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

Celebrating the introduction of its Program in Latin American Studies, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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 — and strangely affable doppelgänger — 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.

Davíd Carrasco. (Photograph courtesy of Harvard Divinity School)

Davíd Carrasco, a Mexican American historian of religions, offers the inaugural lecture in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College’s Latin American studies program at 4:15 p.m. Monday, Sept. 16, in the Keck Classroom, Room G52 in Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

Titled Origins, Cities and Crossroads: Latin American Studies Through the Lens of a Colonial Mexican Map, the talk is open to the public at no cost. Refreshments will be provided. For more information, please call 207-786-8204.

Carrasco is the Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America at Harvard Divinity School, with a joint appointment with the anthropology department in the faculty of arts and sciences. He has a particular interest in Mesoamerican cities as symbols and in the Mexican-American borderlands.

The new Latin American studies program enhances ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ stated mission to become a center of learning in today’s global culture. Encompassing multiple approaches to the study of Latin America, the program aims to broaden students’ worldviews, challenge ethnocentric attitudes, expand understandings of diversity and develop tools for cross-cultural communication.

The fields of anthropology, economics, environmental studies, history, politics and Spanish contribute to the major. Focusing on this region that includes Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, courses in the program explore history, culture, language and politics from initial European encounters to the present.

More about Davíd Carrasco

Carrasco’s studies with historians of religions at the University of Chicago inspired him to work on the question “Where is your sacred place?”; on the challenges of postcolonial ethnography and theory; and on the practices and symbolic nature of ritual violence in comparative perspective.

Working with Mexican archaeologists, he has carried out research in the excavations and archives associated with the sites of Teotihuacan and Mexico-Tenochtitlan. An award-winning teacher, he has participated in spirited debates at Harvard with Cornel West and Samuel Huntington on the topics of race, culture and religion in the Americas. His several collaborative publications include Mysteries of the Maya Calendar Museum with Laanna Carrasco (Cruce de Caminos, 2012).

He was co-producer of the film Alambrista: The Director’s Cut, which puts a human face on the lives and struggles of undocumented Mexican farm workers in the United States, and he edited Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants (University of New Mexico Press, 2004).

Carrasco’s most recent publication is a new abridgement of Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s memoir of the conquest of Mexico, History of the Conquest of New Spain (University of New Mexico Press, 2009).

He has received the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor the Mexican government gives to a foreign national. He has been chosen as University of Chicago’s Alumnus of the Year for 2014

An analyst from the National Security Archive and scholars from Duke and New York universities take part in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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.

Readers: Please note that the schedule and location for Global Lens film screenings have changed: The Saturday screenings have been moved to Mondays at 6 p.m., and the new location for all screenings is the Ronj, the student-run coffeehouse at 32 Frye St.

The Global Lens series of films from around the world continues at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ with Becloud by Mexican director Alejandro Gerber Bicecci, showing at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24, and 6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 27, at the Ronj, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ student-run coffeehouse, 32 Frye St.

Hosted by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art, the series continues on Fridays and Saturdays throughout the fall. Admission is $5. Becloud is in Spanish with English subtitles (111 min.). For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Set in 1960s Mexico, Bicecci’s film depicts a tangled neighborhood tale filled with an enthralling mix of history, memory and atonement, creating an unexpected parable of modern Mexico itself.

A trucker and his neighbors Felipe and Andres share a defining incident from their childhood, linking the destinies of their entire neighborhood to an infant found by the trucker and his companion in a dry lake bed years earlier.

Bicecci, a prolific producer of documentaries and short films, graduated cum laude from the Film Training Center in Mexico City and has received numerous grants and fellowships for filmmaking and screenwriting. Made in 2009, Becloud is his first feature film. His documentary Morada won the Golden Mikeldi at the Bilbao International Film Festival and is screened worldwide.

The Global Film Initiative produces the series in an effort to promote cross-cultural understanding through the medium of cinema by showing little-known, skillfully made independent films to American audiences. The initiative believes that “a powerful, authentic narrative can foster trust and respect between disparate cultures and mitigate the social and psychological impact of cultural prejudice.”

Here’s the remainder of the 2010 Global Lens schedule at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½:

Gods (2008): Peruvian director Josue Mendez focuses on the soon-to-be wife of a wealthy industrialist who is eager to shed her working-class background for the opulence of her fiance’s elite lifestyle, but instead finds the ironic contrasts of fate and ambition (Oct. 1 and 4).

Masquerades (2008): This heartfelt comedy starring and directed and co-written by Lyes Salem centers around a gardener in a dusty Algerian village who dreams of improving his family’s fortune and marrying off his narcoleptic sister to a “real gentleman” — but she has other plans (Oct. 8 and 11).

Leo’s Room (2009): Director Enrique Buchichio’s film is a coming-of-age story set in the heart of Montevideo, Uruguay, about an affable but secretly troubled young man who is forced by a chance reunion with a classmate to consider the true meaning of his reclusive lifestyle (Oct. 15 and 18).

My Tehran For Sale (2009): Iranian director Granaz Moussavi depicts a terminally ill actress fighting for political asylum, and waiting to clear Australian immigration, as she recounts to an unsympathetic official her attempts to live, work and love in Tehran’s thriving yet turbulent arts subculture. (Oct. 29 and Nov. 1)

Ocean of an Old Man (2008): Set in the devastating aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Indian director Rajesh Shera’s feature debut portrays an elderly British schoolteacher coming to grips with his own loss as he searches for missing students on the remote Indian islands of Andaman and Nicobar. (Nov. 5 and 8).

Ordinary People (2009): Serbian director Vladimir Perisic tells the story of a young soldier who, one quiet afternoon during an unspecified conflict in the Balkans, is forced to come to a painful reconciliation with his own actions after following orders to execute civilians (Nov. 12 and 15).

The Shaft (2008): Director Zhang Chi’s wise and poetic debut comprises three intertwined stories about a father, son and daughter fighting to hold onto hope and family as they face the harsh realities of life in a poor Chinese mining town. (Dec. 3 and 6).

Shirley Adams (2009): In this deeply affecting portrait of ordinary courage in present-day South Africa by director Oliver Hermanus, a single mother struggles to care for her paraplegic teenage son in a depressed district on the outskirts of Cape Town (Dec. 10 and 13).

This is the first of what we anticipate will be a series of communications as we all deal with the H1N1 (swine flu) outbreak in the United States and internationally.

There have been no cases of swine flu reported at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.  There have been three probable cases reported in two other counties in Maine. These await confirmation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). As the CDC continues to investigate outbreaks of swine flu, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ encourages students who have flu-like symptoms and/or have recently been to Mexico to call the Student Health Center at 786-6199.  To date, swine flu signs and symptoms have consisted of influenza-like illness including sudden onset of fever, plus cough or sore throat.

Cases in the United States have been mild with only one fatality reported. However, new diseases such as H1N1 are, by definition, poorly understood. Influenza viruses are notorious for their rapid mutation and unpredictable behavior.

Based on the CDC’s elevated pandemic risk announcement, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Senior Emergency Response Group is meeting as needed to assess new developments that may affect students, faculty and staff. The Student Health Center has sent messages to all students, faculty and staff in recent days with information about the virus and advice on preventing its spread.

Information for students and families

Classes and activities are continuing as scheduled. We do not anticipate the College needing to close before the end of the Short Term May 29. But should circumstances arise that necessitate an emergency closing, all students would need to leave campus within 24 hours of the announcement. Our concern is for the health and safety of the students, and our goal would be to get students home before there is widespread infection on campus. We therefore ask that students and families make a specific plan now for leaving campus.  If the student is not able to get home on short notice, please identify relatives or friends with whom the student will stay. Should a closure become necessary, updates on re-opening will be provided on the College Web site and via e-mail.

Information for faculty and staff members

Faculty and staff who are experiencing flu symptoms or have a family member in their home with confirmed swine flu should stay home from work, contact their physician, and follow the for preventing the spread of the virus.  Staff members are asked to contact their immediate supervisor prior to the start of their workday to inform them of their absence, and should plan to use accrued sick time while absent.

Staff and faculty are also asked to e-mail the Human Resources Department at hrdept@bates.edu to inform the College of their exposure to the swine flu.  If you do not have access to e-mail, you may leave a message with the Human Resources Department at 786-6140.  All personal medical information will be kept in strict confidence following HIPAA guidelines.  The information gathered will help inform the college about the level of flu incidences in our employee population.

The community should also monitor the news to stay informed. Public health officials are warning that the disease will continue to spread. Swine flu is thought to spread in the same manner as seasonal flu. Common precautions such as regular hand-washing and avoiding touching your nose, eyes, or mouth, should be practiced. The best sources of information come from the CDC and may be found at its Web site at . Students studying abroad should monitor public health announcements and visit the World Health Organization Web site at .

Additional information

The recent cases of swine flu provide an opportunity to remind us all of the things we can do to prevent illness and stay healthy.

• Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze.  Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it and wash your hands.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after coughing or sneezing.  Alcohol-based hand sanitizers also are effective.
• Avoid spreading viruses by not touching your eyes, nose or mouth.
• Try to avoid close contact with sick people.

Students: What to do if you feel ill

If you feel ill with flu-like symptoms, students should call the Health Center at 207-786-6199.  Do not go to class or work until you have been cleared to do so.

Treatment

• Treatment consists of rest, fluids, and antiviral medications.
• Care providers should assess and treat any additional complications caused by the flu.

After your return from an area that has reported cases of H1N1 (swine flu):

• Closely monitor your health for seven days.
• If you become ill with fever and other symptoms of swine flu like cough and sore throat and possibly vomiting and diarrhea during this period, call the Health Center or your primary care provider for an appointment right away.  Your health care provider may test you for influenza and decide whether influenza antiviral treatment is indicated.
• When you make the appointment, tell your provider’s office the following:  your symptoms, where you have traveled, and if you have had close contact with a person infected with H1N1 (swine flu).
• If you are ill, avoid going to classes or Commons until you have been medically evaluated.

Period of Contagion

• The duration of shedding (the period of contagion) with the swine flu virus is unknown.  Therefore, until data are available, the estimated duration of the viral shedding is based upon seasonal influenza virus infection.  Infected persons are assumed to be shedding virus and potentially infectious from the day prior to illness onset until resolution of fever. Infected persons should be assumed to be contagious up to seven days from illness onset. Some persons who are infected might potentially shed virus and be contagious for longer periods (e.g. immunosuppressed, and immunocompromised persons).

For more detailed information

• Please keep updated at the following CDC Web sites: and

“I arrived in Oaxaca, Mexico, on the first of July, equipped with my Nikon, rolls upon rolls of film and a handle on the Spanish language that was, for lack of a better word, lessthanbueno,” writes Alexandra Strada ’10, whose photographs are on display in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave. “My love of photography had taken me many places in the past, but this trip was different. For the first time, I was traveling on my own in a foreign country, and I was unsure of what to expect…”

Strada, a studio art and art history double major from Amagansett, N.Y., traveled to Mexico in 2007 to participate in a workshop led by accomplished photographer Mary Ellen Mark, whose work, Strada says, has significantly influenced her own. “I spent my mornings photographing children in their homes, and my afternoons photographing and volunteering at a local orphanage, Casa Jogar,” writes Strada.

As a result of her trip, Strada has produced a series of exquisite black and white photographs of Oaxacan preteens on display in Chase through Nov. 21. The public is invited to visit the exhibition free of charge. Visiting hours are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

Oaxaca is a city in which time has stopped, says Strada.  “In the absence of the immense skyscrapers and rumbling SUVs found in a modern metropolis, Oaxaca is characterized by pristine colonial architecture and parades of vintage Volkswagen Beetles.” These qualities of timelessness, articulated by the Oaxacan children she met, deeply affected her photography. “I sought to … develop the idea of opposite worlds of fantasy and reality, and a preadolescent’s ability to exist in both. This is a concept understood by all. It is preserved — timeless like the streets of Oaxaca.”

Strada has previously focused her lens on children between the ages of 10 and 14. “As a photographer, I am intrigued by the awkward departure from naiveté to an almost eerie pensiveness exhibited in a child at this age,” she writes. “Adolescence is on the horizon, and they are beginning to take on the responsibilities of mature members of society while holding fast to their youthfulness.”

Seniors Erica Montgomery and Sara Tichenor spent the summer of 1995 analyzing the structural geology and aqueous geochemistry of the ground water aquifers in Zimapán, Mexico. They were working under the direction of Lois Ongley, a professor of geology at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Aurora Armienta (National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico), Alison Lathrop (Millersville University, Pa.) and Helen Mango (Castleton State College, Vt.).

The drinking water in Zimapán has an average arsenic concentration of 0.3 mg/L. The World Health Organization drinking water standard is 0.05 mg/L. The residents of Zimapán are beginning to show ill health effects of chronic arsenic poisoning which include skin cancer and kidney and liver disease. Montgomery and Tichenor are trying to determine the source of the arsenic and the pathway by which it enters the groundwater supply.

Montgomery made a geologic map of the area of El Muhi, near the public water supply well with the highest concentration of arsenic (1.1 mg/L). Tichenor was part of a team that sought out sources of drinking water (wells and springs) to analyze the water chemistry. A significant result of this work is that the municipal authorities have closed the El Muhi well and opened another, the San Pedro Profundo, whose water has much less arsenic (0.006 mg/L).

Montgomery, a resident of Lancaster, Pa., plans to become a secondary school teacher after graduation. Tichenor, from Washington, D.C., is planning a career in geochemistry.