THE YEAR OF THE PLAGUE
(EL ANO DE LA PESTE)
dir. Felipe Cazals, 1979
109 mins. Mexico.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 10 PM EST in-theater and at stream.spectacletheater.com
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 10 PM EST in-theater and at stream.spectacletheater.com
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 7:30 PM EST in-theater and at stream.spectacletheater.com
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – 7:30 PM EST in-theater and at stream.spectacletheater.com
ONLINE TICKETS

Ten years after we showed his anti-anti-communism horror masterpiece CANOA, Spectacle is thrilled to reprise living master Felipe Cazals’ THE YEAR OF THE PLAGUE: a little-seen adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year transposed to 1970s Mexico. Working from an original idea proposed by his friend Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cazals uses the outbreak of a pandemic to diagnose the ills of Mexican society as he saw it: political corruption, snake-oil pundits on television, municipal apathy to the basic needs of lower-income citizens. The result is a bracing, terrifying vision of life out of junct 40 years ahead of coronavirus.

“Gabo (Marquez) is known as the creator of magical realism, but there is no magic to this film. We inserted a plague to create a different reality, in order to reveal problems within society. What can change is the way authorities will react to a crisis of this nature. To hide the truth is a power move, essentially linking all forms of power together. The president must say whatever is convenient for private interests. The whole reason he is in power is to create a distorted reality. The president, the private interests—their form of reality becomes the official truth. To take the pandemic seriously would necessitate destroying preexisting forms of power.” – Felipe Cazals, Filmmaker Magazine

Special thanks to Felipe Cazals, Herandy Goytia and IMCINE.