The Humanities Film Series Presents

EVEN THE RAIN

Friday, September 14 at 7 PM

ETC Lecture Hall

A Spanish film crew helmed by idealistic director Sebastian (Gael García Bernal) and his cynical producer Costa (Luis Tosar) come to Bolivia to make a revisionist epic about the conquest of Latin America – on the cheap. Carlos Aduviri is dynamic as “Daniel,” a local cast as a 16th century native in the film within a film. When the make-up and loin cloth come off, Daniel sails into action protesting his community’s deprivation of water at the hands of multi-national corporations.

When riots break out in Cochabamba, protesting excessive fees for water, production is interrupted and the convictions of the crew members are challenged. Sebastian and Costa are forced to make an unexpected emotional journey in opposite directions.

With ample irony, EVEN THE RAIN (También la Lluvia) explores the effects of Spanish imperialism, still resonating some 500 years later in the continued struggle against oppression by indigenous people.

This fictional Fitzcarraldo-like quest to make a film against all odds, is set against the back drop of the real life “Water Wars,” fought against the privatization of Bolivia’s water supply in the year 2000 and is anchored in the philosophies of historian Howard Zinn, as well as the stories of 16th century priests, Fathers Bartolome de las Casas and Antonio Montesinos, the first radical voices of conscience against an Empire.