OBLIVION
dir. Heddy Honigmann, 2008
Peru, 93 min
In Spanish w/ English subtitles

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7 – 10 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 12 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16 – 10 PM

OBLIVION focuses on Peru’s capital city of Lima, revealing its startling contrasts of wealth and poverty, and how many of its poorest citizens have survived decades of economic crisis, terrorism and government violence, denial of workers’ rights, and political corruption. Demonstrating anew Honigmann’s extraordinary talent as one of the most empathetic of documentary filmmakers, OBLIVION provides intimate and moving portraits of street musicians, singers, vendors, shoeshine boys, and the gymnasts (some mere children) and jugglers who perform at traffic stops.

The film also visits with small business owners, from a leather-goods repairman and a presidential sash manufacturer to a frog-juice vendor, and contrasts the work and home environments of bartenders, waiters and waitresses employed at Lima’s finest restaurants and hotels but who live in slums in the city’s surrounding hillsides. For most viewers, who are reminded of Peru only by news reports of a major earthquake, a presidential election or the discovery of a decades-old mass grave of army massacre victims, OBLIVION introduces us to the everyday reality of Lima, celebrating a people who, albeit politically powerless, have resisted being consigned to oblivion.