"Sexile and the Task of Archiving Cuban Queer Diasporas"
Please join us on November 14th 2022 for a screening of Lázaro González’s film Sexile and a filmmaker discussion with the filmmaker moderated by Dr. Zaira Zarza.
This event will take place in the York Amphitheatre E.V. (EV 1.615) from 6:30 - 8:30 PM. The event is free to attend but RSVP is required – done via this link. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and the Concordia SGW Campus is located at the Guy-Concordia metro station. This event is presented by Archive/Counter-Archive.
Event Description : Filmmaker Lázaro González will reflect on his ongoing process of creating a counter-archive of the most significant migratory crisis to date in this hemisphere : the Mariel Boatlift. In his second feature film, the documentarian addresses how this exodus was also a notorious queer migration, instigated by the Cuban government's institutional homophobia, and one that remains as a gap in the official history of this Caribbean island. As a living counter-archive, Sexile uses cinematographic devices to represent the oblivion of thousands of queer Cubans who were expelled from their country in 1980 and forced to resettle in the United States. This hybrid research endeavour also highlights the extent to which the desired freedom of Marielitos was vexed by racism, homophobia, resettlement issues, and the AIDS epidemic. For González, making a film becomes more than a means to represent the unspeakable, it is also a way of questioning the unbearable traumas of being in sexile.
About Lázaro González :
Lázaro González is a Ph.D. candidate in Film & Media at UC Berkeley and an award-winning filmmaker. His areas of interest include queer cinema, non-fiction storytelling, and Latin American film and media production. He holds a MA in Literatures, Cultures, and Languages from the University of Connecticut and a BA in Journalism from the School of Communications at the University of Havana, and he graduated from International Workshops in the International School of Cinema in San Antonio de los Baños (Cuba), and the Sundance Documentary Lab.
About Zaira Zarza :
Zaira Zarza is Assistant Professor at Université de Montréal. In 2015, she founded Roots and Routes, an archival and curatorial project that promotes film and media works by Cubans in the diaspora. Zarza directed the LASA Film Festival in2019 and has worked as a programmer at the Toronto (TIFF) and Cartagena (FICCI) Film Festivals. Her current research focuses on Caribbean film economies and Latinx-Canadian cinema.
