FAUNA
dir. Nicolás Pereda, 2020
70 mins. Mexico.
In Spanish with English subtitles

FRIDAY, JULY 1 - 10 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 10 - 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 14 - 10 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 23 - 7PM with remote Q+A with Lázaro Gabino Rodriguez
(This event is $10.)

In a run-down Mexican mining town, Luisa brings her boyfriend Paco home to meet her family including her brother (Lázaro Gabino Rodriguez) and mother (Teresa Sanchez). Luisa and Paco are both actors, and the visit grows increasingly (and hilariously) awkward as Luisa’s father becomes fascinated by Paco’s minor role in a big television show. FAUNA's exploration of performance deepens as the film reinvents itself halfway through, recasting Lázaro Rodriguez  as the protagonist of a mystery plot set in a nearby roadside motel. Scenes and characters begin to repeat and revise each other’s earlier incarnations, with each actor taking on new roles.

screening with

MY SKIN, LUMINOUS
(MI PIEL, LUMINOSA)
dirs. Lázaro Rodriguez and Nicolás Pereda. 2019
Mexico, 40 minutes
In Spanish with English subtitles

Originally commissioned by the Mexican Ministry of Education, Nicolás Pereda and Gabino Rodríguez’s hypnotically mysterious, hybrid object unravels and metamorphoses within the walls of a school. This oneiric journey from light to darkness is a gorgeously abstracted tale of childhood and healing. Having lost the pigment in his skin, Matias, an infirm orphan at a Michoacán primary school, has been quarantined from his classmates. Meanwhile, the presence and words of novelist Mario Bellatin offer the prospect of healing to his ailing body.