Guillermo Calderon
Cinema Pacific is hosting Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderon, who on April 24 will accompany both the film whose screenplay he co-wrote Violeta Went to Heaven and a staged reading of his play Villa. In Villa (2011), three young women debate the future of the site of a former villa turned into a torture barracks by the military dictatorship. Originally performed inside the infamous Villa Grimaldi, this “spare, intense” play by one of Chilean theatre’s fiercest new literary voices grapples with the legacy of atrocity using “stark lyricism and dreamlike imagery” (LA Times). The staged reading will be performed by Portland actors Rebecca Lingafelter, Cristi Miles, & Dana Millican
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Guillermo Calderon is Chile’s foremost contemporary theatre artist. His productions have toured extensively through South America and Europe. Festival stops have included Buenos Aires International Theatre Festival, Chekhov Festival (Russia), Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Festival d ́Automne (France), The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival, and many more. His co-written screenplay Violeta won the World Cinema Jury Prize for Drama at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and the International Federation of Film Critics Prize for Best Film at the 2012 Guadalajara Mexican Film Festival. Calderón’s awards include Best Play of the Year (Art Critics Circle of Chile), three Chilean Altazor Awards for Best Playwright and Best Director, and 2010 Bank of Scotland Angel Award (Edinburgh Fringe Festival). He is currently working on a commission from the Royal Court Theater.
Calderon will join in conversation with UO faculty after both the play and the film. The faculty discussants include Juan Eduardo Wolf, School of Music, Tamara Spira, Women and Gender Studies, and Amalia Gladhart, Romance Studies.
Cosponsored with Boom Arts and UO Department of Theatre Arts.
Villa a live performance
April 24 at 3:30 p.m., Bijou
April 24, 6:45 p.m., Bijou
Maite Alberdi
Director Maite Alberdi is part of a lively community of young, independent Chilean documentary filmmakers, many of whom are women. Early on she developed a distinct style as filmmaker, portraying intimate worlds in an unobtrusive manner. Her short fictional film ‘Las Peluqueras’ (The Hairdressers) (2007) was awarded on TVE with the Casa de America prize for the best Latin American short film. In The Lifeguard, she provides no commentary or fanciful editing in illustrating the life of Maurcio. Her film is composed entirely of elegantly radiant cinematography and subtle cuts that reveal the complicated social system on the Chilean beach. Alberdi allows viewers to decipher the relationships and consider, if they wish, larger allegorical implications of the lifeguards’ displays of authority and masculinity.
Alberdi will participate in a live Skype Q&A with the Eugene audience.
April 27, 4:00 p.m., Bijou