Lo que se hereda (It Runs in the Family)

After learning about Oscar Torres, her radical queer filmmaker cousin, filmmaker Victoria Linares Villegas seeks to unearth the cultural legacy he left behind in his death. A pioneer in the Caribbean docufiction movement, Torres is little known today, and his films are largely unrestored and difficult to find. Despite his importance as a filmmaker and his contributions to the art form, his outspoken queerness and leftist politics forced him into relative obscurity under the cultural climate of the Dominican Republic’s Trujillo regime. In the present day, Torres has been almost entirely erased from Villegas’ family history, a face clipped from the family photo album.

In Lo que se hereda (It Runs in the Family), Villegas confronts her concerns of queer erasure and the impermanence of her own art as she struggles to reinvigorate the memory of her cousin. Through stagings of Torres’ unproduced screenplays, interviews with extended family members, and intense archival research, the edges between Torres’ and Villegas’ respective realities begin to blur. In honoring her cousin’s legacy, Villegas deftly shapes a remarkable reconstruction of queer history and a testament to transgenerational inheritance. (Victoria Linares Villegas, Dominican Republic, 2022, 84 minutes, DCP)

Victoria Linares is an award-winning Dominican filmmaker whose interests lie in telling queer stories regarding transgenerational trauma and sociopolitical oppression. Her debut non-fiction film It Runs in the Family won best documentary at the Fine Arts Film Festival in Dominican Republic, Best New Director by the Youth Jury at the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival, Best Film as decided by the Youth Jury at the Trinidad + Tobago Film Festival, and Best Documentary Film Runner-up at the Outshine Film Festival. Her latest film Ramona had its world premiere at the Berlinale. She is the recipient of the True Vision Award 2023 at the True/False Film Festival. The film won the SIGNIS Award and Best Documentary at Cinélatino Toulouse, and was selected by Cinema Tropical as one of the best Latin American films of 2023.

This event is free and open to the public. Doors open thirty minutes prior to the screening. 

Presented in partnership with the Caribbean Studies Collective, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at the University of Chicago, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, the University of Chicago Center for Latin American Studies, and the Department of Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity.