Spanish Films @ WSU (Sept 2 - Nov 18)

Fall Semester Spanish Films at Weber State University

Who: Luis Guadano, luisguadano@weber.edu
What: Fall Semester Spanish Films
When: September 2- November 18

All movies are scheduled every other Thursday. All films start at 5:30 in the Wildcat Theater.
All movies are in Spanish with English subtitles and Not Rated.

September 2: Días de fútbol. (2003), David Serrano. 109m.
Jorge is thirty and thinks his life can’t possibly get any worse. He finds his work depressing and his girlfriend leaves him when he asks her to marry him. But things can always get worse and to see the truth in this he only has to look at his friends. Ramón can’t decide what gets at him most; his wives crazy ideas or his lost battle against baldness. Gonzalo has been studying law for as long as he’s been looking for a girlfriend. Carlos hopes to become an important actor but has got no further than a minor part in a Spanish QVC channel. Miguel is a policeman and the father of a family but his dream is to be a singer-songwriter; that is if his wife lets him. The only one who seems to have his life under control is Antonio but this doesn’t mean much as he has just come out of prison. The brilliant solution for changing their lives is to set up the soccer team they had in their youth and finally win something in life even if it’s only the soccer 7 trophy.

September 16: Tapas. (2005), Juan Cruz, José Corbacho. 87m.
Five stories intertwine in a big city neighborhood. They are five worlds linked by their daily routine, with the bar, the shops and the market as the key places. These people show us their concerns, fears, hopes and dreams. The fear of illness or loneliness felt by Mariano and Conchi, two retired people living in the neighborhood, the hope and sadness felt by Raquel, a middle-aged woman who experiences love over the Internet, the uncertain future of Cesar and Opo, two young people who work in the local supermarket and who are organizing their holiday, or Lolo’s discovery that there is another world beyond his bar, thanks to his relationship with Mao, his new cook... all this takes us through life in a working-class neighborhood with a script full of tenderness, comedy and bitterness.

September 30: Cándida. (2006), Guillermo Fesser. 112m.
Cándida, a cleaner past retirement age, goes on with her job because it allows her to do what she enjoys most; being kind to others. She is like a Mary Poppins from the Madrid district of San Blas but she comes by underground rather than flying. Her problems are never ending and her children are a disaster so she dreams of escaping to a house in the country one day, if possible with three hens. When she finally gets what she wants she gives up the miracle to stay close to her folk.

October 14: La habitación de Fermat. (2007), Rodrigo Sopeña, Luis Piedrahita. 87m.
Four mathematicians who do not know each other are invited by a mysterious host to spend a weekend trying to solve a great enigma. They are given the names of some of the most important mathematicians in History, and the only thing they know about their host is his pseudonym: Fermat. The meeting point is an abandoned house; and the place that has been arranged for them turns out to be a shrinking room that will crush them if they do not discover what connects them all and why someone might wish to murder them.

November, 11: Celda 211.(2009), Daniel Monzón. 114m.
A novice prison official has the back luck of starting a new job on the same day the prisoners organize a mutiny. Entangled by the capricious and tragic circumstances, he must make the most of his own greatest resource: his intelligence. Discovering he is far from the shy, weak an even good man he has long considered himself, he finds he is a born survivor on the edge of an abyss.

November 18: Ágora. (2009), Alejandro Amenábar. 126m.
4th century A.D. Egypt under the Roman Empire. Violent religious upheaval in the streets of Alexandria spills over into the city’s famous Library. Trapped inside its walls, the brilliant astronomer Hypatia and her disciples fight to save the wisdom of the Ancient World. Among them, the two men competing for her heart: the witty, privileged Orestes and Davus, Hypatia’s young slave, who is torn between his secret love for her and the freedom he knows can be his if he chooses to join the unstoppable surge of the Christians.


Luis Guadano Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Spanish
Dept. of Foreign Languages & Literatures
Weber State University
1403 University Circle
Ogden, UT 84408-1403
(801) 626-6193
luisguadano@weber.edu