Welcome to La Peña! Promoting social justice & intercultural understanding through the arts since 1975.
Doors open at 5:30pm / Film starts at 6pm
$12 Advance / $13 Door ($12 Seniors and Students at the Door)
SF Latino Film Festival Presents: Translucid / Translúcido
Dir. Leonard Zelig / Ecuador, USA / 2016 / Drama / 86 mins.
Rubén has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He has three months to live or a year-and-a-half with treatment. Rubén has decided to end his life with dignity, without loose ends.
Sunday October 1, 2017
Doors open at 5:30pm / Film starts at 6pm
Doors open at 6:30pm / Film starts at 7pm
$12 Advance / $13 Door ($12 Seniors and Students at the Door)
SF Latino Film Festival Presents: Pachamanka – Singing for Freedom Documentary Film Screening
Dir. Markus Toth, / Austria / 2017 / Documentary, Music, Exiles/ 67 mins
On the surface, “Pachamanka- Singing for Freedom” profiles a Chilean music band, formed during the dictatorship of Pinochet, recording their new CD.
Looking closer, it is also a story about staying true to one’s political and cultural principles like solidarity and equality while trying to survive as a musician. The initial goal was to fight the regime and narrate the situation in Chile through music. Facing persecution, members were forced to leave Chile and continue their musical journey to Uruguay, Spain and finally Austria.
Doors open at 6:30pm / Film starts at 7pm
Pachamanka – Singing for Freedom Documentary Film Screening
Dir. Markus Toth, / Austria / 2017 / Documentary, Music, Exiles/ 67 mins
On the surface, “Pachamanka- Singing for Freedom” profiles a Chilean music band, formed during the dictatorship of Pinochet, recording their new CD.
Looking closer, it is also a story about staying true to one’s political and cultural principles like solidarity and equality while trying to survive as a musician. The initial goal was to fight the regime and narrate the situation in Chile through music. Facing persecution, members were forced to leave Chile and continue their musical journey to Uruguay, Spain and finally Austria.
This event is FREE with donations of any size welcome!
Doors open at 7pm, Event starts at 7:30pm.
Join activist/muralist Camilo Diaz, representing UMLEM, and Documentary filmmaker Kelly Bauer at La Peña for a speaking tour about their experiences in actvism and art in post-dictatorship Chile.
The goal of this tour is to share experiences and build solidarity with other artists, activists and organizations via conversations about muralism in each others’ communties and the presentation of a short documentary about UMLEM by filmmaker Kelly Bauer.
One of the many expressions of the Chilean radical left movement is a group of muralists known as the UMLEM. Their goal is to create social and political change via collective art projects that reclaim public space and document the local political struggles of the community. Their murals are often painted on union halls, universities, neighborhoods and areas of conflict.
Camilo Diaz has been a militant of the radical left since 2006, participating in several student and social organizations as well as part of the development of the Chilean communist liberatory project.
A little history on Chile’s post-dictatorship politics:
In 1990, the US-supported Pinochet dictatorship in Chile came to an end after 17 years of violent state repression. While Chile transitioned back to democracy on a superficial political level, the constitution written under Pinochet remained unchanged and continued to deepen the neo-liberal economic policies inspired by Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys.
The first generation born post-dictatorship has grown up during a time of increasing national disillusionment with electoral politics, the state and global capitalism. In response to the false hopes promised under democracy, this same generation began to organize as high school students and is responsible for the massive student movements in 2006. This movement transformed into the nation-wide demand for free higher education when the same generation of politicized students entered the university system in 2011.
Doors open at 7pm, Screening starts at 7:30pm.
FREE! Donations of any size welcome!
As white supremacy is increasingly coming out of the shadows in this country, it is important we confront racism in our native Latin American and Caribbean countries.
Black in Latin America is an award-winning documentary series where Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. travels to 6 different nations in Latin America and the Caribbean to explore how each nation’s history with colonialism and slavery directly impacts the ways black people in those countries experience discrimination and instituional racism today.
Join us at La Peña Cultural Center on Thursday, Sept. 28 as we screen Episode 3 in the Black in Latin America series “Brazil: A Racial Paradise?” followed by a community discussion.
Our special guest speaker for the community discussion is Phil Hutchings, representing the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI).
Mr. Hutchings is a long-time activist in struggles for civil rights, human rights, grass-roots community power and international solidarity.
He lives in Oakland where he was a co-founder of Causa Justa Just Cause and more recently the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, where he is the Senior Organizer.
Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) believes that a thriving multiracial democracy requires racial, social and economic justice for all. African Americans and black immigrants are stronger together and we can win by becoming leaders in the fight against structural racism and systemic discrimination. BAJI was formed to bring Black voices together to advocate for equality and justice in our laws and our communities.
Phil has traveled to Brazil with organizations like Global Exchange and was a member of the Brazil Action and Solidarity Exchange (BASE) composed of Brazilians in the Bay Area with North American supporters of movements in Latin America. BASE educated the public about issues in Brazil and raised funds to send to left and progressive groups working at the grass-roots level to democracize Brazil.
Phil’s interest in Brazil started the 1980s, when he was involved with a group known as Project Abraco which did education around the “Third World Debt Crisis” focusing on Brazil, Argentina and Mexico during the 1980’s.
http://baji.org/
ALL BLACK IN LATIN AMERICA SCREENINGS & DISCUSSIONS Doors open at 7pm, Films start at 7:30pm
Sept. 14 – Haiti & the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided
Sept. 21 – Cuba: The Next Revolution in Cuba
Sept. 28 – Brazil: A Racial Paradise?
Oct. 5 – Mexico & Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet