Event
Film Screening and Panel Discussion featuring Filmmaker Luis Argueta
Guatemalan-American Filmmaker Luis Argueta will be joining us for a screening of his film Abrazos (2014), which tells the story of a transformational journey of 14 U.S. citizen children, sons and daughters of undocumented immigrants, who travel from Minnesota to Guatemala to meet their grandparents for the first time. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Manuel Portillo, Director of Community Engagement at The Welcoming Center, and Sarah Lopez, Associate Professor at Weitzman. This event will be hosted and moderated by Domenic Vitiello, Associate Professor at Weitzman.
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Luis Argueta is a film director and producer who has been telling transnational immigrant stories since 1977. His work spans features, documentaries, shorts and episodic TV. He has also worked as commercial director, lecturer and teacher in the United States, Europe and throughout the Americas. Born and raised in Guatemala, Argueta is a US Citizen and has been a resident of New York since 1977. His feature film The Silence of Neto (1994), the coming of age story of a 12 year-old boy in 1954 Cold War-Guatemala, is the first Guatemalan film internationally recognized and the first Guatemalan production ever to be submitted to the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category. In April 2009, the British newspaper The Guardian, listed Mr. Argueta as one of Guatemala’s National Living Icons, alongside Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu and Singer/Songwriter Ricardo Arjona. Argueta’s series of films on immigration -- abUSed: The Postville Raid (2010), Abrazos (2014), and The U Turn (2017) -- brings into sharp focus the resilience of immigrants, their struggle to succeed often against impossible odds as well as their contributions to their countries of origin and to American society. Argueta is currently researching a film/podcast project about migration pressures, patterns, return migration, and reintegration of returning migrants in Mexico the Northern Triangle. He is also developing a film project about illegal adoptions in Guatemala and working on a film about the effects of family separation on US Citizen children.
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This event is supported by Perry World House's Global Lens Series, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, & Immigration, and Cinema & Media Studies.