Wednesday, March 8, 2023 (7:30PM) 
WILLIE VARELA: RECUERDOS
Filmmaker Willie Varela in attendance
Curator: Peter Lucas
$10 / Free for Aurora Members
Aurora is proud to present El Paso-based Chicano filmmaker Willie Varela, who has made personal, experimental films and videos exploring social space and cultural identity since the early-1970s. A protégé of experimental film pioneer Stan Brakhage, Varela’s visceral media works fuse the personal and political, and the sacred and mundane. Though his work has been shown at MoMA, the Whitney, and countless film venues and festivals over the years, he is too often overlooked in the histories of experimental media and Latinx art. Join us for a rare screening of short works made between the 1970s and 90s, followed by a conversation with Varela about his work and his life “on the margins of the margins,” as he’s said, as a Mexican-American experimental filmmaker in West Texas. 

Note: People with photosensitive epilepsy should be warned that there is some fast-paced editing and flashing in this program.


Program:
Detritus, The Remix (1989/2002, sound, 12:10)
Recuerdos de flores muertas (1982, sound, 6:58) 
Ghost Town (1974, silent, 2:43) 
Bent Light (1976, silent, 3:17)
The Last Look (1981, silent, 1:53) 
In Progress (1985, sound, 12:30) 
His Hidden Presence (1998, sound, 10:10) 


Willie Varela
Mexican-American experimental filmmaker Willie Varela was born Jan. 8, 1950 in El Paso, Texas. Since 1971, Varela has created more than 100 experimental films and videos, as well as photographs and installations. Living and working most of his life in the West Texas border town, the self-made artist’s visceral media meditations blend observational photography, abstraction, and media collage, and strike a unique balance of the personal, cultural, and political. Among his greatest influences is the pioneering experimental filmmaker and theorist Stan Brakhage, who became a friend and mentor to Varela beginning in the late-1970s. Varela’s work has screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, including a dedicated program as part of the “Cineprobe” series (1988) and “Big As Life: An American History of 8mm Films" (1998) exhibition. Varela had a mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art (1994) and had work included in two Whitney Biennial exhibitions (1993, 1995). One-person shows have also been presented at the San Francisco Cinematheque, Los Angeles Film Forum, Chicago Filmmakers, Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archives, Collective for Living Cinema, Boston Film/Video Foundation, Austin Film Society, Rice University, Guadalupe Central Arts Center San Antonio, Donnell Media Center, and elsewhere. His photographs and visual/text pieces have been exhibited at numerous museums and galleries, including the El Paso Museum of Art and San Antonio Museum of Art. Varela was an artist-in-residence at ArtPace in San Antonio in 1994, and was an assistant professor of film studies at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) 1997-2006.