jesús Miguel Hernández, tells the story of a group of Cuban transvestites, the support they have been receiving from Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual (CENESEX) for years, and their struggle to find a space that will allow them to be who they chose to be and still be included in society.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Jesus Hernández is an award-winning film director and producer. His short Ella trabaja (She Works) has been screened at numerous festivals in Cuba and around the world. During his career, he has worked with directors like Fernando Pérez, Fatih Akin and Paddy Breathnach. His has been living in New York City since November, 2014, where he coordinated Documentary Fortnight at MoMA, and worked at Nantucket Film Festival and Cinema Tropical. He founded Bach Media, a company that has several projects in the USA as well as in Cuba in different stages of development. Most recently, he worked in the marketing campaigns during DOCNYC 2015 and MIFF 2016 for the film Tough the Light by Jennifer Redfearn. He also co-sponsored, with Bach Media, the Havana Film Festival in NYC.

Many thanks to our student, Wilfredo Burgos Matos, for the organization of this screening!

This event is free and open to the public

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22
Mar 16

Bildner Center: 21st Century Mexican Art and Literature

21st Century Mexican Art and Literature

Presentations

“Filming Globalization: Mexico and the World in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s ‘Babel’”
Juan E. De Castro, Eugene Lang College
Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel has become a privileged text in discussions about globalization and culture. In addition to reviewing some of the more global aspects illustrated by the film, this presentation attempts to situate the film within the context of US and Mexican cultural and political interactions. By inscribing Mexico’s borderlands within the world, Babel marks González Iñárritu’s look at his home culture and reality before becoming, with Birdman and The Revenant, one of the most honored Hollywood filmmakers.“Contemporary Art and Social Writing”
Pablo Helguera, visual artist, NYC

“‘Caída libre’ by Martha Cerda: New York in Fragments”
Diana P. Valencia, University of Saint Joseph
This presentation explores some discourse strategies employed in this novella to re-articulate not only the role of fate in human destiny but also ruling fiction as a random game of possibilities. Cerda´s work wisely intermingles fragments of truth and imagination in order to deconstruct the notion of discourse as a totality – and life as a complete universe of meaning. Irony, parody, fragments of the self, or the self in fragments are fresh ways of retelling a story. Cerda´s literary strategies made of her work a cutting edge fiction emblematic of 21st Century Mexican literature.

Moderator: Araceli Tinajero, City College of New York (CUNY)

 

About the presenters

Juan E. De Castro is an Associate Professor in Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, where he teaches courses in Latin American and Latina literatures. He has published articles in MLN, Latin American Research Review, and Aztlan, among other journals. He has edited several books, including Critical Insights: Mario Vargas Llosa (2014) and (with Nicholas Birns) Roberto Bolaño as World Literature (forthcoming). He is the author of three books, the most recent of which is Mario Vargas Llosa: Public Intellectual in Neoliberal Latin America (2011).

Pablo Helguera is a visual artist living in New York. Helguera often focuses on history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics and anthropology in formats such as lectures, museum displays, performance and written fiction. His project The School of Panamerican Unrest (2003-2011), an early example of pedagogically-focused socially engaged art, consisted in a nomadic think-tank, physically crossed the continent by car from Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego. He has exhibited widely internationally. His is author of several other books including An Atlas of Commonplaces: A Notebook for Artists (2015), Art Scenes: The Social Scripts of the Art World (2012), Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011), a primer for social practice, What in the World (2010), Theatrum Anatomicum (and other performance lectures) (2009),a book on the sociology of contemporary art, and The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art Style (2007).

Diana P. Valencia (Ph.D., Stony Brook) is Professor of Spanish/Chair, Department of Culture, Arts and Languages at the University of Saint Joseph, Connecticut. She is the author of Octavio Paz, una mirada al nuevo milenio: Ensayos en torno a la modernidad (Gobierno del Estado de México, 2010). This research work was awarded an Honorary Mention in the National Fine Arts Literary Essay Prize, José Revueltas (CONACUTA, 2009.) Dr. Valencia translated into Spanish, the poems, Hiding in Other People´s Houses by Dory Katz (La Luciérnaga Editores, Guadalajara, 1999). She has published extensively on Latin American poetry as well as Mexican women authors. Her work, La literatura de mujeres en Jalisco: Martha Cerda, is included in De la Catedral al Rascacielos (CUNY/ALDEU) which was awarded best essay book by the International Association of Writers in Chicago in 1999. Dr. Valencia also presented the premiere edition of Caída libre by Martha Cerda at the FIL Guadalajara, 2011.

Araceli Tinajero is Professor of Spanish at The Graduate Center and City College of New York, CUNY. She is the author of Orientalismo en el modernismo hispanoamericano; El lector de tabaquería (Eng. El Lector: A History of the Cigar Factory Reader); and Kokoro, una mexicana en Japón. Professor Tinajero is the editor of Cultura y letras cubanas en el siglo XXI; Exilio y cosmopolitismo en el arte y la literatura hispánica (2013) and Orientalisms of the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian World (2014).

Reservations for this event are encouraged. Email bildner [at] gc.cuny.edu. Visit the Bildner Center page for more information.

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09
Nov 15

HLBLL: “Familia, nación y la retórica de la expiación en el cine español/europeo de inmigración” 

“Familia, nación y la retórica de la expiación en el cine español/europeo de inmigración”

Isolina Ballesteros (Baruch College, CUNY; The Graduate Center, CUNY)

Isolina Ballesteros interpreta el tropo de la familia y su función emblemática en la narrativa nacional en una selección de películas españolas de inmigración situándolas dentro del contexto cinematográfico europeo. Sirviéndose de una variedad de géneros fílmicos, el cine de inmigración documenta, por un lado, la xenofobia y el racismo benigno o violento que resultan de una percepción de la inmigración exclusivamente en términos de invasión y pérdida de homogeneidad y recursos; y por otro, la empatía y solidaridad individuales.

Ballesteros analiza el cine español de inmigración a la luz de propuestas intelectuales postcoloniales que predican una reflexión consciente acerca de la heterogeneidad y diversidad de la identidad europea, y cuestionan y proveen alternativas positivas a la retórica de la expiación blanca.

 

Professor Isolina Ballesteros, Baruch College, CUNY

Isolina Ballesteros is Associate Professor at the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature and the Film Studies Program of Baruch College, and the Graduate Center of CUNY. Her teaching focuses on Modern Peninsular Studies (19th and 20th century literature and film), Comparative Literature, and Spanish and European film. She is the author of three books: Escritura femenina y discurso autobiográfico en la nueva novela española (1994), Cine (Ins)urgente: textos fílmicos y contextos culturales de la España postfranquista (2001), and Immigration Cinema in the New Europe (2015).

This event is free and open to the public.

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22
Apr 15

HLBLL Book Launch: La comedia y el melodrama en el audiovisual iberoamericano

Join us for the book launch of La comedia y el melodrama en el audiovisual iberoamericano, edited by Distinguished Professor Paul Julian Smith.

Speakers:

Alberto Medina (Columbia University)

Tanya Meléndez (Fashion Institute of Technology)

Oswaldo Zavala (Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, CUNY)

With contributors:

Nancy Berthier (Sorbonne)

Julia Tuñón (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia and Colegio de México)

 

This event is free and open to the public.

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03
Mar 15

HLBLL: Lecture and Film Screening with Professor/Writer/Director Margarita Ledo

Professor Margarita Ledo (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) presents her lecture “El cuerpo y la lengua” followed by a screening of the 2012 film that she wrote and directed, A cicatriz branca.

Film synopsis from acicatrizbranca.com:

“A lo largo de la primera mitad del siglo XX, miles de mujeres salieron solas de Galicia hacia América. Muchas de ellas eran ilegales, con papeles que falsificaban su edad e incluso su identidad. Historias ordinarias como la de Merce, destinada a servir y, de la noche a la mañana, despedida. Sin lugar al que ir ni nadie a quien acudir, Merce pasa tres días y tres noches en la Estación Constitución donde su vida se enlaza con la de otras emigrantes. A la par de un trabajo en la fábrica Mil8, Merce se casa, asiste a clases de contabilidad en alguna de las Sociedades Gallegas y un día la norma se hace añicos por algo tan simple como quedar prendada de una situación que no sabe nombrar.”

This event is free and open to the public.

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22
Oct 14

CUNY: Human Rights Law & Documentary Filmmaking

This event is presented by the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education of the City College of New York. It is taking place at the Center for Worker Education, downtown.

From the event organizers: “In the spring of 2013, General Efraín Ríos Montt of Guatemala was tried and convicted of genocide (even if the conviction was overturned one month later). This was the first time in 500 years that genocide against indigenous Americans was tried. Clips from the documentary Granito (Skylight Pictures, 2011) were used as evidence in the trial. Now the filmmakers are working on the third film in the Guatemala trilogy, triggered by the trial and its aftermath, called 500 Years. Almudena Bernabeu, one of the lawyers who worked on the Guatemala Genocide Case, still serves transnationally on cases throughout the world.  The event will explore the path-breaking work of Spain in human rights law and the relentless commitment of intellectuals and activists in making the seemingly impossible possible. By bringing together documentary film, ethnography, and law, the filmmakers and lawyer who join us for this event are exemplary of how human rights can make a difference, even if the odds remain seemingly insurmountable. ”

Visit the website to find our more information and to register to attend.

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01
Oct 14

HLBLL: Luis López Carrasco: “Stories of History: Los Hijos’ Experimental Documentaries in the Context of Contemporary Independent Film in Spain”

los hijos

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