Latest news with #ThirdHorizonFilmFestival
Axios
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Axios
Third Horizon Film Festival filmmaker spotlight: Natalia Lassalle-Morillo on reimagining "Antigone"
Among the nearly two-dozen films, shorts and documentaries included in the Third Horizon Film Festival programming is " En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy (Part I)," an experimental film by Puerto Rican artist and director Natalia Lassalle-Morillo. Why it matters: The film, a reimagination of the Greek myth of Antigone through the lens and perspective of the Puerto Rican diaspora living in New York City, is the only Puerto Rican film in this year's festival. The big picture: The idea for the film began in the midst and aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the 2017 Category 4 hurricane that caused catastrophic damage to the island. Lassalle-Morillo had left just one month prior to study in California. "It was very strange," she told Axios. "I wasn't living the embodied experience of what it's like to go through this catastrophe in person, but I was still living this different experience." Between the lines: Lassalle-Morillo was born and raised in Puerto Rico, but lived in New York as a young adult before moving to Miami, where she was "offered a very welcoming community of people and artists who were receptive to the ideas I was bringing that I didn't feel elsewhere." "I have a very intimate and profound connection to Miami," where she said she came to understand herself as a Caribbean person, not just a Puerto Rican. Zoom in: In the aftermath of the storm, Lassalle-Morillo began reading Greek mythology and the story of Antigone stuck with her. The play explored who had control of memory and who had the right to be remembered. It led her to think about what the tragedy would look like in the context of a post-Maria moment. What they're saying:"I wanted to reimagine this play as a portal to think about memory, about tragedy and moving beyond these cycles of tragedies," she said. "The impetus was to create a space for Puerto Ricans who have had to migrate, and those who have chosen not to, to come together and think and create together," she added. How it works: The five-woman cast (which includes Lassalle-Morillo) is made up of non-professional actors who reside in New York City. The women underwent acting classes and training to make the film; the final product is a record of that experience. "All of them chose a character in the play and rewrote it based on their experiences and desires," Lassalle-Morillo said. Zoom out: While the film is anchored in the Puerto Rican experience, Lassalle-Morillo says it's a film for "anyone who's had an experience of displacement and migration." She hopes viewers who aren't from Puerto Rico can still have a deep connection to the ideas and feelings expressed in the film. What's next: There's a Part II to this film in the works, Lassalle-Morillo said. She's working on developing it through a similar process — this time with four women in Puerto Rico. Eventually, the two groups will come together to present the play with a live audience. How to watch: The film is screening Saturday at the Koubek Center at 3:15pm, followed by a Q&A with Lassalle-Morillo.
Axios
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Axios
Third Horizon Film Festival pushes boundaries with Caribbean stories
For Jonathan Ali, the Third Horizon Film Festival is a platform — one that elevates "cutting-edge Caribbean cinema" and showcases the region, its politics and its diaspora. Why it matters: Since its inaugural year in 2016, Ali, the event's director of programming, said the festival has built a reputation for featuring works that push boundaries and wouldn't otherwise be shown in Miami. Driving the news: The festival's eighth edition begins Thursday night and runs through the weekend, with multiple daily screenings at the Koubek Center. The event's opening film, screening Thursday night at the Pérez Art Museum Miami and followed by an opening party, is "Koutkekout (At All Kosts)," a documentary from Haiti by director Joseph Hill. State of cinema: This year's festival is built around a retrospective of restored films, Ali explained, comprising four films that center themes of labor and workers' rights. "You Don't Get Freedom, You Take Freedom: Caribbean Activist Cinema 1978–1985," includes four films: three documentaries, featuring stories from Haiti, Jamaica and Suriname, and a fiction feature. What they're saying:"What they all have in common, in particular the three documentaries, is that they focus on the struggle of workers' rights, labor organizing and people's struggles against often-oppressive capitalistic systems of labor and work," Ali said. The fourth film, "West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (1979)," is part musical, part theatre, and examines nearly 400 years of colonialism in the Caribbean. That film will close out the festival with a Sunday night screening. In curating this year's lineup, the festival aimed to use cinema as a "socially and politically disruptive tool," though the event itself is not tied to any particular political moment, Ali said. "For us, as Caribbean and diaspora artists and curators, we have always believed in and championed the political possibility of art," whether that's sparking conversation or the imagination, he said. The region's "history of colonialism, exploitation and a longstanding process of resistance and resilience" is "reflected in the films we show and the art we platform," he added. What we're watching: This year's lineup also includes new and recent films, mostly documentaries, from different countries, free-to-attend panels with filmmakers and events around the city. Plus, this year's festival includes "something we've never really done before," said Ali: A multimedia live performance with "A Freedom Struggle: Looking for Lucrecia Pérez." The live performance, by Dominican artist and filmmaker Génesis Valenzuela, examines the "challenge of investigating the colonial wound" and how it presents currently in the body. (Valenzuela will participate in a Q&A after the performance.) The intrigue: The festival's organizers deliberately keep it short and intimate. Despite it lasting just a few days, there is no counterprogramming, meaning no films overlap in screen time. "We want people to be experiencing things together in solidarity and community," Ali said.
