By Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, Associate Professor and Celinés Villalba-Rosado, Associate Professor, Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, UConn ECE Spanish Faculty Coordinators
On May 22, UConn ECE Spanish hosted our first event on the Storrs campus. More than 50 students from four high schools participated in the first ever UConn ECE Spanish Film Fest. The event was organized for students and teachers to come to campus, watch a selection of short films, have a conversation with the directors of those shorts, and have the opportunity to interact with students from other high schools in Connecticut.
The UConn ECE Executive Director, Christopher Todd, welcomed students from the following high schools and their instructors: East Lyme High School (Jessica Garcia), John F. Kennedy High School (Catalina Rincon), Lewis S. Mills High School (Pamela Thomas), and E.O. Smith High School (Amy Nocton). Chris emphasized the importance of this event in UConn ECE Spanish’s history. Event organizers Celinés Villalba-Rosado and Eduardo Urios-Aparisi gave an overview of the line-up of event activities and thanked not only the students for their participation but also film producer Ivonne Cotorruelo-Perez. She curated the films and moderated the post-screening conversation with the directors.
The four films were made by Caribbean directors and had a connection to the present situation in the Caribbean and the USA. We started by watching Ana y la distancia, (Cuba, 2024), directed by Hansel Porras García. It is an emotional short about a Cuban woman who lives in Florida and struggles with anxiety as her son is trying to join her in Florida by taking the dangerous route from Nicaragua to the US border. DEPEYIZE, (República Dominicana, 2024) is a short directed by Pamela Bencosme about a young Haitian boy whose mother is taken back to Haiti by migration police and, alone, he is adopted by a family of poor fishermen in the area. Mano Santa (Puerto Rican, 2020) is a short directed by Stephanie Camacho, that focuses on a gay man who escapes from his father and homophobic prejudices and takes refuge with his grandfather, a man who lives in the mountains in the interior of Puerto Rico and who practices non-conventional medicine. The final short, Parole (Cuba-USA, 2024), is a documentary that tells two stories: the life of the director, Lázaro González, in San Francisco and Berkeley, California and the voice messages his mother and sister leave him in his phone. The film shows the contrast between the life of the director in the US and that of his family in Cuba.
The students noted questions in their handout after each short. The discussion that ensued exceeded our expectations. One by one, students came to the podium and asked the four directors very relevant and meaningful questions about the films. Some students from the Dominican Republic were particularly affected by Pamela Bencosme’s DEPEYIZE since they had lived or knew people in a similar situation. They asked about unusual elements like the repeated presence of a canary in a cage in the film Ana y la distancia. They wanted to know whether Lázaro González was finally able to meet his family. They also asked about the use of the camera in Parole and its connection with the other Cuban short, Ana y la distancia. They wondered about the presence of music and its narrative role in Mano Santa. The conversation was lively, and we felt it could have continued when we had to break for lunch.
While we were having lunch, we asked students to write down which was their favorite short and why and then to ask students from another school about their favorite film. The hall immediately came alive with young people talking amongst each other, discussing, and interacting, sharing their own tastes and interests. This was the perfect ending for the activity which was meant to engage, discuss, and learn from each other by reflecting on what movies allow us to experience.
The beauty of a short film is the capacity to create poetry and narratives with very few images, and the students showed great sensitivity towards the beautiful images, the characters, the glimpse into their lives, and demonstrated an interest in getting to know more about what happened to the people in the stories. We often have the need to continue the story with our imagination. Short movies are perfect tools to learn about language, culture, and storytelling.
The event was an excellent conclusion to a very successful year. We had a large number of certified teachers. By all accounts, the workshop by Dr. Dolores Juan-Moreno (Clark University) was excellent and we awarded the first UConn ECE Spanish language award to Sophia D’Angelo from Lyme-Old Lyme High School. We look forward to next year’s event.