The Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University
Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de … Read more
Title: LA PRISION INSOMNE Description: This documentary gives the viewer the unfortunate important facets of life and the controversial work of the poet Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés, Plácido, during the first half of the turbulent and contradictory colonial nineteenth … Read more
Title: EL HOMBRE ILLUSTRANDO Description: Manuel Mendive is known as one of the most important contemporary Cuban painters. Medive was born in 1944 in Havana, Cuba. Mendive integrates materials such as paint, fabric, and shells to create costumes, and decorate … Read more
Title: BETTY & PANCHO Description: A portrait of the 50 year marriage of Elizabeth Catlett, the renowned African American sculptor, and the Mexican painter, Francisco Mora. Now in their eighties, the couple share the same studio in Cuernavaca, and exhibit … Read more
Description: Los 50 Vividos offers insight into the intellectual and cultural side of Cuba. The Union de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC) or the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba was founded by Nicolas Guillen, the national poet … Read more
Description: This documentary combines social commentary with surrealism to explore the Cuban soul. The filmmakers take the viewer on a trip through the heart of twenty-first-century Cuba, making stops in Pinar del Río, los Acuáticos, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, and Guaraabuya. In … Read more
Description: "Builders of Images" This program explores the arts throughout the Americas, celebrating the extraordinary creative ferment that has attracted global acclaim and given rise to a distinct and increasingly influential Latin American and Caribbean artistic voice. Copies: 1 (VHS) … Read more
Description: Part I is a documentary dealing with the art of the Mexican revolution as a political movement and a revolution in art. Text by Octavio Paz. Part II examines these monumental creations not only for their great aesthetic value, … Read more
Description: This is a documentary allows the viewer a glimpse into a Brazilian art symposium which celebrates the art and poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. The symposium occurs in Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais. Literary discussions and some presentation material included. … Read more
Description: An impressionistic journey through the music of Cuba, Spain and Mexico from pre-Columbian times to the present, on the occasion of the Fifth Centenary of the Conquest. Copies: 2 (DVD and VHS) Length: 111 minutes
Description: A period musical, based on the novel The Song of Rachel by Miguel Barnet, the film concerns a young woman who uses everyone to attain her dream of being a singer at the Alhambra, Cuba’s top burlesque theatre in … Read more
Description: This docudrama about the life and art of the Brazilian artist Arthur Bispo do Rosário takes the artist’s imagination as its viewpoint. Bispo spent 50 years in a psychiatric hospital in Rio and his art was almost completely unknown … Read more
Description: The acclaimed performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña directs himself in this video focusing on issues of cross-culturalism along the U.S.-Mexico border. In his performance he switches in and out of various characters reflecting different aspects of border culture. Copies: 1 … Read more
Description: The Buenavista Base was produced in 1994 at Duke University Museum of Art for the exhibit Painting the Maya Universe. Dorie Reents Budent, curator of the exhibit and curator at DUMA explains in this video the importance of this … Read more
Description: Part of the series "Races and Expressions of the Yucatán" produced by the Autonomous University of the Yucatán. This film portrays Yucatan culture through the paintings of Fernando Castro Pacheco, the Yucatán’s most celebrated painter. Copies: 1(VHS) Length: 25 … Read more
Description: This video is part of a series that seeks to provide developmental and educational materials that engage the cultural heritage of Latin America. Los Colores de Rufino teaches about colors while exploring the work and words of Mexican artist … Read more
Description: This film documents the traveling performance of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco, in which they exhibit themselves as caged Amerindians from an imaginary island, providing a vivid and provocative interpretation of cultural encounters. Copies: 1 (DVD) Length: 30 minutes
Description: This short film explores the work of several Cuban artists who collaborate with Vígia Press, a unique publishing house in Matanzas which makes beautifully crafted books by hand. The interviewed artists discuss their imaginative modes of contemplating what constitutes … Read more
Description: The great Soviet filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein went to Mexico in 1929 to shoot the film Qué vive México using surrealist and muralist influence. The project was never finished. However this documentary film follows the work of Eisenstein including stills … Read more
Description: Patricia Amlin, the extraordinary animator who created Popol Vuh has taken authentic images from ancient Maya ceramics and turned them into a riveting retelling of the Maya creation myth. The story tells how Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca create heaven and … Read more
Description: A collection of four short films by Venezuelan filmmaker Joseph Fabry. The first, "Tres Encuentros del Arte Hispanoamericano" (30 min.), explores the broader contours of Latin American art by examining three specific forms: the spiritual architecture of Andean Peru, … Read more
Description: “An artist must be the conscience of his age.” In this way Diego Rivera, a leader of the Mexican mural renaissance movement of the 1920’s and 1030’s expressed the philosophy behind his work; in particular the spectacular series of … Read more
Description: Visually depicts the life of Frida Kahlo through her own paintings and the surroundings of her home in Coyoacán, Mexico City. Copies: 2 (DVD and VHS) Length: 16 minutes
Description: A documentary about Frida Kahlo’s painful life and creative process. Part of the series “Portraits of an Artist.” Copies: 1 (DVD) Length: 62 minutes
Description: On her deathbed artist Frida Kahlo (played by Ofelia Medina) conjures up images and memories of her life as a painter, revolutionary and woman of the world. Her stormy relationship with muralist Diego Rivera, her tender hospitality for exiled … Read more
Description: Part I-Documents religious paintings in the Merced Iglesia, a colonial church in Antigua. Part II-Documents retablos in the Merced Iglesia. Part III-Documents the rich history of the church of Santo Domingo and the feast of the patron in San … Read more
Description: Based on the research of Felipe Vázquez Palacios and his team in the state of Veracruz. This documentary depicts the daily life of those whom society considers to be old. The testimonies of these men and women teach us … Read more
Description: This Masterpiece Series provides a triple treat – a close-up look at the lives and works of the worlds most famous artists plus three art lessons that focus on the style of each. These lessons reinforce the techniques and … Read more
Description: Breaking new ground in the world of Cuban art, this is the first documentary to focus exclusively on the art and artists from Cuba’s easternmost region: Oriente. This film takes the viewer on an insightful journey where one will … Read more
Description: Released in 1917, this silent film focuses on the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico. Lupita, a young woman in Mexico is concerned about her fiancée’s trip to Europe because of the war. The woman asks for … Read more
Description: Several Maya women in the Highland community of Comalapa share their insights into the art of weaving and its place and importance in their lives. Directed by Julia Kellman and Phil Miller and filmed on location in Guatemala and … Read more
Description: Made by Lourdes Portillo and Susana Muñoz. The very young, the old, and the deceased are all represented in this personal and affectionate filmmaker’s relationship to the history, and present-day celebrations of the Day of the Dead. Copies: 2 … Read more
Description: Photographer-filmmaker Susan Meiselas returns to Nicaragua to find out what happened to the people she photographed years earlier at the height of the civil war. Meiselas and her collaborators capture the shattered lives and broken dreams of people on … Read more
Description: Sergei Eisenstein’s lost masterpiece documents the history of Mexico and its people. With sequences devoted to the Edenic land of Tehuantepec, the savage majesty of the bullfight, the struggles of the noble peon and the hypnotic imagery of the … Read more
Description: Every November the Mexican people clean and decorate the graves of their loved ones, set beautiful tables or altars in which they place offerings so the visiting dead enjoy them. Experience these and other ancestral rituals of the Day … Read more