Ignacio Sanchez Prado

Why there’s no such thing as an ‘authentic’ taco Tacos are a modern food, influenced by historical and cultural migrations, says Washington University professor and author Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado.

I did 25 minute interview in my book in St Louis in the Air at my local NPR station. This can be heard here or in your favorite podcast app
www.stlpr.org/show/st-loui...

Eva Aridjis’ Goodbye Horses, a heartbreaking documentary on singer Q Lazarus, her tragic life, her disappearance and the way her royalties were stolen from her, a story of erasure of a brilliant Black woman, who befriended the Mexican director in her last years of life. In the Criterion Channel.

This weekend, catching up with poetry.

It appears also that international pressure helps, although Rasoulof did have to flee to Germany.

From the absolutely stunning exhibit Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea at the St Louis Art Museum, paired today by a 3D screening of Wim Wenders’s documentary. Some of these are site specific. If you are in St Louis or driving distance you should rush to see this. Closes January 25

I mean considering they could go to prison every second, this was quite impressively executed.

It will be coming out in Criterion very soon I think

Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, a brave and powerful thriller, shot in clandestinity in Iran, triggered by the story of a man who believes to have found his torturer, riveting and brilliant in form and content, arguably the most significant film of the year. In theaters.

Para los que visitan la FIL, el cinco de diciembre tengo el gusto de presentar con Siglo XXI editores a Rafael Rojas, con Melissa Cordero Novo, y a Irmgard Emmelhainz con Aura García Junco. Por si andan por ahí.

Criterion’s 4K edition of Luis Buñuel’s El, the film Lacan taught to his students and a truly brilliant melodrama of paranoia with a subtext of rentier capitalism, in the 2022 Film Foundation-supporter restoration .

This months’s book arrivals

This month’s film arrivals

Thanks for reading! 😊

Andres Veiel’s Riefenstahl, a damning documentary on Leni’s Nazi affinities, backed up by found off-the record footage showing the ways she tried to narrate her life while negating her knowledge of the Holocaust. In Kino Film Collection.

I grabbed this from my to-read shelf when it won the NBA last night. I found it ingenious in its structure and powerfully written in the parts related to war, but I found the comic narrator overdone and it spoiled the novel to me to a degree. But that is just taste and it is a very strong novel

2 AM Nuevo bolero while reading playlist

Daphne Michelle- ¿En qué momento?
Daniel, me estás matando- Yo nunca te mentí
Jósean Log and Elsa y Elmar- Grecia
Los Rumberos y Bolela- Tu espejo es un mentiroso
Debí Nova- Un Bolero para Lola
La Santa Cecilia- Nuestro Juramento

Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, a beautifully crafted, obsessively nerdy, perhaps too precious, tribute to the filming of Godard’s Breathless as a cypher for the French cinema revolution, carried by a dynamic screenplay and charming character performances by Marbeck and Deutch. In Netflix

I am immensely happy that my dear friend Robin Myers received the National Book award alongside writer Gabriela Cabezón Cámara for her brilliant translation of a very daring book

I stayed up very late reading this brilliant book. Its first 136 pages are a satirical novel in the great Eastern European tradition (think Hasek or early Kundera) which then derives into a very intelligent autofiction about the question of the exile writer’s representation of the homeland.

A fantastic and potentially very teachable book, asking what do people who resist eat, Mastrogiovanni writes moving chronicles departing from recipes by people fighting violence and extractivism, alongside with personal recipes tied to his personal memories. recommended for the food studies peeps.

Top 5 movie genres

Romcoms from everywhere except the US
Insurgent films from the Global South
K- and J-
Deterritorialized rather than globalized
Criterion bait

I am very excited to visit Wabash College tomorrow for a reading of Taco. Thank you to Julio Enríquez-Ornelas for his kind invitation. I hope friends in Indiana can stop by!

Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, a bravura adaptation of Harwicz’s novel that depicts mental breakdown through hazy visuals and uncertainty about time and perception, led by Jennifer Lawrence in her best performance. In theaters.

Olallo Rubio’s Tormento, a very strong horror film on guilt, labor precarity, and punishment, with an excellent crescendo of tension and scare. In Mexican theaters

Lauro Zavala, Maricruz Castro Ricalde and I were the keynotes in this wonderful conference in Sonora, three scholars of literary, film and cultural studies, very different from each other but united in our fights to keep our fields going amidst the global war against the humanities

Close reading el taco!

Welcome to Sonora tacos, which are a fundamentation if my defense of the excellence of the flour tortilla. Doesn’t hurt to have a cup of Bacanora in hand

Just read this in a long flight. It has every element to be good (a fascinating story with strong political and aesthetic possibilities) but it is not good: it’s written with a flat lyricism that undermines its choral structure and the plot is muddied. I do respect the ambition

Lo voy a escuchar!