Revolutionary Puerto Rican and Chilean NYC Underground Films by Jaime Barrios

Three films by the groundbreaking filmmaker Jaime Barrios will screen at Comfort Station on Wednesday, September 8 at 8pm: FILM CLUB (1968), HOMMAGE TO NICANOR PARRA (1968), and THIS IS NOT A DEMONSTRATION (1969). The screening will likely be held outdoors but may be moved indoors in the event of inclement weather.

Cine-File and Comfort Station are proud to present three films by Jaime Barrios, a Chilean-born filmmaker and political activist who dedicated his life to youth arts education. Barrios moved to New York City in 1963 and five years later co-founded the Young Filmmakers Foundation, which taught film to impoverished kids on the Lower East Side of Manhattan out of a storefront microcinema and educational space called The Film Club. Echoing current gee-whiz sentiments about youngsters and technology, the New York Times wrote of their work at the time, "While the Film Club is unusual in some respects, its basic activity is not. In the last few years, filmmaking for youngsters has been turning up increasingly in school curricula, in after‐school clubs, in summer projects and in recreational programs. For these are Marshall McLuhan's nonlinear children, the technologically hip generation that seems to understand the operation of sophisticated movie camera equipment almost as soon as it sees it in use." The screening will kick off with a document of Barrios' work with the kids of The Film Club, then will shift to his solo film work focusing on his involvement with the New York underground art scene and a visit by his fellow Chilean countryman and famed poet Nicanor Parra.

FILM CLUB (1968, 26 min, 16mm)
The growing excitement of a group of Puerto Rican teenagers at a storefront film workshop on New York's Lower East Side, creating their own films and showing them in the streets to young people throughout New York City. The interesting relationship between these filmmakers, their supporting social service institutions and personnel and the television media; plus details of the production of the first Puerto Rican Western, THE REVENGE.

HOMMAGE TO NICANOR PARRA (1968, 44 min, 16mm)
Note: This film will be presented In Spanish with no subtitles. An intimate portrait of the South American poet Nicanor Parra, reading his poetry and talking with friends. Made during Parra's visit to the YMHA Poetry Center in New York.

"... a series of punches to the solar plexus—physical, moral, audio and visual—of the audience." The Sunday Magazine, Santiago, Chile.

THIS IS NOT A DEMONSTRATION (1969, 8 min, 16mm)
A day in the life of Enrique Vargas' Guerilla Theater. A short, personal look at radical street theater in New York City.

Prints, film descriptions, and images from The Film-Makers’ Coop.

Cine-File is a volunteer-run resource for Chicago cinephiles. Since 2007, Cine-File has provided a weekly listing of independent, underground, experimental, and repertory cinema screenings and events happening in and around Chicago. In June 2010, the Chicago Reader called Cine-File the "Best Website for Film Buffs.”

This will be a free outdoor screening.

Media: All Films will be projected on 16mm.

Programmed for Comfort Film by Raul Benitez, Nando Espinosa, Emily Perez and Mathew Tapey.