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April 2021
On-Line Albuquerque Premiere: Conjunto Blues
7 pm (MST)
The premiere performance will be on our Foundation YouTube page HERE
This performance, the Albuquerque premiere of Valdez’ critically acclaimed work, is made possible through the generous sponsorship of AARP.
In Conjunto Blues, playwright, actor, and musician Nicolás Valdez explores the social and historical conditions that led to the development of conjunto music as an expression of cultural resistance and liberation. Centering on Valdez’ personal experience growing up in the conjunto music scene, the work is loosely based on his relationship with his grandfather, also an aficionado of the music. Audiences are taken through a shifting landscape of memory and reflection that is highlighted throughout by traditional music performed live by Valdez and accompanied by musicians Luis Gonzalez on bajo sexto (12-string Mexican guitar), Sarah Rocha on tololoche (upright bass), and Joaquin Abrego on batería (drums). With a cast of colorfully poignant characters, Conjunto Blues is a deeply personal performance for viewers of all ages and backgrounds, and one that is sure to entertain as well as educate.
Film: Del corto al largo (y viceversa), Antonio Muñoz Molina, el oficio del escritor
12 pm (MST)
Available for 48 hours
Instituto Cervantes Vimeo Channel HERE
Antonio Muñoz Molina, el oficio del escritor, a documentary produced by María del Puy Alvarado and directed by Álvaro Giménez Sarmiento, is a richly revealing portrait of Andalusian writer and professor Antonio Muñoz Molina. One of the great figures of contemporary literature and a former director of Instituto Cervantes’ New York office, Muñoz Molina has divided his time between Madrid and New York for many years.
2014; Spanish with English subtitles; 60 minutes; not rated.
Free community event
May 2021
Workshop: Conjunto Blues
2 pm (MST)
Live via Zoom with suggested donation. Click here to donate. You may also email marmijo@nhccfoundation.org to register for any of these events. We will send you the link to the performance.
Nicolás Valdez will present an hour-long workshop and discussion live from his home, revolving around specific themes drawn from pre-recorded interviews and historical documentary footage that he has compiled. This workshop will explore the complexity of conjunto music’s origins and evolution and its long-term impacts on the Mexican-American community, delving into topics including conjunto’s campesino origins, its stylistic evolutions, women and the recording industry, and pachucos and the nightlife, and including ethnographic interviews with prominent figures in the conjunto music scene. The crux of the conversation will be the way in which the evolution of conjunto music parallels that of the Mexican-American identity.
AARP Brain Health Webinar: Conjunto Blues
2 pm (MST)
Live via Zoom with suggested donation. Click here to donate. You may also email marmijo@nhccfoundation.org to register for any of these events. We will send you the link to the performance.
Conjunto Blues, performance sponsor, AARP will offer a live webinar on brain health and the arts, including the intrinsic connection between music and memory, the lasting effects of music on the brain, and tools to assist in boosting brain health and wellness.
Film: Zonazine documental, El cuarto reino: El reino de los plásticos
12 pm (MST)
Available for 48 hours
Instituto Cervantes Vimeo Channel HERE
El cuarto reino: El reino de los plásticos, by Adán Aliaga and Álex Lora, is set in a can collection and recycling center in a New York City neighborhood. At “Sure We Can,” founded by Basque nun Ana Martínez, homeless people can come to exchange recyclables that they have collected for a few dollars. Through René, an undocumented worker from Mexico who works and sleeps at the center, and the relationships he establishes with his peers, we explore the daily life of this “kingdom of plastics,” and a community that, in the face of its disillusionment with the American dream, transcends this reality to turn “el cuarto reino” into a sometimes surreal planet of its own.
Spain; 2019; Spanish with English subtitles; 82 minutes; rated G.
Free community event
Film: Zonazine documental, Para la guerra
12 pm (MST)
Available for 48 hours
Instituto Cervantes Vimeo Channel HERE
Francisco Marise’s Para la guerra explores the combat memories of “Mandarria,” a former Cuban soldier who is searching for the comrades who served in his last command. As Mandarriagoes through a series of exercises from a military manual, the director’s observation of his body and his gestures offers insight into his memories, his solitary life, and the invisible wound he still carries with him, 30 years after his final mission.
Cuba/Spain/Argentina; 2018; Spanish with English subtitles; 65 minutes; not rated.
Free community event
Film: Zonazine documental, Baracoa
12 pm (MST)
Available for 48 hours
Instituto Cervantes Vimeo Channel HERE
Baracoa, by Pablo Briones and The Moving Picture Boys (Sean Clark and Jace Freeman), documents the lifelong friendship between nine-year-old Leonel and thirteen-year-old Antúan, two boys who live in Pueblo Textil, a small village in the Cuban countryside. During the hot summer holidays, the boys explore the isolated areas surrounding the town, bonding through games, fights, and simple pleasures, as well as conversations about everyday life and existential questions. But just as Cuban society is going through a transitional period, Antúan is moving to Havana at the end of the summer, and this vacation may be their last together. As his older friend is drawn to the busy life of the city, Leonel is forced to examine his own place in the world.
Colombia/Switzerland/U.S./Cuba; 2019; Spanish with English subtitles; 90 minutes; not rated.
Free community event
Film: Zonazine documental, Una corriente salvaje
12 pm (MST)
Available for 48 hours
Instituto Cervantes Vimeo Channel HERE
Una corriente salvaje, Nuria Ibañez’ third feature film, explores the daily lives and the burgeoning relationship of two men who have chosen to live on an isolated beach in Baja California, Mexico, leaving their separate pasts behind, living off the grid, and fishing to survive. Alone with only the sand and water for company, Omar and Chilo become unlikely friends as they harvest food from the ocean, share meals together, and talk late into the night in this “delightfully intimate and beautifully realized portrait of male companionship.”
Mexico; 2018; Spanish with English subtitles; 72 minutes; not rated.
Free community event
June 2021
Film: Berlanga cumple cien años, Esa pareja feliz
12 pm (MST)
Available for 48 hours
Instituto Cervantes Vimeo Channel HERE
Set in Madrid in the 1950s, Esa pareja feliz is the feature film debut by Luis García Berlanga and Juan Antonio Bardem. Underlying the 1951 comedy, heavily influenced by Italian neorealism, is a critical look at the incipient consumerism that was beginning to infiltrate the society of the day. A young couple, searching for ways to improve their lot in life, win a contest sponsored by the Florit soap company and receive the gifts and invitations awarded to the “happy couple” for 24 hours, before they must return to their everyday reality.
Spain; 1951; Spanish with English subtitles; 102 minutes; rated PG.
Free community event
Film: Berlanga cumple cien años, Calabuch
12 pm (MST)
Available for 48 hours
Instituto Cervantes Vimeo Channel HERE
An illustrious American rocket scientist, wearied of working on atomic bombs and increasingly concerned about their destructive potential, flees the country to find refuge in Calabuch, a small village on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, in Berlanga’s 1956 film of the same name. First taken for a smuggler’s accomplice and then for a kindly tramp, he soon blends into the everyday life of the community, but when he helps his neighbors win a fireworks competition, the international authorities discover his whereabouts.
Spain/Italy; 1956; Spanish with English subtitles; 92 minutes; not rated.
Free community event