Loading Events

Screening of Cecilia Aldarondo's ‘Landfall’ and ‘Picket Line’

Tue, April 11th, 2023
4:00 pm
- 6:00 pm

  • This event has passed.

A free screening of Professor Cecilia Aldarondo’s short film Picket Line (2017) and feature film Landfall (2020) will be held as part of her solo exhibition Mirrored Interiors will be held at WCMA from 4 to 6 p.m.

One week before Donald Trump was elected, 700 workers—many of whom were Trump supporters—walked out of the Momentive chemical plant in Waterford, N.Y., sparking a 105-day strike. In the wake of his win, the striking workers reflect on the election and Trump’s advocacy for union-busting legislation in the short film Picket Line.

Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, Landfall is a cautionary tale for our times. Set against the backdrop of protests that toppled the U.S. colony’s governor in 2019, the film offers a prismatic portrait of collective trauma and resistance. While the devastation of María attracted a great deal of media coverage, the world has paid far less attention to the storm that preceded it: a $72 billion debt crisis crippling Puerto Rico well before the winds and waters hit. Landfallexamines the kinship of these two storms—one environmental, the other economic—juxtaposing competing utopian visions of recovery. Featuring intimate encounters with Puerto Ricans as well as the newcomers flooding the island, Landfall reflects on a question of contemporary global relevance: when the world falls apart, who do we become?

This screening of these two films will be repeated on Tuesday, April 18.

Cecilia Aldarondo’s documentaries explore complex realities with themes ranging from identity, family, and memory. She is a director-producer from the Puerto Rican diaspora who works at the intersection of poetics and politics. Her feature documentaries Memories of a Penitent Heart (2016) and Landfall (2020) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and were co-produced by the award-winning PBS series POV. Her third feature You Were My First Boyfriend was selected for Opening Night of the 2023 South by Southwest Film Festival and will broadcast on HBO in 2023. Among Aldarondo’s fellowships and honors are the Guggenheim, a two-time MacDowell Colony Fellowship, the 2022 IDA Emerging Filmmaker Award, the 2021 New America Fellowship, and Women at Sundance 2017. In 2019 she was named to DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 list and is one of 2015’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. She teaches at Williams College.

More Information
Facebook

Event/Announcement Navigation