CHAC: DIOS DE LA LLUVIA
(CHAC: THE RAIN GOD)
dir. Rolando Klein, 1975
95 min. Mexico.
In Tzeltal & Spanish with English subtitles.

MONDAY, MAY 8 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 12 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 18 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 30 – 7:30 PM

After their shaman turns to liquor and they experience a sustained drought, a village is forced to rely on a mountain-dwelling diviner to keep them from starvation. The sole directorial effort by Chilean filmmaker Rolando Klein takes as much inspiration from the Mayan creation story documented in the Popul Vuh, as it does from real-life. The surreal blend of ethno-fiction reveals a perspective on life rooted in otherworldly logic. Although Klein would not direct again, CHAC endures as a unique calling-card from another world.

“Chac” is a relic of its mid-’70s period. The film operates with the spare-but-exaggerated flourishes of Bertolucci, Polanski, Herzog and Kubrick, protracting minimalism until it alludes to opulence. But the film is not an artistic study in atmospherics, nor is it an interrogative piece of anthropological bricolage. “Chac’s” simplicity has the mythological matter-of-factness of a fable, blessed with something celestial.”
— Wesley Morris, San Francisco Examiner