IN CINEMA

LA PECERA (The Fishbowl)
Screening: Tuesday, March 25th 7PM
Tickets: $15 General Admission / $7 Reduced Price

Glorimar Marrero Sánchez, 92 minutes, 2023
USA/Spain. In Spanish with English Subtitles

Noelia (Isel Rodriguez), a 40-year-old Puerto Rican visual artist, discovers her cancer has metastasized after spending several years in remission. Despite the insistence of her partner, Jorge, she refuses to continue her treatment and decides to return to Vieques, the small Caribbean island east of Puerto Rico where she grew up and where her mother, Flora, lives. Once there, she keeps her cancer a secret in order to live freely and throws herself into the work she had dedicated herself to years before – denouncing pollution left by the U.S. Army after years of military exercises on the island. However, as Noelia’s health worsens and she joins her neighbors to secretly enter closed testing areas to document undetonated bombs and toxic remains, her struggle to survive and the struggle of Vieques to recover from decades of bomb testing become inextricably intertwined. When an approaching hurricane threatens the island and Noelia rekindles an old romance, she faces the decision to leave and seek treatment or stay with her community.

Post-screening Q&A with director Glorimar Marrero Sanchez and cultural critic Daniella Brito

DANIELLA BRITO is a Dominican-American writer and curator from New York City. Trained in art history, Brito draws from visual cultural studies, queer theory, and decolonial aesthetics within their writing to document queer performance histories. Their writing has appeared in publications like The Brooklyn Rail, The Kitchen Magazine, Hyperallergic, e_flux, and elsewhere. 

“Striking. A thought-provoking meditation on the impact of the political on the personal and on how women’s bodies become the battleground for men’s struggles.” —Jonathan Holland, Screen International

“Exposes the continuing wounds of colonization while showing Puerto Rican autonomy, grief, and grace." —Cristina Escobar, Latino Rebels

“Vivid and raw... Its images seem to shiver with an unsettling sense of urgency.” —Elena Lazic, Cineuropa

“Quietly powerful, approaching a catharsis that lyrically unearths how mourning is not without hope.” —Alyssa Miller, No Film School