by Birdie Jaworski
This article first appeared in the Las Vegas Optic on October 3.
Las Vegas Committee for Peace and Justice member Pat Leahan stood under the Serf Theatre marquee and waved a stuffed envelope with an angry flick of her wrist. A neon green tracking sticker covered the return address, but the last three letters in Albuquerque Mayor Chávez's name were still visible.
"He's a hypocrite! You heard him in that film! He promised he would allow peaceful freedom of speech, but it happened again on September 15."
Leahan's voice shook in frustration, shook with anger at the recent raw memory of a peaceful anti-war protest disturbed by police baton. Leahan was a woman transformed by the power of film, by the scenes of poets marching against the war, against the unfair suspension of a poetry coach whose simple transgression was allowing his students to speak with honesty, with the belief their words mattered. Committing Poetry in Times of War brought Leahan's emotions to the surface, connected her recent experience as a peaceful protester to that of those who marched in Albuquerque four years ago.
"We're bringing Hollywood to Las Vegas," said Ryan Smith of Cypress Film Labs, one of the sponsors of last weekend's second annual Las Películas film festival. "We're here to celebrate the language of film. Film has the power to move you, to make you see the world in new ways."
Smith's business partner, Elias Eversole, gestured toward the small stream of filmgoers filing into the recently reopened Serf. "Northern New Mexico has a strong film tradition. This isn't just about being an extra in a big budget movie. We're giving the public a chance to see films from around the world as well as films from our own backyard."
The Serf's muted murals of painted cowboy and indian flickered with orange light as each film began. Loops of film pulled from an old spool flanked by two vases of yellow mums decorated the stage beneath the screen. Aside from the two movies shown at the Fort Union Drive-In - Red Dawn and Easy Rider - Los Zafiros, a documentary about a Cuban singing group shown Friday night, was the most attended screening with an estimated fifty viewers enjoying the music-rich show.
"By early Saturday afternoon, we already matched the attendance of last year's event," said Eversole.
Small pockets of people traded sunlight for the theatre's womb every few hours during the festival's three days. Two middle-aged women sat dead center in the Serf, their heads moving in unison, sadly shaking in sympathy and distress as Standing Silent Nation documented the story of a poverty-stricken Lakota family whose industrial hemp crops were systematically destroyed, year after year, by overzealous narcotics agents. Images of struggling family, of young children chasing horses, chasing life, overlapped the edges of the worn screen. Though the crop contained no useable amounts of THC, the active drug in cannabis, yellow-vested agents carrying loaded weapons trampled the carefully cultivated plants. Shot in the muted greens and browns of the South Dakota reservation lands, Standing Silent Nation asks the viewer to consider questions of sovereignty, poverty, the right of a people to meet their own needs in ways that empower and enrich.
Las Vegas resident Antoinette Fox discussed the film with friends in the lobby of the Serf.
"I completely support what these people are trying to do. Industrial hemp is a great resource. It just makes sense. I appreciate the festival organizers showing films like this, films that make you think."
The Serf echoed with whoops and angry chatter during Il Inmigrante. Shot in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Mexico, the documentary examined the Mexican and American border crisis by telling the story of Eusebio de Haro, a young Mexican migrant looking for water, who was shot in the back, killed, by an angry Texas man.
"Can you believe this? What's wrong with our world? He's a human. Don't call him an alien," cried one filmgoer as the Texas sheriff pointed to a map of de Haro's fated journey.
The crowd rustled in sadness and anger as Il Inmigrante ended. I paused in the isle. A teenaged girl asked for a page from my notebook. I tore two sheets, handed them to her. The final credits ticked along the screen. The girl pulled a stubby pencil from her purse.
"I saw Committing Poetry this morning. And now I saw this movie. Can these things happen in Las Vegas? I don't want to think these things can happen here. I'm going to write a poem before I forget what I saw. I don't want anyone to forget."
The reel ended, sputtered, sending shatters of night against her face. She began to write.
