Holyoke Community College to offer Ibero-American Film Festival

Date: 9/29/2016

HOLYOKE – Migration not only affects people who leave their homelands, but also the loved ones they leave behind.

That is the theme behind Everybody Leaves, the first installment in this year’s Holyoke Community College “Ibero-American Film Festival,” which features five weeks of free screenings of movies from Central and Latin America.

The third-annual film festival began Sept. 28 and the film series continues each Wednesday through Oct. 26, concluding with the screening of Who is Dayani Cristal?, a documentary that tracks an investigation to identify a man who died in the Arizona desert after crossing the border from Mexico.

Formerly called the “Spanish Film Festival,” the new title reflects an expanded focus. In the previous two years, all the films were in Spanish. This year one of the films (The Second Mother, on Oct. 19, from Brazil) is in Portuguese.

All have English subtitles.

“Brazil is part of Latin America, and we don’t teach Portuguese here, but it seemed like such a good film, so why not?” said Spanish professor Monica Torregrosa, the other event organizer. “It might spur interest in learning Portuguese, which would be great.”

The theme of migration runs throughout this year’s festival entries. That was by design, said Gutierrez, chair of the HCC Language Studies Department and one of the organizers of the film festival.

This year the film festival dovetails with another Pioneer Valley-wide project Gutierrez and HCC are involved with called the “Big Read,” which is sponsored by the Mary Lyon Foundation and kicks off Oct. 15. The foundation won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the project and selected the novel Into the Beautiful North, by Mexican-American author Luis Alberto Urrea, which is about a Mexican village where all the men have left to find jobs in the U.S.

Next April, Urrea is scheduled to visit HCC to present his work.

In keeping with the theme of Urrea’s novel, “Big Read” organizers asked Gutierrez to select films this year that deal with issues related to migration, and HCC’s Ibero-American Film Festival is one of the events listed on the “Big Read” calendar.

Gutierrez said he is also working on scheduling more screenings of this year’s films at off-campus locations.

All films are free and will be held in HCC’s Leslie Phillips Theater in the Fine & Performing Arts building. All the films are subtitled in English.

Oct. 5, 7 p.m.: “I am from Chile” Chile, directed by Gonzalo Díaz Ugarte. A coming of age story about Salvador, a man who moves from Chile to London to study English and travel around Europe at his parents' expense.

Oct. 12, 11 a.m.: “The Return (El regreso)” Costa Rica, directed by Hernán Jiménez. After living 10 years in New York, 30-year-old Antonio returns to San José where he is forced to deal with the realities he ran away from.

Oct. 19, at 7 p.m., “The Second Mother (Que horas ela volta?)” Brazil, directed by Anna Muylaert (In Portuguese with English subtitles). Val is perfectly content to take care of every one of her wealthy employers' needs, from cooking and cleaning to being a surrogate mother to their teenage son, but when Val's estranged daughter Jessica suddenly shows up, the unspoken but intrinsic class barriers that exist within the home are thrown into disarray.

Oct. 26, 11 a.m., “Who is Dayani Cristal? (¿Quién es Dayani Cristal?)” Mexico, directed by Marc Silver.  Deep in the sun-blistered Sonora desert, Arizona border police discover a decomposing male body with a tattoo that reads “Dayani Cristal.” Who is this person? What brought him here? How did he die? And who-or what-is Dayani Cristal? Following a team of dedicated forensic anthropologists from the Pima County Morgue in Arizona, director Marc Silver seeks to answer these questions and give this anonymous man an identity.

The festival is sponsored by the HCC LISA Club (Latino International Student Association), the HCC Languages Studies program and the Spanish Film Club by Pragda.

For more information, contact Gutierrez at rgutierrez@hcc.edu.