History Through Cinema

Queen Isabella of Castile makes a retrospective of what her life has been like. Of the political and social achievements that she achieved, as well as her struggle against the loneliness she endured. Isabella knew the obligations she had and was always severe and responsible with them, she supported the initiatives of Christopher Columbus, signed important political treaties and married Fernando the Catholic, with whom she had a family life full of misfortunes, such as the death of two children and her daughter´s madness.
Isabel Ordaz is the only performer of this unusual film and the weight of the plot falls on her. The script carefully examines every part of the life of the queen and the feelings of the queen, a woman advanced for her time. Rafael Gordon directs a film which is emotional and disturbing.

Country: Spain 2000
Director & Writer: Rafael Gordon

Wed. March 27th @6pm

At the turn of the 16th century, after the death of Isabella I of Castille (Isabel la Católica) there are times of uncertainty in which power struggles between Ferdinand II of Aragon (Fernando el Católico) and Philip I of Castille (Felipe el Hermoso) whose main victim was Joanna of Castille (Juana la Loca), daughter of Isabel and legitimate heir to the throne of Castile.

Country: Spain 2016
Director: Jordi Frades
Writer: José Luis Martín

Wed. April 10th @6pm

The film narrates the imposition of the Spaniards with their new customs and regigion on the natives of Mexico, dominating them and eventually leading to the conquest of their culture and spiritual lives.

Country: Mexico 1998/2008
Director & Writer: Salvador Carrasco

Wed. April 24th @6pm

Spain 17th century. Diego Alatriste, brave and heroic soldier, is fighting under his King’s army in the Flandes region. His best mate, Balboa, falls in a trap and near death asks of Diego, as his last desire, to looking after his son Inigo and raise him as a soldier. Alatriste has to return to Madrid.

Country: Spain 2006
Director: Agustín Díaz Yanes
Writer: Agustín Díaz Yanes (Novela: Arturo Pérez- Reverte)

Wed. May 8th @6pm

Little is known of the childhood and youth of the great 19th-century Cuban liberator, José Martí. This robust biopic imagines his early years. The son of a magistrate, the precocious Martí — “Pepe” to family and friends — takes an early interest in justice. Gradually he enters the nascent independence movement and, not yet 18, is arrested for sedition. Respectful, yet not worshipful, this is a portrait of the revolutionary as a young man, and a stirring historical drama besides.

Country: Cuba 2010
Director & Writer: Fernado Pérez Valdés

Wed. May 22th @6pm

The story starts in 1880, near the date when the remains of the deceased José de San Martín were moved to Buenos Aires. A veteran of the Army of the Andes gets an interview for the event, and the narration continues mostly through a flashback. The telling of the events does not follow the complete biography of San Martín, focusing instead in the Crossing of the Andes and the later Battle of Chacabuco.

Country: Argentina 2010
Director Leandro Ipiña
Writer: Leandro Ipiña, Andrés Maino

Wed. June 12th @6pm

Francisco Goya (1746-1828), deaf and ill, lives the last years of his life in voluntary exile in Bordeaux, a Liberal protesting the oppressive rule of Ferdinand VII. He’s living with his much younger wife Leocadia and their daughter Rosario. He continues to paint at night, and in flashbacks stirred by conversations with his daughter, by awful headaches, and by the befuddlement of age, he relives key times in his life, particularly his relationship with the Duchess of Alba, his discovery of how he wanted to paint (insight provided by Velázquez’s work), and his lifelong celebration of the imagination. Throughout, his reveries become tableaux of his paintings.

Country: Spain 1999
Director: Carlos Saura
Writer: Carlos Saura, Luigi Scattini

Wed. June 26th @6pm

Simon Bolivar fought over 100 battles against the Spanish Empire in South America. He rode over 70,000 miles on horseback. His military campaigns covered twice the territory of Alexander the Great. His army never conquered – it liberated.

Country: Venezuela 2013
Director: Alberto Arvelo
Writer: Timothy J. Sexton

Wed. July 10th @6pm

A soldiers trapped inside a church as last refugee. A fight that no one couldn’t win. A war that no one wanted to lose.

Country: Spain 2016
Director: Salvador Calvo
Writer: Alejandro Hernández

Wed. July 24th @6pm

The story takes place in Bogotá in the days leading up to April 9th, 1948, a day in history known as ¨El Bogotazo.¨  Roa is an example of a classical superstitious man that leaves everything to chance, a poor man without a stable job but with a family to feed. Tired of looking for work and convinced that he was born for big things, he visits his idol Eliecer Gaitan to ask for work.

Country: Colombia 2013
Director: Andrés Baiz
Writer: Andrés Baiz, Patricia Castañeda

Wed. August 14th @6pm

The true story of an Argentine family who lived with Josef Mengele without knowing his true identity, and of a girl who fell in love with one of the biggest criminals of all time.

Country: Argentina 2013
Director & Writer: Lucía Puenzo

Wed. August 28th @6pm

The last 7 hours of former President of Chile Salvador Allende, and his closest collaborators inside the Palace of La Moneda, during the brutal military coup d’etat on Sept. 11, 1973, the day democracy in Chile ended. Based on true events.

Country: Chile 2014
Director & Writer: Miguel Littin

Wed. September 11th @6pm

A young boy, in an effort to have a normal childhood in 1980’s El Salvador, is caught up in a dramatic fight for his life as he desperately tries to avoid the war which is raging all around him.

Countries: Mexico, Puerto Rico, USA 2004
Director: Luis Mandoki
Writer: Luis Mandoki, Oscar Orlando Torres

Wed. September 25th @6pm

“La Vida Loca” reflects a depressing and hopeless reality. The documentary, by photojournalist and filmmaker Christian Poveda, follows some of the members of “la dieciocho”, the so-called 18th Street gang in a poor San Salvador neighborhood.

Countries: Spain, EL Salvador, Mexico , France 2009
Director: Christian Poveda

Wed. October 9th @6pm

14 Kilometres, the distance separating Africa from Europe, is a road movie depicting the hardships and challenges some people undertake in order to reach their dream destination, where they believe they can find paradise.
The film follows the perilous journey of three characters across the Sahara to Morocco in order to cross the Straits of Gibraltar into Spain, as they attempt to reach the supposedly lavish lands of Europe where there is hope for the future. This trio consists of a young girl, Violet, who lives in a village in Mali, escaping her arranged marriage to an old man; Buba, a mechanic and a skillful footballer, and his older brother Mukela from the neighbouring Niger, who suggests that he go to Europe to try his skills there.

Countries: Spain 2007
Director & Writer: Gerardo Olivares

Wed. October 23th @6pm

As a director and his crew shoot a controversial film about Christopher Columbus in Cochabamba, Bolivia, local people rise up against plans to privatize the water supply.

Countries: Spain, Mexico, France 2010
Director: Icíar Bollaín
Writer: Paul Laverty

Wed. November 13th @6pm