This short film will screen with other short films in Block 2 | Excursions in Arte
Friday, December 9th at 2pm
Palm Springs Art Museum. Palm Springs, California.
Buy Tickets Here
An incarcerated firefighter struggles to find emotional stability as he relives searing memories of his traumatic past. El Llano En Llamas is a meditation on trauma, the fluidity of memory, and the isolation experienced by those suffering from mental illness.
Andrés Vázquez (Andrew Vasquez) is a first generation Latinx and writer-director from Los Angeles. His work has premiered with Remezcla, NPR Music ALT LATINO, and the LA Film Festival. Andres’s most recent film, Wilderness, which addresses the crisis of homelessness in the United States, was an official selection of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (2020), The Social Justice Film Festival (2020), and HOLA Mexico Film Festival, presented by HBO and The Hollywood Foreign Press Association. His recent script, Despierta, won the Sundance Co//ab Sound as Storytelling Challenge (2020) presented by the Dolby Institute.
As the seventh son of Mexican immigrants and a descendant of the Bracero Program, Andrés filmmaking examines the relationship between work and identity, and the dialectical process of people making something out of what their situation is making of them. He believes in creating stories that are willing to tell the truth and the condition of truth that not only allows marganizaled narratives to speak but to stay in contact with the humanity of those that these stories are depicting.
Andrés was a Film Independent Project Involve Directing Fellow (2020). He was recently awarded the 2021 DB Frieze LA Film Award Fellowship, presented by Deutsche Bank, Frieze, Ghetto Film School, and in partnership with Endeavor Content. Andrés is a recipient of the 2021 Kintsugi Spirit Grant presented The Japanese American Cultural & Community Center. He is currently developing his first feature film.
El Llano en Llamas (The Burning Plain) is a reflection of Latinx identity in the U.S. in relation to the confinement, redistribution, and destruction of instinctive expressions of water; the film traverses various Los Angeles landmarks historically earmarked for marginalized brown communities (LA River, Marrano Beach).
Paying homage to the work of painter John Valadez and incorporating intimate phone calls with the filmmaker’s mother, the piece draws from personal feelings of isolation, emotional disconnection, and mental illness.
