Sal Lopez, left, and Luis Adana star in “Acuitzeramo,” a short film about gay Latino senior who copes with life after his partner of 15 years dies. Photo: Matias Ponce.
Aging, as seen through the lens of our pop cultured, youth centric,
heteronormative, Western society, is a multi-layered truth we all eventually contend with.
And when considering our LGBTQIA elders through this same lens, we quickly realize their plight is often times grossly underrepresented or ignored all together.
With “Acuitzeramo,” we explore queerness, elderliness, and the ways in which homophobia affects these topics. We delved deeper into this reality by setting our story in a conservative, rural, Mexican town where a gay elder has recently lost his partner of 15 years. Stereotypical machismo, intolerance and conjecture are the antagonists in this brief but poignant tale.
The goal is to humanize and give a voice to our queer senior population in a manner not seldom seen and to address the generation and empathy gap that exists and separates our younger queer generation from their elder gay predecessors.
Miguel Angel Caballero (writer-director-producer) and I founded Cabaldana Alchemy with the goal of writing and producing Latinx centric stories that are exceedingly missing in the media, especially queer Latinx stories.
“Acuitzeramo” is the second film under the Cabaldana Alchemy banner. As queer, Latinx content creators, we have a responsibility to tell, imagine, and reimagine our diverse stories. As we live through a right-wing political climate and a White House administration that has made indisputable attempts at our erasure and our censorship, it’s imperative that our stories be told now more than ever.
“Acuitzeramo” will screen as part of Outfest Fusion 2020 at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, March 7, at Regal LA Live 11, and 9:30 p.m. Monday, March 9, at the Plaza de la Raza in Boyle Heights.
