Traveling through cinema: upcoming film festival at Rider

By Sofia Santiago

How do a group of Rider students, faculty and community members in Lawrenceville, New Jersey get transported to another country, experience another time period or immerse themselves in a different language and culture within the span of two hours? 

The answer: through film. 

The, now annual, Pragda Spanish Language Film Festival offers the Rider community the free opportunity to watch contemporary films that would otherwise be difficult to find access to.

Hosted as a collaboration between the University Library and the Department of Humanities, the festival is made possible due to a grant from Pragda’s Spanish Film Club and the University Library’s Lozano endowment.

Cynthia Martinez, associate professor of Spanish and Latinx studies, along with Sharon Whitfield, dean of the library, and Melissa Hofmann, the humanities and bibliographic control librarian, submitted an application for the grant in advance of the start of the semester.

Pragda is an independent cultural initiative sponsored mainly by Spain’s Ministry of Education and Culture and its State Secretariat for Culture. The initiative has access to rights from a catalog of an ever-increasing number of recent Spanish-language films. 

“What’s really cool about Pragda is that it’s really contemporary films … they’re a way of spotlighting new directors, or directors doing novel stuff,” Martinez said. 

Martinez carefully reviews hundreds of trailers and information about the films in the catalog, then selects five of them for the upcoming festival.

“[I] see what kind of themes are going on, what the content is like, what the film is really engaging with, and then I also try to be really mindful of representing a lot of different areas of the Spanish speaking world because this is something that we advertise to the whole community,” Martinez said.

Hofmann, Martinez and Whitfield first applied for the grant in 2023 after hearing about its success at other universities nearby, such as Rutgers and Princeton. Rider hosted the festival for the first time in fall 2024. 

“[By] watching Spanish language films, you’re engaging with cultural contexts that maybe are new to you. Through film, you can also engage with historical periods that are not yours,” Martinez said.

“It’s a low-barrier entry into experiencing something you probably wouldn’t otherwise. That’s how I see film. I’m never going to be a certain person in a different country with a certain experience, but I can viscerally experience it through, depending on how the film is made, through the various techniques of cinema,” Hofmann said.

This year, the film lineup includes titles and directors from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Guatemala and Spain, and involves a wide variety of genres and themes: from a dystopian-cyber thriller to a family-centered dramedy, there is something for all tastes.

“I have something positive to say about every single one. Even if you think that the idea of the movie may not be for you, I would still encourage somebody to watch it, because it reshifts your frame a little bit,” Whitfield said.

“One of the reasons why I’m really intentional about picking films from a variety of regions is because I want students to get that diversity in both the linguistic and cultural context of what they’re seeing. I think there’s a ton of richness pedagogically with film, but then also just in general because it’s not only students studying Spanish or Latinx studies who I really want to come to these films,” Martinez said. 

Martinez continued, “Anyone affiliated in some way with the Rider community is invited, very invited, enthusiastically invited to come watch the films … They are free. They’re open to the public.”

The first film on the schedule, “Pérez Rodríguez,” was shown on Sept. 22 at 2:45 p.m. in the Rue Auditorium. “Zafari,” directed by Venezuelan filmmaker Mariana Rondón, will be screened Oct. 13 at 2:45 p.m. in Lynch Adler Hall 130. 

A week later, on Oct. 20, “Justicia artificial,” or “Artificial Justice,” will be shown at 2:45 p.m. in the Rue Auditorium. 

On Nov. 3, “Madres Paralelas,” or “Parallel Mothers,” by internationally-acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, will be shown at 2:45 p.m. in the Rue Auditorium, as well. 

Finally, “Temblores,” or “Tremors,” from Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante, will be shown on Dec. 1 at 2:45 p.m. in the Rue Auditorium.

If people cannot make it to the in-person film screenings, all of the films will be available to view online for a week after their showing. All of the films will have English subtitles, and include a discussion involving all those in attendance afterwards.

“If you’re not a big talker, you don’t have to say anything during the discussion, but you have an opportunity to hear what people’s perspectives on the film was, and that can make film viewing so much richer,” Martinez said. 

The organizers of Rider’s Pragda Spanish Language Film Festival hope that these screenings will expose viewers to techniques, stories and types of cinema not typically seen in Hollywood.

Martinez reiterated, “I really, really hope that folks will give it a chance and come to the films.”