Guatemalan Poet-Filmmakers

A righteous celebration of the history-making initiatives by our own Alex Mejia to restore crucial films with the Cinemateca Nacional in Guatemala City! Tonight he guides us on a ultra-rare journey through the region’s radical cinema underground, where poets picked up cameras and filmmakers found their voices in verse...from a forgotten ‘40s doc capturing Indigenous political mobilizations for Jacobo Arbenz, through national poet Otto René Castillo’s experimental collaborations in West Berlin exile, to militant writer Eduardo Labarca’s fierce reflections on art and armed struggle. The program showcases the recently digitized Al Cabo del Tiempo (scanned right here at SF State!), in which the radical Taller de Cine collective grapples with defeat through a critical poet’s lens. We’ll witness Anais Taracena’s lyrical video with Indigenous author Rosa Chávez, building toward our centerpiece: Javier Briones’ (in person) sublime meditation on historical memory, told through Maya Achi voices and the ancestral lands that hold their stories. Five films..Decades of resistance..Traditions of political fury becoming cinematic poetry. Tamales de chipilín too! $11