2 pm to 4 pm
The National Hispanic Cultural Center presents an afternoon talk, screenings, and book signing of “Hidden Chicano Cinema: Film Dramas in the Borderlands.” by A. Gabriel Meléndez the Distinguished Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. He has authored books on borderlands literature and film, serves on the board of the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project and is a general editor for the Pasó por aquí Series at UNM Press. He has been a Fulbright Teaching Fellow at Eszterházy Károly College, Eger, Hungary.
The event will examine how New Mexico, situated within the boundaries of the United States, became a stand-in for the exotic non-western world that tourists, artists, scientists, and others sought to possess at the dawn of early filmmaking, a disposition stretching from the silent era to today as filmmakers screen their fantasies of what they wished the Southwest Borderlands to be. The highlighted “film moments” in the region’s history including the “filmic turn” ushered in by Chicano/a filmmakers who created new ways to represent their community and region.
Free event
