We are pleased to welcome acclaimed filmmaker Nicolás Pereda to the Center for Ethnographic Media Arts as part of our Visiting Artist Series. Join us Friday, April 11th, for a screening of his films DEAR CHANTAL, FLORA, and LÁZARO AT NIGHT. Details below.

Nicolás Pereda has had over 35 retrospectives worldwide in places like TIFF Cinematheque, Anthology Film Archive, and Jeu de Paume. His films have been presented in most major international film festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, New York, and Toronto, as well as in galleries and museums like the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Guggenheim and MoMA in New York. In 2010 he was awarded the Premio Orizzonti at the Venice Film Festival.

DEAR CHANTAL
A miniature homage to Chantal Akerman, conceived as a series of playfully impossible letters that respond to her inquiry about renting my sister’s home in Mexico City.

FLORA
A reflection on the nature of representation and the ongoing drug war in Mexico, Nicolás Pereda’s Flora revisits locations and scenes from the mainstream 2010 narco-comedy El Infierno, exploring the paradoxes of depicting narco-trafficking on film—its tendency both to romanticize and to obscure. To screen is both to project and to conceal.

LÁZARO AT NIGHT 
Lázaro at Night follows three friends in their early forties as they audition for a coveted film role. Amid the process, one of them interviews a former literature teacher whose voice transports us to their past—a time when literature offered them an escape, allowing them to dream and hope in ways the dull, unforgiving real world never could. As they reminisce, their deep friendship becomes tangled in an uneasy love triangle, blurring the lines between memory, desire, and reality.

Nicolás Pereda in-person with a Q&A to follow the film.

Friday, April 11th, 2025
Doors at 6:30 PM, films begins at 7:00 PM.
Runtime 90 min. 

USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, Room SCI 106
900 W 34th St, Los Angeles, CA 90007

FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu

This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.