Film series focuses on Mexican avant-garde

Film series focuses on Mexican avant-garde

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

A four-part program titled ”Remains of Mexico” will feature discussions and screenings of Mexican avant-garde and experimental films April 26-28.

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The event is a personal curatorial project by Tarek Elhaik, visiting professor of anthropology.

The first program is titled ”Eroticizing Mexico: Eisenstein’s Theories of Gender.” Presented by Masha Salaskina of Colgate University, it will address erotic imagery in Sergei Eisenstein’s unfinished film ”Que Viva Mexico!” It will be held at 12:15 p.m. April 26 in Sewall Hall 570.

The second program is an evening with established documentary filmmaker Jesse Lerner of Claremont College. He will screen two short works, ”T.S.H.” and ”Magnavox.” Both deal with aspects of the Mexican avant-garde in the first part of the 20th Century. It begins at 8 p.m. April 27 at the Rice Cinema.

There will be two programs the following day. The first, ”Lost and Found Portraits of Ricardo Nicolayeski,” is a film shot by the Mexico City-based artist during the early 1980s on the New York City gay scene. The Maya Deren- and Andy Warhol-inspired super 8mm work has been in a vault for 20 years. It screens at 7 p.m. April 28 at the Rice Cinema.

The final program is a screening of the award-winning documentary film ”Maquilapolis: City of Factories” by Vicky Funary and Sergio de la Torre. The 2006 work explores the daily lives of women who work in Tijuana’s maquiladores (assembly plants), and reflects on the state of the factory economy and culture on the Mexico-U.S. border. It screens at 9 p.m. April 28 at the Rice Cinema.

The program is sponsored by the Houston Institute of Hispanic Culture, Rice’s Departments of Hispanic studies and anthropology.