A 3-page acercamiento about U.S. Latinx communities and their faith as seen through three Los
Angeles-centered dramatic films.
Goal:
For this short paper you will experience three films, El Norte (1983), My Family/Mi Familia
(1995) and A Better Life (2011) as a way for theology to do its work as Justo González expresses
it:
“[1] to discover the purposes of God, [2] to read the ‘signs of the times,’ and [3] to call the
church to obedience [in the vision of a loving God] in the present situation.”
What insights into the roots of this community’s suffering and what tools for prophetic
denunciation do these three films provide? In the midst of a story that has perceptibly
worsened since 1983 does the critical reflection of these films, viewed in their intensely
theological key, facilitate the experience of “walking in someone else’s shoes” that can be the
beginning of noticing that someone else actually has no shoes and that their feet are bleeding?
Requirements:
Watch these three films. Write a 3-page essay addressed to a general audience that has not watched these films. You don’t need to footnote film running times or scenes, but do footnote any other sources , such as film reviews that youuse for your essay. Outside sources are not required.
Process:
Questions for preparing your acercamiento:
1. What “signs of the times” become apparent to you in each of the different decades the
films are portraying? Look at their contexts and the memoria historica (historical memory) they are mediating to their audiences.
2. What religiously charged symbols of reality understood as sacred are discernible in these films? What may be some of the insights these films are revealing about God’s
presence as understood in the particular stories presented?
3. When you interlace these films with each other, our listening sessions, our readings and
conversations and the research you are doing for your final project, do you hear them
calling the rest of us to any particular ways we must transform la realidad toward a vision of the kin-dom of God?
4. Conclude with any insights the films provided you personally as you move into your own
future.
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