Thesis ProposalProf. Aaron Kerner
“¡DALE!”A film by: Guillermo Alejandro Vázquez
Logline:
After breaking a federal law for stealing an AMERICAN FLAG in
the none-incorporated US territory of Puerto Rico, four high school
friends, Rafa, Ignacio, Lara and Arturo (a Revolutionary, a Joker, a
Lover and a Thiefve) try to escape their small country and build their
ideal family among themselves in the neighboring Caribbean island of
Saint Martin. Soon they get caught up in a crime spree trying to
finance their getaway; running into obstacles that challenge the ties
they have with each other till they become their own ENEMY.
Synopsis:
Four Catholic School teenagers fantasize about trying to escape
the obstacles in their lives by running away from them. Lara wants to
hide an unexpected pregnancy and her relationship with Arturo. Arturo
wants to be with Lara and is afraid of his father’s’ reaction towards the
pregnancy. Ignacio has confessed his love for Lara to his best friend
Arturo, unaware of the baby or the relationship between them; also he
wants to run wherever Lara might go. Arturo holds back the truth from
his friend by staying silent. On top of everything, Ignacio is purposely
trying to get expelled from school to avoid moving to the United States
with his mother and her boyfriend; this contributesattributes to his
desire to escape. Finally Rafa, trying to gain personal sovereignty,1,
rounds up the gang by dangling hope in front of them as a way to get
to Saint Martin2 for little money. The four get stopped by a cop for
smoking pot. With a stolen American flag in their hands, they think
they are going to be charge with a federal crime. This forces them to
go on the run, which is their dream of utopia.
They manage to escape the police, but are seen trying to steal
provisions for their getaway from a rich classmate, having her birthday
party. This pushes them into panic mode while they escape from the
party without any money but they manage to steal jewelry causing
them to acquire another felony. As a result, it drives them further
away from home. Though they make it to the boat terminal they never
get any further; the ferry has left them.
1 To be sovereign over one's self is to be free of the control or coercion of others - to truly direct one's own life. Most citizens of advanced nations believe that they control their own destiny, yet they are generally mistaken. Practically all have it within their power to achieve such control, with the result being a quantum leap in individual productivity, wealth and happiness.2? Saint Martin is a tropical island in the northeast Caribbean, approximately 300 km (186 miles) east of Puerto Rico. The 87-km² island is divided roughly in half between France and the Netherlands Antilles; it is the smallest inhabited sea island divided between two nations. The southern Dutch half comprises the Eilandgebied Sint Maarten (Island area of St. Martin) and is part of the Netherlands Antilles. Marihuana is legal on this half.
As they figure out what to do, Ignacio unearths Arturo’s secret
relationship with Lara and becomes jealous. He insists they are
betraying the group and he must get money to get to Saint Martin as
soon as possible. Ignacio takes all the stolen jewels and heads to a
pawnshop. Rafa agrees to go with him but they are robbed trying to
pawn the jewelry for money. They lose everything and try to hide it
from Arturo and Lara. Ignacio becomes more suspicious as Rafa claims
to have more jewelry to bribe the ferry ticket lady. Arturo and Lara
fight with Ignacio and all their secrets come out. Arturo goes to the
station alone after learning that Lara is not actually pregnant. There he
discovers that there is no ferry to Saint Martin from Puerto Rico. He is
about to renounce his friendships when Lara drags Ignacio in. He was
beaten unconscious trying to get back the jewels that were stolen from
him.
Everyone becomes worriesd about Ignacio, which causes them to
forget their differences, and getaway plans. They rush him to the
hospital and call Ignacio’s mother. Ignacio’s mother meets them at the
hospital and announces to Ignacio that she is staying with him in their
homeland.
Each of them learns it takes much more character to stay and
face your problems instead of running away when life brings
challenges that seem insurmountable.
Style:
Movies such as City of God, The Dreamers, Y Tu Mama Tambien,
La Ciénaga and Amorres Perros have demonstrated the potential
success of films that are rich with cultural details. The success of these
films is also dependent on the quality of the story and its authenticity
in its cultural context. “Dale” intends to incorporate refreshing digital
cinematography, acting workshops, and detail intensive directing to
produce a quality art form similar to the aesthetic of the films mention
above.
Form:
To achieve a complete sense of contemporary realism, the
project will be visually approached as a documentary. The actors will
be encouraged to improvise, and they will have the time to explore
and adopt the text to their own interpretation. These performances will
be filmed mostly on a hand held digital camera that will provide the
versatility to capture a sense of realism. Filming on digital video, the
common aesthetic of documentary, will assist to create this
environment.
Research and Theoretical Framing:
The first thing one has to do at the time of analyzing the concept
of nation is to be aware that nations are cultural artifacts. When I say
artifact I mean it in the literal sense of the word, therefore nations are
artificial constructions made by manpeople, and as other political
constructions, they are not innate or eternal.
The concepts of nation and nationalism where born in the XVIII
century in Latin America for a variety of reasons; once born they
became powerful tools to attract loyalties. Before this period nobody
talked about nations or nationalism. Other things generally associated
with a common dream or religion, defined identity. Benedict Anderson
in his book Imagined Communities supports this idea about nation and
nationalism.3 Anderson defines the nation as an "imagined political
community that is imagined as both inherently limited and
sovereign.".4
He states that nations are political communities because all their
members belong to the same political group, and that group feels
strong bonds of union among themselves. According to Anderson this
sentiment of strong comradeships is what generated such a high
number of deaths for the idea of a nation.5
Political communities are also imagined, because is impossible
that all the inhabitants of that particular community will know all of its
integrants. Although in the mind of each member lives the idea of
communion with one and other.
Nations imagine themselves limited because even the largest
ones, that accommodates millions of living humans, has frontiers and
borders, even if elastic, outside there are other nations. It is precisely
31 Creole States and Nationalism: Anderson defines Creole states (new world colonies) as communities that were formed and led by people who shared a common language and common descent with those against whom they fought. He affirms that "Creole states" were among the earliest to develop conceptions of nation-ness, way before the notion of nationalism blossomed in Europe. 4 Imagined: That is, the possession of citizenship in a nation allows and prompts the individual to imagine the boundaries of a nation, even though such boundaries may not physically exist.53 Community: Because the nation is "always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship". Regardless of the dissent and inequalities within the nation, the imagined alliance among people of the same imagined nation is so strong as to drive men to heroic deaths in nationalistic sacrifice.
that idea of the others, that is inherent to nations and a fundamental
idea for nationalism, due to the idea that an enemy or simply some
one different is more definable thant what constitutes the nation or the
nation in it self. Defined limits and concrete inhabitants inside those
limits are more than enough elements to reinforce a national
sentiment.6
Apart from limited, nations also imagine themselves sovereign
because only sovereignty (expressed in the form of sovereign national
State) can guaranty the freedom to the nationals. One has to keep in
mind that nationalism was born during the illustration and the
revolutionary period against the old regime; is during this time that
freedom is considered the most claimed right.7
Allegorical Concepts:
I. The Title:
¡DALE! comes from a slang expression used mostly by
contemporary youth in Puerto Rico signifying: “do it” or “let’s do it”.
6 Limited: The fact that nationalists are able to imagine boundaries suggests that they recognize the existence of partition by culture, ethnicity, and social structure among mankind. They do not imagine the union of all under one massive, all-encompassing "nationalism."7
? Sovereign: Because "the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm . . . nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so". The sovereign state, therefore, is symbolic of the freedom from traditional religious structure. It provides the sense of organization needed for an orderly society, without relying on the then weakening religious hierarchy.
The word derived from the colloquial word “andale”, from the verb
“andar” meaning: “to go”, “to leave”. This refers to the positive
response that our four characters give to the choice of building their
own community or “nation”, apart from the imaginary limits that
colonialism has built around their intangible concept of “nation”.
II. Family Bonds:
The relationships between the characters and their family
context allude to the relationship between Puerto Rico and its
colonizer, The United States of America. The plot reflects the conflict of
the non-conformist Puerto Rican with the socio-political situation of
the country, and at the same time manifests an urge to depart from
insularity and isolation, both common evils of island colonies. Absent
and dysfunctional family figures function as portraits of decay in
the first “nation”, family. They also symbolize the citizen that is
willing to cooperate with the system in a passive way.
III. Authority Figures:
The stolen flag denotes frustration against an untouchable
and indifferent enemy. Policemen take on the roll of colonial
authority. Historically they have been annexationists recognized
for their violent contempt against separatist’s youth movements.
IV. Utopia:
The island of Saint Martin makes reference to their ideal
dream state. 8 Our four characters submerge themselves in an
autonomist discourse satirize by the ignorance of escaping to
another colony. Exposing the lack of education that the Puerto
Rican adolescents struggle against.
V. Class:
The party represents the clash of different social classes
that coexist in a nation, it also brings up issues of segregation
due to class and political ideals.
VI. Voyage:
By escaping, our young protagonists encounter the rural
population of their nation. This is an illustrative way to render the
city as a nation within another.
VII. Imagined Communities:
The relationships among our four main characters allude to
the construction of an imagined community, where each of them
assumes that the other aspire the same big ideal.
Bibliography
1. Abbad y Lasierra, Iñigo. Historia Geográfica, Civil y Política de Puerto Rico. Madrid, 1788.8 Utopia is a name for an ideal community, taken from the title of a book written in 1516 by Sir Thomas More describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean, possessing a seemingly perfect socio-politico-legal system. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempted to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in literature.
2. Anderson, Bendedict. Imagined Communities (New ed.). London, New York: Verso, 2006.
3. Castro-Klarén, Sara and Chasteen, John Charles eds. Beyond Imagined Communities:reading and writing the nation in nineteenth-century Latin America. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003.
4. González, Jose Luis, El país de cuatro pisos y otros ensayos. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Huracán, 1980,
5. Kristeva, Julia. Strangers to Ourselves New York: Columbia University Press,199.
6. More, Thomas (2002). George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams (eds.). ed.. Utopia. Raymond Geuss and Quentin Skinner (series eds.) (Revised Edition ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
7. Pabón, Carlos Nación Posmortem: ensayos sobre los tiempos de insoportable ambiguedad, Puerto Rico: Callejón, 2002.
8. Solanas, Fernando and Octavio Getino, "Towards a Third Cinema" in: Movies and Methods. An Anthology, edited by Bill Nichols, Berkeley: University of California Press 1976.
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