Thursday, October 5, 2023
Movies at 7:00 pm | Doors open at 6:30 pm
Pay what you can
Come out and enjoy a double bill at the Aron Theatre, featuring VELA and CHINESE TAKE-AWAY.
by Mexican-Canadian Esteban Powell / Canada 2023 / 14 min
Vela is an immigrant story weaving a Mexican folk tale with family drama - and horror elements. It melds the horror genre to portray the spectrum of emotional weight that impacts our young protagonist Xime – and displays the transformation of grief into something more positive once the unknown is faced head-on.
The story is close to Esteban (writer/director) not just from the cultural angle, but from a deep place of personal loss; his own hauntings have led him to return to ghost stories in many forms in his previous films. As important as the ethereal/supernatural aspects are in Vela, this film aims to focus on the very real effect that ghosts – if left unconfronted – can have on our relationships and self-realization. We want the short to tell a universal story through the specific angle of a Mexican folk tale, with something as powerful as familial bonds severed & strengthened during grief.
by Sebastián Borensztein / Argentina 2012 / 98 min
Roberto, a gruff, anti-social loner who lords over his tiny hardware shop in Buenos Aires with a meticulous sense of control and routine, barely allowing for the slightest of customer foibles. After a chance encounter with Jun, a Chinese man who has arrived in Argentina looking for his only living relative, Roberto takes him in. Their unusual cohabitation helps Roberto bring an end to his loneliness, but not without revealing to the impassive Jun that destiny's intersections are many and can even explain the film's surreal opening sequence: a brindled cow falling from the sky.
