Pepe
Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias
WEST COAST PREMIERE
- Price
- $12*
- Genre
- Film/Video
- Season
- Winter/Spring 2025
- DATE
- MAR 3
- TIME
- MON, 8 PM
- RUNTIME
- Approx. 120 minutes
- COUNTRY
- Dominican Republic, Germany, France, Namibia
* Discounts available for REDCAT members, students & the CalArts faculty and staff
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About
The first and last hippopotamus killed in the Americas, the beautiful beast nicknamed Pepe by the media, was controversially shot by authorities in Colombia, deemed an invasive and dangerous threat to the community. Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias (Film/Video MFA ‘14) presents a film guided by a voice that claims to be from Pepe. Between encounters and misunderstandings, epiphanies and sadness, the film presents a world full of stories replete with more stories.
Please note: Pepe contains loud sounds, gunshot sounds, and depictions of animal cruelty.
Presented in Spanish, Afrikaans, Mbukushu, and German with English subtitles.
Pepe presents a kind of patchwork portrait of the Global South, its colonial past, and the cross-pollination of cultural memory across generations.
—
Jordan Cronk, MUBI
The Jack H. Skirball Series is organized by Jheanelle Brown.
about the artists
Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias studied film in Buenos Aires and Edinburgh and has an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. His first short film SheSaid HeWalks HeSaid SheWalks won a BAFTA Scotland in 2009 while his documentary Pareces Una Carreta… was part of the major Latin America art exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. His graduation film Santa Teresa & Otras Historias won the Prix Georges De Beauregard at FidMarseille; Cocote won the Signs of Life Award at Locarno. He developed Pepe while participating in the DAAD artists-in-Berlin program.
