Indie film series continues
For as little as $2.50 with a student ID, or $5 without one, you can watch award-winning independent films at Thursday at the Theatre, sponsored by the AWC Foundation, in Yuma's Historic Art Theatre on Main Street.
The evening event begins at 7 p.m. The doors open at 6:30 pm so that film viewers will have time to purchase $2 bags of popcorn, $2 sodas and find a good seat. Before the feature film, AWC Professor Michael Miller gives an introduction and any disclaimers, and an award-winning short film is shown.
After both films, interested viewers are welcome to stay and join Professor Miller's film class to discuss and critique the films.
The following are the Fall 2013 films along with a synopsis of each:
August 22, 2013 -- Clandestine Childhood (Argentina, Spain, Brazil | 2011 | Drama | Spanish w/ English subtitles | 112 minutes). Argentina, 1979. After years of exile, Juan (12) and his family come back to Argentina under fake identities. Juan's parents and his uncle Beto are members of the Montoneros Organization, which is fighting against the Military Junta that rules the country. Because of their political activities they are being tracked down relentlessly, and the threat of capture and even death is constant. However, Juan's daily life is also full of warmth and humor, and he quickly and easily integrates into his new environment. His friends at school and the girl he has a gigantic crush on, Maria, know him as Ernesto, a name he must not forget, since his family's survival is at stake. Juan accepts this and follows all of his parents' rules until one day he is told that they need to move again immediately, and leave his friends and Maria behind without an explanation. This is a story about militancy, undercover life and love. The story of a clandestine childhood.
September 5, 2013 -- Lucky (South Africa | 2011 | Drama | Zulu, Hindi & English w/ English subtitles | 100 minutes). How could a recently orphaned, 10-year old homeless South African boy ever be called Lucky? Over the grave of his dead mother, Lucky makes a promise to make something of himself. Leaving the security of his remote Zulu village for the big city with the hope of going to school, he arrives on the doorstep of an uncle who has no use for him. Lucky then falls in with Padma, an elderly Indian woman with an inherent fear of Africans, who takes him in as she would a stray dog. Together, unable to speak each other's language, they develop an unlikely bond. Through an odyssey marked by greed, violence and ultimately belonging, Lucky shows how a child's spirit can bring out decency, humility and even love in adults struggling to survive in the new South Africa.
October 3, 2013 -- Shun Li and the Poet (Italy | 2011 | Drama | Italian & Mandarin w/ English subtitles | 100 minutes). Shun Li works in a textile factory near Rome, slowly paying off the broker that brought her from China to Italy, while saving money so she can bring her young son to join her. She is suddenly transferred to work as a bartender at a pub in a small town along the Venetian Lagoon. The pub is the hangout of the local fishermen, including Bepi, a handsome old Slav immigrant nicknamed "The Poet." A tender, delicate friendship grows between Shun Li and Bepi. But gossip soon threatens their innocent relationship, a bond that had once transcended two very different, yet not at all distant cultures.
November 7, 2013 -- La Sirga (Columbia, France, Mexico | 2012 | Drama | Spanish w/ English subtitles | 88 minutes). Alicia is helpless. War memories invade her mind like threatening thunder. Uprooted by the armed conflict, she tries to reshape her life in La Sirga, a dilapidated hostel on the shores of a great lake in the highlands of the Andes. There, on a swampy and murky beach, she will try to settle down until her fears and the threat of war resurface again.
December 5, 2013 -- Aliyah (France | 2012 | Drama | French w/ English subtitles | 90 minutes) Alex, 27, lives in a working-class Paris neighborhood and sells drugs for a living, continuously paying off the debts of his brother Isaac (played by French auteur Cedric Kahn), who's becoming a real burden. When his cousin, who has just returned from completing his military service in Israel, tells him he's opening a restaurant in Tel Aviv, Alex thinks that joining him might be the life-changing opportunity he was waiting for. But in order to leave, Alex must quickly find enough money and accomplish his "aliyah" (the term for Jews immigrating to Israel), which involves, among other things, Hebrew lessons and connecting with his Jewish roots. He also has to leave behind his beloved city of Paris, his former lover Esther, his lifelong friend Mathias, and Jeanne, a woman whom he's just met but has the potential of becoming someone important in his life. Torn between making his aliyah, his drug selling, his complicated love life and a destructive brother, Alex will have to find his own way and make a final decision.
