"Sexile and the Task of Archiving Cuban Queer Diasporas"
Archive/Counter-Archive Lázaro González Talk and Screening at Concordia University

Please join us for a talk and screening with Lázaro González at Concordia University on November 14th 2022 - held at Concordia University's York Amphitheatre (EV 1.615, 1515 Saint Catherine Street Ouest, Montréal, Quebec) from 6:30 - 8:30 PM.

The event will screen Lázaro González's film Sexile (60 minutes, 2022) as well as a Q&A with Gonzelez, Moderated by Professor Zaira Zarza. 

Free to attend, RSVP Required

About "Sexile and the Task of Archiving Cuban Queer Diasporas": 
Filmmaker Lázaro González will reflect on his ongoing process of creating a counter-archive of the most significant migratory crisis to date in this hemisphere: the Mariel Boatlift. In his second feature film, the documentarian addresses how this exodus was also a notorious queer migration, instigated by the Cuban government's institutional homophobia, and one that remains as a gap in the official history of this Caribbean island. As a living counter-archive, Sexile uses cinematographic devices to represent the oblivion of thousands of queer Cubans who were expelled from their country in 1980 and forced to resettle in the United States. This hybrid research endeavour also highlights the extent to which the desired freedom of Marielitos was vexed by racism, homophobia, resettlement issues, and the AIDS epidemic. For González, making a film becomes more than a means to represent the unspeakable, it is also a way of questioning the unbearable traumas of being in sexile.

About Lazaro Gonzalez 
Lázaro González is a Ph.D. candidate in Film & Media at UC Berkeley and an award-winning filmmaker. His areas of interest include queer cinema, non-fiction storytelling, and Latin American film and media production. He holds a MA in Literatures, Cultures, and Languages from the University of Connecticut and a BA in Journalism from the School of Communications at the University of Havana, and he graduated from International Workshops in the International School of Cinema in San Antonio de los Baños (Cuba), and the Sundance Documentary Lab. 

González was also recently (October 24-November 7, 2022) a Visiting Artist-in-Residence at the Vulnerable Media Lab at Queen's University.

For further information, please visit the filmmaker's website.

About Zaira Zarza 
Zaira Zarza is Assistant Professor at Université de Montréal. In 2015, she founded Roots and Routes, an archival and curatorial project that promotes film and media works by Cubans in the diaspora. Zarza directed the LASA Film Festival in 2019 and has worked as a programmer at the Toronto (TIFF) and Cartagena (FICCI) Film Festivals. Her current research focuses on Caribbean film economies and Latinx-Canadian cinema.

Accessibility notes: 

• The event is free to attend, but please RSVP in advance 
• Wheelchair accessible seating 
• The auditorium is located on the ground floor and there is a small ramp to access it 
• Closest Metro station is Guy-Concordia located on the Green Line, unfortunately there is elevator access in the station.