Film and Video Collections
This Week's Theme
Each week, we feature items from our collections which correspond to a theme chosen by our staff!
This week we're celebrating the first full week of Hispanic Heritage Month by showcasing films by Central and South American directors. You can learn more about Hispanic Heritage Month and see more library resources in our Hispanic Heritage Month guide.
Hispanic Heritage Month on Streaming
Precious Knowledge (2011)
Precious Knowledge reports from the frontlines of one of the most contentious battles in public education in recent memory, the fight over Mexican American studies programs in Arizona public schools. The film interweaves the stories of several students enrolled in the Mexican American Studies Program at Tucson High School with interviews with teachers, parents, school officials, and the lawmakers who wish to outlaw the classes.
Los Sures: A Puerto Rican Barrio in Brooklyn (1984)
Diego Echeverria's Los Sures skillfully represents the challenges of its time: drugs, gang violence, crime, abandoned real estate, racial tension, single-parent homes, and inadequate local resources in Los Sures, a Puerto Rican barrio in Brooklyn. Five different people living in this Brooklyn neighborhood, are the focus of five episodes in this documentary. As seen through the eyes and ears of each of the barrio's five inhabitants, the litter-strewn streets and crumbling tenements representative of the worst urban blight cannot completely dominate the human spirit.
Hispanic Heritage Month on DVD
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La Ciénaga (The Swamp) by
Publication Date: 2001With a radical take on narrative, disturbing yet beautiful cinematography, and a highly sophisticated use of on- and offscreen sound, Martel turns her tale of a decaying bourgeois family, whiling away the hours of one sweaty, sticky summer, into a cinematic marvel. This visceral take on class, nature, sexuality, and the ways political turmoil and social stagnation can manifest in human relationships is a drama of amazing tactility and one of the great contemporary film debuts. -
Fresa y chocolate (Strawberries and Chocolate) by Publication Date: 1992David, a student at Havana University, is devastated when his girlfriend marries someone else. When he meets a gay artist, Diego, he is drawn to his cultured lifestye and a friendship forms between them. -
Hermia and Helena by Publication Date: 2016Camila, a young Argentine theater director, travels from Buenos Aires to New York for an artist residency to work on a new Spanish translation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Upon her arrival, she quickly realizes that her work isn't compensating for the loss of her friends and the lover she left behind. When she begins to receive a series of mysterious postcards from Danièle, Camila second-guesses her artistic endeavors and begins to seek answers about her past. -
Y tu Mamá También (And Your Mother, Too) by
Publication Date: 2002Two teens set off on a wild cross-country trip with seductive, 28-year-old Luisa. Lisa schools them in the finer points of passion, but will their mutual desire for her destroy their friendship forever?.
Dos adolescentes emprenden un viaje loco al campo con la seductora Luisa, de 28 años. Luisa los educa en los puntos más finos de la pasión, pero puede que el deseo de los adolescentes para ella destruirá su amistad para siempre. -
La Mujer sin Cabeza (The Headless Woman) by
Publication Date: 2008A bourgeois woman is driving alone on a dirt road when she becomes distracted and runs over something. In the days following this jarring incident, she becomes dazed and emotionally disconnected from the people and events in her life. She becomes obsessed with the possibility that she may have killed someone. The police confirm that there were no accidents reported in the area and everything returns to normal, until a gruesome discovery is made -
Atame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!) by
Publication Date: 1990A rambunctious dark comedy. An unbalanced but alluring former mental patient takes a B-movie porn star prisoner in the hopes of convincing her to marry him. A highly unconventional romance that came on the spike heels of Almodovar's international sensation Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, this is a splashy, sexy central work in the career of one of the world's most beloved and provocative auteurs.
Hispanic Heritage Month on 16mm
A complex, insightful look at the Chicano experience as mirrored in the lives and music of the most acclaimed Nortęo musicians of the Texas-Mexican border, including Flaco Jimenez and Lydia Mendoza. Features the music and culture of Mexican-Americans living in southern Texas, showing food preparation, family life, dances, fieldwork, and other social activities.