SIP FilmFest 2019

Three Spanish films participate in third annual SIP FilmFest, whose theme this year is “visual narratives of diversity, displacement, and inclusion from the Mediterranean and Latin America.”

Minorities, migrants, workers, and victims of violence have often been neglected by mainstream audiences as well as by canonical academic syllabi. At a time of renewed uncertainty for these underrepresented groups, this year’s FilmFest, presented by The University of Virginia, continues giving voice to female filmmakers and movies whose protagonists and minor characters question the status quo with their gaze, their stories, and their behaviors. The selection of movies for this year’s festival encompasses a variety of countries and latitudes, and brings to the forefront cross-cultural, diverse, and inclusive points of view of the human experience.

Spanish films at SIP FilmFest 2019

Timecode

• On Thursday, September 26 at 5 pm. Followed by Hotel Explotación: Las Kellys.
• Opening remarks by Professor Samuel Amago, Chair of the Spanish, Italian & Portuguese Department, University of Virginia. Introduction to the films by Professor Erin K. Hogan, University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Post-screening discussion.
• At Newcomb Hall Theater, University of Virginia, 180 McCormick Road, Charlottesville, VA.
• Directed by Juanjo Giménez Peña, Spain, 2018, 15 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles. Watch trailer.

Luna and Diego are the parking lot security guards. Diego works the night shift, and Luna works by day. One day, the investigation of a broken tail light leads them to an unexpected finding.

Hotel Explotación: Las Kellys

• On Thursday, September 26 at 5 pm. Preceded by Timecode.
• At Newcomb Hall Theater, University of Virginia, 180 McCormick Road, Charlottesville, VA.
• Directed by Georgina Cisquella, Spain, 2018, 55 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles. Watch trailer.

More than 200,000 women work as maids in the hospitality sector in Spain. Their work is fundamental and yet they are invisible to the guests and the common public. Two years ago, in October 2016, the so called “Kellys” (a colloquial expression from Spanish “las que limpian” / those who clean) decided to organize to claim their rights. While globalizing imperatives has left them without rights, their organizing activities have raised within them a new feminist consciousness and made it clear that they are struggling against a gender-based exploitation.

Talks at SIP FilmFest 2019

Fatal ambition in La noche que mi madre mató a mi padre

• On Friday, September 27 at 4 pm.
• At the Language Commons, University of Virginia, 299 New Cabell Hall, Charlottesville, VA.

In this talk, Erin K. Hogan, Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), explores how filmmaker Inés París’s depiction of the femme fatale deviates from that of her forefathers to defy misconceptions of women’s ambition and to celebrate women’s professional fulfillment.

La noche que mi madre mató a mi padre is a thesis comedy by Inés París, the founder and former president of an advocacy group for women in the Spanish audiovisual industry, that follows its fifty-year-old actress protagonist’s clandestine audition in order to illuminate a number of obstacles facing women in show business.