In conjunction with the acclaimed director’s residency at UC Berkeley, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, BAMPFA, and the Townsend Center present Lucrecia Martel: Un destino común, a retrospective of Martel's films, including short films rarely seen on the big screen, that offer insights into her methods and obsession with dislocating the stories that uphold the illusion of a single world. 

Martel’s atmospheric movies explore the moral, psychological, and social decay of characters willfully blind to the historical violence and continuing social cost they pay for their privilege. In the Salta trilogy, set in Martel’s home province in Argentina’s northwest, middle-class adults exist in an atmosphere of looming threat, self-absorbed and lurching toward self-destruction, as their servants endure and their children are forgotten. Set in the late eighteenth century, Zama (2017) depicts the depravity of colonialism via the delusions of an officer of the Spanish crown.

Palpably present in all these films, Indigenous people are the central focus of Our Land/Nuestra Tierra, Martel’s first documentary. A decade in the making, it chronicles, according to Martel, “Argentina’s strategies to deny the Chuschagasta community their territory.” Martel concentrates the film around the trial of the men who killed activist Javier Chocobar in 2009, showing the defense team working to deny the existence of the Chuschagasta, while interviews with community members who share their stories, home movies, and photographs offer irrefutable evidence of their existence.

See BAMPFA for more details and to purchase tickets.

La ciénaga (2001)

Saturday, April 4, 6:30 PM

Introduced by Luis Madrigal (Film & Media)

The Holy Girl (2004)

Thursday, April 9, 7 PM

Introduced by Ramsey McGlazer (Comparative Literature)

Our Land/Nuestra Tierra (2025)

Wednesday, April 15, 7 PM

Lucrecia Martel, Ernesto de Carvalho (director of photography), and Natalia Brizuela (Spanish & Portuguese and Film & Media) in conversation

Canuto’s Transformation (2023)

Friday, April 17, 7 PM

Lucrecia Martel, Ernesto de Carvalho, and Natalia Brizuela (Spanish & Portuguese and Film & Media) in conversation

Selected Short Films of Lucrecia Martel

Saturday, April 18, 4 PM

Lucrecia Martel in conversation with Blanca Missé (School of Cinema, San Francisco State University)

The Headless Woman (2008)

Saturday, April 18, 7 PM

Lucrecia Martel in conversation with Iggy Cortez (Film & Media)

Zama (2017)

Sunday, April 19, 7 PM

Lucrecia Martel in conversation with Natalia Brizuela (Spanish & Portuguese and Film & Media)

Presented in partnership with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and BAMPFA