Double Feature
Nazarín
Luis Buñuel, 1959, 94 min.
Buñuel’s film is a study of religious idealism and harsh social realities at the end of the 19th century. Father Nazarín is a priest who lives in a Mexico City slum. His neighbors steal from him and take advantage of his literal reading of Jesus’s teachings. After he shelters a prostitute injured in a fight, Nazarín is disavowed by the Catholic hierarchy and driven from his home, accompanied by two prostitutes who believe he is the new Christ.
Angel de fuego (Angel of Fire)
Dana Rotberg, 1991, 90 min.
3:00 p.m.
Phyllis Wattis Theater
Alma is a 13-year-old fire-eater and trapeze artist whose life centers around the creaking, fantastical world of the circus. Her only joy is her love for her father, an elderly clown who impregnates her with a son before dying. Cast out by the circus, she wanders the streets before falling in with the members of a marionette theater group. The group is a ray of hope in the squalor of her life, but she must undergo a demanding purification ritual to cleanse her of sin. Rotberg casts a powerful aura over her material as she follows Alma through the vagaries of life.