Dana Cronin
Staff Writer
Colorado College’s inaugural Southwest Week is expected to take place from Nov. 10 to Nov. 14. The weeklong series of events will include film screenings, music events, an open house, and a photography lecture.
The photography lecture by Steve Weaver, the Technical Director of Geology here at CC, will kick off the first-ever Southwest Week. The lecture will be followed by an awards ceremony for the winners of a photography contest, which includes categories of Southwest Landscape, People, and Culture.
On Tuesday, there will be an open house for the Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies held at the Dern House. The open house will display the winning photographs from the previous day.
The Film Festival series will also premiere on Tuesday with the film “Barking Water.” The film appeared at the Sundance Film Festival and is directed by Sterlin Harjo, who will give a keynote lecture before the screening.
On Wednesday, the Film Festival will continue with “Lone Star,” an Academy Award-nominated film concerning tensions in a Texas border town surrounding the investigation of a murder. The film will be followed by a panel discussion with faculty members Santiago Guerra (Southwest Studies), Clay Haskell (Film and New Media Studies), and Michael Cucher (English).
Also on Wednesday, the film “La Misma Luna” will be shown in the Cornerstone Screening Room. On Thursday, the screenwriter of the film, Ligiah Villalobos, will give a craft seminar entitled “Considering the Changing Face of America: Lessons in Writing for Film and Television.” The documentary “Precious Knowledge” will also be shown on Thursday.
“The film festival is a big piece of Southwest Week,” said Christina Leza, an Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department who has been planning Southwest Week for almost a year. “It’s a great way to bring in community members because everyone loves movies.”
Southwest Week will also host music events, involving a Beat Making Workshop with Shining Soul, a hip-hop duo from Arizona that focus on hip-hop as a means for empowering people to address social inequalities. The duo will perform on Friday.
“Southwest Week is a way for us to establish outreach into the community and to make people on the CC campus more aware of the program,” Leza said. “We want to educate people about the Southwest.”
Leza says if the events are well attended and enjoyed, she’ll do her best to organize it again next year.
The weeklong event is sponsored by the Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies and is co-sponsored by Film and New Media Studies.