Julieta Zylberberg stars in Diego Lerman’s film “The Invisible Eye.”

Celebrating the introduction of its Program in Latin American Studies, 乐播传媒 presents a festival of independent films set in Latin America in screenings Friday through Sunday, Oct. 11-13, in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

Titled Memories of the Present Past/Memorias del Pasado Presente, the series opens at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 11, with The Invisible Eye, an exploration of surveillance, repression and insurrection during the military regime in Argentina.

A scene from “Fat, Bald, Short Man,” a 2011 production in rotoscope by Colombian director Carlos Osuna.

Showing on Saturday, Oct. 12, are Fat, Bald, Short Man at 3 p.m. and The Prize at 7. Sunday’s films are The Finger at 3 p.m. and A Useful Life at 7. (Descriptions appear below.)

Admission is open to the public at no cost. The series is presented by the Latin American studies program, the 乐播传媒 College Museum of Art and the college’s George and Helen Ladd Library. For more information, please call 207-786-8212.

These five critically acclaimed films reflect on the contested memories of the past, the reverberations of state repression in everyday life and the restoration of democracy in the region.

They are drawn from the Global Lens series of international films. Created by the Global Film Initiative and regularly featured at 乐播传媒, Global Lens celebrates the artistry of independent and emerging filmmakers in countries outside the film industry mainstream.

A scene from the film “The Prize.”

Formalizing the college’s longstanding interest in Latin America, the new program enables 乐播传媒 to offer, for the first time, a formal major in the field. Geographically, the program encompasses Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Course offerings cover anthropology, economics, environmental studies, history, politics and Spanish.

“You can’t understand the United States without understanding Latin America, and you cannot understand Latin America without understanding the United States,” says film series co-coordinator Jennifer Adair, visiting assistant professor of history. A specialist in Latin American history, Adair organized Memories of the Present Past with Baltasar Fra-Molinero, professor of Spanish and of African American studies, and with staff at the art museum.

Politically, socially, economically and culturally, the Americas are connected in ways both apparent and subtle, Adair says. “Understanding what unites the Americas is really resonant today, so it’s timely that 乐播传媒 can now integrate these different aspects of what it is to be American — meaning North, Central and South America.”

A scene from Argentinian director Sergio Teubal’s 2011 film “The Finger.”

The film series has its own timeliness. 2013 is the 40th anniversary of the military coup in Chile that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and epitomized a period of state terror throughout Latin America. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of democracy’s return to Argentina after a military dictatorship notorious for its brutally repressive tactics.

Those events shape the stories and characters in this film series. And film, in turn, is a uniquely effective medium for these stories.

Film, says Fra-Molinero, is “a showcase of the diversity of cultural, political and artistic experiences of Latin America.” And Latin American film is an up-and-coming force in the film world. “Film is such a strong cultural product,” he says.

These filmmakers, Adair says, are “children of the dictatorships.”

Jorge Jellinek plays a dedicated cinema employee in Federico Veiroj’s 2010 film “A Useful Life.”

“Each film in the series is in direct conversation with some aspect of the recent past, and speaks to the ways that memory has somehow become part of politics today.”

In that sense, says Fra-Molinero, the films offer valuable lessons for 乐播传媒 students coming to grips with pivotal moments in the recent history of their own country that took place when they were very young, such as the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.

Here are the films of Memories of the Present Past/Memorias del Pasado Presente:

• The Invisible Eye (La Miranda Invisible; Argentina, 2010. 95 min.). Director Diego Lerman tells the story of a lonely and obedient teacher at an elite Buenos Aires school. At first adopting the school’s totalitarian oversight policies, she soon finds herself amidst a breakdown in structure and discipline at the school that mirrors the rebellion outside.
• Fat, Bald, Short Man (Gordo, Calvo y Bajito; Colombia, 2011. 91 min.). In this film by Carlos Osuna, the prospects for a lonely middle-aged notary unexpectedly change after he joins a self-improvement group and his charismatic new boss 鈥� and strangely affable doppelg盲nger 鈥� takes an interest in his life. Filmed in rotoscope.
• The Prize (El Premio; Argentina, 2011. 99 min.) A political activist’s life-in-hiding on an isolated stretch of Argentina’s coast is jeopardized after her 7-year-old daughter is selected to participate in a local school’s patriotic essay contest. Directed by Paula Markovitch.
• The Finger (El Dedo; Argentina, 2011. 93 min.) In the face of electoral fraud and intimidation, the severed finger of a respected local leader points the way forward for independent-minded citizens and their town’s quest for democracy. Directed by Sergio Teubal.
• A Useful Life (La Vida Util; Spanish, 2010. 63 min.) In director Federico Veiroj’s story, a cinema in Uruguay closes due to dwindling support, forcing loyal employee Jorge to find a new passion and navigate his world beyond the screen.

An analyst from the National Security Archive and scholars from Duke and New York universities take part in the 乐播传媒 College symposium Latin American Revolutions in afternoon and evening sessions on Wednesday and Thursday, March 9 and 10.

Hosted by the Latin American studies faculty, with support from the Mellon Innovation Fund, the symposium is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-8295.

Sibylle Fischer, associate professor and chair of the Spanish and Portuguese department at New York University, offers the lecture Haiti and the Revolutions in Spanish America at 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 9, in Room 204, Carnegie Science Hall, 44 Campus Ave.

At 7:30 p.m. that day, Jocelyn Olcott, associate professor of history at Duke University, gives a talk titled Soldiers, Suffragists and Sex Radicals: Women, Gender and the Mexican Revolution, also in Carnegie 204.

Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive who directs the archive’s Cuba and Chile Documentation Projects, presents the lecture The Cuban Revolution: 50 Years of Bedeviling U.S. Foreign Policy at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, March 10, in the Keck Classroom (G52) in Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

Concluding the symposium is a roundtable discussion with the three guest speakers on the theme Latin America’s Many Revolutions at 7:30 p.m. that day, also in the Keck Classroom.

Fischer’s scholarship covers, among other areas, Caribbean and Latin American literatures in Spanish, Portuguese and French; 19th-century culture and politics; the intersections of literature, dictatorship and philosophy; and the Black Atlantic.

Olcott researches the feminist history of modern Mexico. Her first book, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Duke University Press, 2005) explores questions of gender and citizenship in the 1930s. She is also a co-editor of “Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico” (Duke University Press, 2006).

Olcott is working on two book-length projects: a history of the 1975 UN International Women’s Year Conference in Mexico City, under contract with Oxford University Press; and a biography of the activist and folksinger Concha Michel. She is also developing a long-term project on the labor, political and conceptual history of motherhood in 20th-century Mexico.

The National Security Archive is an independent, nongovernmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University. Kornbluh was co-director of the Iran-Contra documentation project and director of the archive’s project on U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. Through the 1990s, he taught at Columbia University as an adjunct assistant professor of international and public affairs.

He is the author, editor or co-editor of several National Security Archive books, including Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba (The New Press, 1998) and The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (The New Press, 2004), which the Los Angeles Times selected as a “best book of the year.”

Kornbluh’s articles have been published in Foreign Policy, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and many other journals and newspapers. He has appeared on national broadcasts including 60 Minutes, The Charlie Rose Show, Nightline, All Things Considered and Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He has also worked on and appeared in numerous documentary films, including the Oscar-winning Panama Deception.

In the final week of the 乐播传媒 Dance Festival, the annual Different Voices concert showcases the internationalism of contemporary dance, with choreographers from the United States, Africa and Mexico bringing compelling styles and perspectives to the stage at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Aug. 5 and 6, in 乐播传媒 College鈥檚 Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

Tickets are $24 for the general public and $12 for students and seniors, and may be purchased by calling 207-786-6161 or visiting the

On the program are new works by choreographers Claudia Lavista and Omar Carrum of Mexico鈥檚 Delfos Danza Contemporanea; the sensational Middle Eastern performer ; Mozambican choreographer Paniabra Gabriel Canda; Ethiopian dancer Shiferaw Tarikou, in his first U.S. appearance; Connecticut-based company elephant JANE dance; emerging choreographer Deborah Goffe; and Quebecois choreographer Helen Simoneau, a recent winner of the first prize for choreography at the Internationales Solo-Tanz-Theater Festival in Stuttgart, Germany.

In other festival news this week: Young Choreographers/New Works Showcase, an informal presentation of more than 20 new dances created by students and international artists during the festival, takes place from 1-5 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 7, in Schaeffer Theatre. There is no charge for admission and audience members are welcome to come and go throughout the afternoon.

Later that evening, the Festival Finale features students performing a high-energy evening of modern, jazz and Middle Eastern dance created by faculty members Lavista, Carrum, Michael Foley ’89, Doug Varone and Cathy Young. This event culminates the festival’s three-week intensive training program and also showcases the talents of local youth, ages 6-17, enrolled in the Youth Arts Program.

One of today’s most important companies in Latin America, is known for a fully articulated, high-energy style, fast and free of constraint. “If we want to talk of the great figures of Latin American contemporary dance, the name of Claudia Lavista is unavoidable,” said a writer for Spain’s Por La Danza Magazine. A dancer, choreographer and teacher, Lavista founded Delfos in 1992 with Victor Ruiz.

She has received many awards for her artistry, including the prestigious National Arts Creators Fellowship from the Mexican National Endowment for the Arts in 2008 and the title of Best Female Dancer in Mexico’s National Dance Awards. She was named one of the 10 best Mexican dancers of the 20th century by a critics organization in 2001. Lavista has appeared in more than 70 works of dance, theater, video and opera, working with choreographers from around the globe and performing in some of the world’s most prestigious theaters.

An artist known for multilayered, deeply personal work, Carrum is a founding member of Delfos. He has been featured in more than 60 works of dance, theater and opera. In 2000 he was named Best Male Dancer at the 21st Annual INBA-UAM National Choreographic Competition. He has received numerous awards from Mexico’s national fund for culture and art, and in 2009 became the first Mexican choreographer to receive a Guggenheim fellowship.

A central figure in Mozambique’s dance landscape, choreographer Canda has made his mark with a powerful and imaginative choreographic response to the ravages of war. He began his career as a traditional dancer but was soon lured to modern dance through a series of collaborative research projects with Dancas na Cidade in Lisbon, Portugal.

Canda is the founder of CulturArte, a Maputo-based producing and training program for performers with and without disabilities. He directs the program in cooperation with artists Ariry Andriamoratsiresy of Madagascar and Boyzie Cekwana of South Africa.

Rhode Island choreographer-performer Heidi Henderson presents a new work with her company, elephant JANE dance, which has performed at the South Bank Centre in London; the International Festival of Dance in Taegu, Korea; and Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out Festival, among other venues. Henderson has received three choreography fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts.

Emerging artists in residence at the 乐播传媒 Dance Festival showcase recent works to round out the Different Voices program. Choreographer, performer and video artist creates daring interdisciplinary work with her company, Scapegoat Garden, a collaborative dance theater troupe based in Hartford, Conn. She has received artist’s fellowships for her choreography from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, the Greater Hartford Arts Council and the Surdna Foundation.

Quebec native has presented her work across Canada, the U.S. and in Germany and Greece.

In December 2009, faculty member Myron Beasley was in Port-au-Prince to co-curate the first

The event brought 35 international artists to the bustling Grand Rue, a cluttered, cramped, yet dizzyingly creative ghetto space, where sculptors use the junk around them 鈥� from oil barrels to circuit boards 鈥� to create wild, whimsical, and vodou-influenced art. Like the rest of Port-au-Prince, the earthquake mostly destroyed the Grand Rue ghetto, leaving Beasley and others to recall December鈥檚 鈥渕oment of possibility.鈥�

Beasley is an assistant professor of African American studies and American cultural studies.

How did you learn about the Grand Rue artists?

Several years ago, I was doing fieldwork on the topic of women who cook on the streets of Jacmel, south of Port-au-Prince. I kept hearing people refer to 鈥渢he Grand Rue.鈥� I finally visited the community, and it was amazing. I鈥檝e been working with them ever since. I met Andre Eug猫ne, considered the leader of the artists, and I brought him here to 乐播传媒 as a learning associate in 2007.

Why did it take so long for the artists to become known outside Haiti?

People around the world knew about the Grand Rue artists, and people talked about the artists. Prominent collectors have their works 鈥� I think even the Clintons have pieces. But nothing was ever really written about them. Even in the art world, exclusionary practices still exist.

How was curating the Ghetto Biennale different from a typical show?

In a traditional biennale, artists send works to be presented. For the Ghetto Biennale, we asked artists to come and create artwork alongside the Grand Rue community. So when reviewing artists鈥� proposals, we had to ask ourselves, 鈥淎re they really getting this?鈥� Some didn鈥檛. One gentleman wanted to build a sculpture of an ear.

An ear wouldn鈥檛 work?
It was a fine proposal, but we were looking for a more critical stance. We wanted artists who understood the politics of Haiti, the politics of being able to do a piece in the middle of a junkyard, essentially to engage in a dialogue about globalism and international politics of the art world.

Like the politics of creating art from stuff that鈥檚 thrown away by the rest of the West?

Exactly. One visiting artist, Carole Frances Lung, is a textile artist and activist from Los Angeles. She calls herself 鈥淔rau Fiber.鈥� She worked with neighborhood tailors to refashion 鈥淧epe,鈥� the term for used clothing that floods into Haiti. They then sold the items back to U.S. boutiques as sort of refashioned couture. So it鈥檚 not art for art鈥檚 sake. It鈥檚 functional and sustainable.

Did you come away from the Biennale changed?

It was a beautiful moment of possibility. There was a glow. The U.S. State Department gave us funding, and the cultural attach茅 attended the event. The Haitian minister of culture came. These were people who would never come to this neighborhood. They saw the art, and you heard them say, 鈥淢y goodness, I had no idea.鈥� And it was happening right under their noses.

After the earthquake, you told the Sun Journal: 鈥淚 have some information from Twitter but I haven鈥檛 heard any voices.鈥� What have you now heard?

I hear from friends every day now. The day after I spoke with the paper, one of my friends in Jacmel called. He said, 鈥淚鈥檓 just calling to say that I鈥檓 OK.鈥� That overwhelmed me. I see them when I鈥檓 there, but I don鈥檛 think I had acknowledged this level of intimacy, that they would just call to say, 鈥淚 am alive.鈥�

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day at 乐播传媒, a collection was taken, and students with Haitian relatives spoke at the gatherings. What was your take on that?

I was impressed that students stepped up and said, 鈥淭his is my country.鈥� It helped 乐播传媒 to acknowledge that we have diasporas on our campus.

In 2008, your Short Term students presented a 鈥減erformative meal鈥� at Museum L-A in the 乐播传媒 Mill complex. The content was based on fieldwork interviewing local citizens about food. What gave you that idea?

I mirrored the course on the 1930s WPA project 鈥淲hat America Eats,鈥� where writers like Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright were dispatched across the U.S. to ascertain what America was eating.

The students learned about hunger, poverty, and food insecurity in Androscoggin County. And they engaged with people. A student rushed into my office and told me about her first interview, with a Dining Services worker. The woman had brought a receipt from a grocery store dated from 1930, and she told stories about her family. The student ended by saying, 鈥淎nd we see her every single day.鈥� I said, 鈥淓xactly. Now you can really engage with her.鈥�

Your work has connections to food culture, death and loss rituals, vodou, the African diaspora. And more. As an academic, who is your model?

I鈥檝e been profoundly influenced by the work of Zora Neale Hurston. She was a writer and ethnographer who dared to present her research work in a multitude of ways, from the traditional academic monograph to plays and novels. She was able to make connections with Haiti and New Orleans, and New Orleans with Africa. She was constantly open to new ways of seeing and doing.

This is why I love 乐播传媒. I automatically make connections rather than distinctions. That鈥檚 乐播传媒.

乐播传媒 College presents Andidan Lawonn-la, a multilingual performance of music, dance and poetry by the Caribbean Theater Company Siyaj at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 1, in the college chapel, College Street.

Performed mostly in French and French Creole (an English text will be provided), “Andidan Lawonn-la” is open to the public at no cost. It is sponsored by the departments of anthropology, music, and romance languages and literatures; the programs in African American studies and dance; the Francophone Club; and the Multicultural Center. For more information, please call 207-755-5938.

Based in Guadeloupe, French West Indies, Siyaj consists of poet and storyteller Joby Bernab茅, dancer Gilbert Laumord and two musicians, guitarist Dominique Domiquin and percussionist Kl貌d Kiavu茅.

“Andidan Lawonn-la” (“In the Circle”) is based on the “lewoz,” a Guadeloupean ceremony centered on a drum called the “gwoka” or “tambou-ka.” Brought to the island by African slaves and rejected after the abolition of slavery, the gwoka has been rediscovered and now represents a powerful affirmation of African roots and Caribbean identity.

“Andidan Lawonn-la” has the four performers in a circle that symbolizes the cycle of life and death. They pay homage to their ancestors whose spirits have returned to Africa but continue to communicate with the living.

Laumord founded the Theater Company Siyaj in 2002. He is a well-known performer in Guadeloupe, where he was born and where he now works after several years abroad, notably in France, where he acted professionally with a variety of respected directors. An actor, singer and dancer, he is a staunch defender of Creole language and culture.

Bernab茅, a poet and storyteller, was born on Martinique and studied in France before traveling in Africa. Returning to Paris, he became active in theater and used the stage as a platform for criticizing the French political and cultural domination of its overseas departments, such as Guadeloupe and Martinique. He returned in 1975 to Martinique, where his performances in his native Creole have made him well-known.

Offering music from Caribbean, Indonesian and African traditions, this year’s World Music Weekend at 乐播传媒 takes place Friday through Sunday, March 4-6, in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

Performers include the college’s steel pan and gamelan ensembles, Auburn violinist Greg Boardman, and Jordan Messan Benissan, a drummer from Togo, West Africa. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

“The 乐播传媒 music department is committed to broadening our students’ exposure to live music from traditions outside of Western popular and art musics,” says Gina Fatone, visiting assistant professor of music. “That’s what this weekend is about.”

World Music Weekend opens at 8 p.m. Friday with a concert in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. The performers are the Gamelan Mawar Mekar, a percussion-based orchestra playing the gamelan music of Java, Indonesia; the Blazing Sun Steel Pan Orchestra, performing Caribbean pan music; and Boardman, who will join the gamelan on a piece by renowned composer Lou Harrison.

Starting at 2 p.m. Saturday, two 乐播传媒 seniors discuss their musical research. Gregory Rosenthal of Schenectady, N.Y., begins with a talk titled Courtship Rituals of the Yi People of China. At 3 p.m., Joseph Maurey of Germantown, Tenn., offers the lecture From Calypso to Symphony, looking at the musical traditions of Trinidad.

The location of the talks is Olin’s Room 105.

On Sunday, following a drumming workshop, and his band Sankofa perform at 7:30 p.m. in the concert hall, combining modern and traditional rhythms and songs. Steeped in the music of the Ewe people, Benissan has performed and given workshops throughout the United States to children and adults. He lives in Waterville.

His recordings include “Beautiful Music from West Africa,” nominated for Best World Music by Phoenix Magazine, and “Let Me Play My Music,” featured as an Open Mic selection on National Public Radio’s “All Songs Considered” program. Benissan’s fourth album is slated for release this summer.

Among other topics, Gomez’s talk will focus on Cuba’s place in the consciousness of Latin America and the effect of the U.S. embargo on Cubans’ daily lives.

At the age of 13, Gomez emigrated with his family from Cuba in 1960, one year after the victory of the revolution. Since then he has lived in Miami, returning many times to Cuba and traveling often throughout Latin America. Prominent in the movement for open discussion in the Cuban-American community, Gomez has often contested prevailing views in the Florida Cuban-American community. He has played a significant role in helping to shift opinion within that community on U.S. policy toward Cuba. For many years he edited the journal Arieto.

For more information, contact 207-786-6131 or 207-743-2183.

The panels will be organized around several themes: the political economy of social and environmental sciences, scientific knowledge and discourses of difference, modernity and medicine and natural vs. national science.

Michelle Rowley, assistant lecturer in the gender and development studies program, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad, will deliver the keynote address “Border Conversations: Interrogating the Seams of Science” at 3:15 p.m. A roundtable discussion, moderated by Rowley, will follow the talk.

The conference begins at 9 a.m with introductory remarks, followed by the first panel, “The Political Economy of Social and Environmental Sciences. Participants include 乐播传媒 senior Bradley Wilson, on “Producing Sustainable Coffee”; Rachel Narehood Austin, assistant professor of chemistry and environmental studies, 乐播传媒 College, on “A Post-Modern Approach to Assessing Environmental Risk: Gauging the Human Health Risks Posed by Lead Exposure”; and Lillian Guerra, assistant professor of history, 乐播传媒 College, on “Cuba, Cubans and the Harvard Summer School for Cuban Teachers: Making a Science of Civilization.”

The second panel, “Natural/National Science, Modernity and Medicine,” begins at 11 a.m. Panelists are Scott MacEachern, associate professor of anthropology, Bowdoin College, on “Genes, Tribes and African History”; Susan Bell, professor of sociology, Bowdoin College, on “Sexuality, Culture and Social Change: Connecting ‘Women’; and ‘Science’ in Microbicide Research”; and Kiran Asher, assistant professor of political science and women’s studies, 乐播传媒 College, on “The ‘Global Environment’ Discourse and Biodiversity Research in Columbia.”

Following a break for lunch, the third 90-minute panel, “Scientific Knowledge and Discourses of Difference,” begins at 1 p.m. with Anindyo Roy, assistant professor of English, Colby College, on “Labor Visibility and the Colonial Apparatus: The Case of Leonard Woolf”; NeEddra James, a Bowdoin College religion major, on “Imaging and Imagining the Black Female Subject in 19th-Century Anthropology”; and Patricia J. Saunders, assistant professor of English, Bowdoin College, on “Those Who Insist on Be(Come)Ing: Anthropology and the Task of Translating Identity for Caribbean Subjects.

The 3:15 p.m. keynote address and roundtable discussion will be followed by a 90-minute reception at the Benjamin Mays Center. For more information, call 207-786-6472 or 207-725-3670.

The conference is sponsored by the Women and Scientific Literacy Project; the political science department, the environmental studies program and the Office of the President at 乐播传媒 College; The Hewlett Group; and the English department at Bowdoin College.

A native of Puerto Rico, Ortiz Cofer focuses on biculturalism and the creative process. She advocates for the need to disseminate the literature and art of diverse groups within the United States. Ortiz Cofer also explores the U.S. society’s assumption that minority artists create sociological text, rather than art.

Among her many distinguished awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, the Florida and Georgia councils for the arts and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Ortiz Cofer received the 1998 Chris-Janer Award in creative research from the University of Georgia, where she holds the Franklin Professorship in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. The Rockefeller Foundation awarded her a 1999 residency at the Bellagio, Italy, Conference Center.

This talk is sponsored by the 乐播传媒 College Multicultural Center. For more information, call 207-786-8376.