LatiFAM's Latinx Film Festival: Archives & The Forgotten Presupposition of Memory

By Micah Slater

According to Dr. Laura Isabel Serna, these five films were possibly “never shown” before LatiFAM de USC, the School of Cinematic Arts’ Latine student organization, hosted a compilation screening of archived shorts earlier this month (April 2) as a part of their annual film festival. Shot on what was “likely” a Bolex 16mm, LatiFAM reintroduced these hidden gems to a modern audience in one of the School of Cinematic Arts’ many smaller screening rooms—and simultaneously made a much broader statement about the importance of cultural preservation and archival work (Dino Everett.) 

White Powder Dreams

Gliding atop underpinning visuals of barren streets and intravenous drug use, a blaring pop song blurs together realities of 1973 Los Angeles into a dreamlike haze, given direction only by the unnamed Chicano protagonist’s pedestrian journey. Shots often return him to eerily identical storefronts, where featureless white mannequins pay no mind to his passing. Cut through with visuals of methodical self-administration of a heroin dose, these scenes alienate the unnamed man, further burying him beneath the music that coats the entirety of the piece. White Powder Dreams is, in many ways, a rueful acknowledgement of the inherently selective portrayal of Los Angeles that popular culture invents and perpetuates, and in an attempt to illustrate such, falls—either unwittingly or intentionally—into the same pattern as the culture it examines. It becomes emblematic of the ‘undesirable’, so-called drifters, and the Chicano experience in Los Angeles amidst the halcyon glow of the City of Stars. 

Meditation

Touched by rich musical traditions and scribed by the enduring physicality of 16mm film stock, Meditation presents itself as a document of rhythm: a single uniting factor, sliding euphoniously between scenes of serenity and performance. “A musician is God’s word”, declares a steadily-spoken narrator, ostensibly the man at the center of the film. He moves through the scenes of Meditation with the same fluidity as his music, sitting at rest in front of a fountain; performing for a group of senior citizens. Cradling the tactful rhythm of this piece is a distinctly anti-war sentiment: the terrors of contemporary Vietnam are arrhythmic; antithetical to “providence.” Despite limited technical accomplishment, one of the throughlines that strings these archival pieces together, Meditation draws on musical rhythm to create cohesion within the piece, between its subjects, and to draw its viewer into the hypnotic pace of drum beats. 

Tabla Rosa

The longest and most narrative of these five pieces, Tabla Rosa also supposedly claims the most mileage: where the School of Cinematic Arts’ HMH Moving Image Archive notes that only one copy was made of all others, this film was printed three times: though it’s uncertain where the other two remain today. In a triptych of womanhood, Tabla Rosa blends the life of a woman—as a young girl, an adult, and finally, a dying octogenarian—into a seamless mirage of memory. The woman applies lipstick while a radio plays an advertisement into the still air. The young girl drifts through a field of tall grass and flowers.  All of this stands in fervent loyalty to its original subject; a woman in the last stages of life. She blinks, lethargic, as this mirage culminates in her final moment, a kaleidoscope of her own history. Tabla Rosa is a succinct honoring of memory, states of being, and the dimensions of femininity, however aged.

The Balloonman

Direct and unapologetic in its exposure, The Balloonman mirrors a recognizable pattern in activist-made film: a deep-seated concern for the children of one’s own culture. Centering the titular Balloonman, whose balloons contain doses of narcotics, and a group of young men, one of whom is hosting an art show, all are consumed by the swirling haze of consumption. Once again overlaid by the brightness of a pop song, the presence of the balloons exudes color, even through the black and white depth of film stock. They eke hollow innocence, a constant superficial positivity that stands to break at any moment. In a classic use of non-synced dialogue, most characters speak facing away from the camera or a distance from it, alienating the individual and culminating in movement towards a broader self. Balloonman carries with it bright pinpoints of youth, wistful gestures towards the future, and blaring points of contact with a popular culture that seems to feed into its own worst nature. 

El Capito Dream 

Neatly balancing absurdism and narrative structure, El Capito Dream frames the phantasmagoria of a saxophonist’s dreams in a jarring, articulated montage of dark figures and frantic musical repose. The creatures in his dream wear bone-white masks, moving wildly around him, taking the place of a looming audience. These figures undulate on the edges of his performance, contributing to the frenetic jump cuts that characterize the terrific urgency of the moment. In many ways, El Capito Dream presents an artist’s rendition of the pressures of creation and a deeper fear of rejection. In the final scenes of the film, the artist is awoken by a woman, presumably his partner, and leaves with his saxophone for another performance. The same feverish playing accompanies him out, a persistence of haunting, dragging fears of judgment into the waking world. As a piece that takes great care to presuppose the artist as subject, El Capito Dream becomes its own audience, an endless superposition of art as creation and criticism in a frenetic series of dreamlike images. 

Preservation is an admirable, difficult, withstanding effort. Archives like ours here at USC are repositories of history, culture and prescience that exist nowhere else on Earth, and they must be acknowledged as such. It’s nothing less than a crime that these films have gone unseen for so long, and a joy that we are yet capable of resurrecting them for new audiences. It is my sincerest wish that more student organizations like LatiFAM take advantage of the resources that exist in our archives, and the rich local histories within—con alguna suerte.