Join us for a screening of Beno's Son with the filmmaker. Ilán Lieberman! There will be a Q&A session following the screening. 

Synopsis 

Ilán, a fifty-two-year-old visual artist, takes his family on a musical road trip, trying to reconstruct the chaotic, creative life and tragic death of his father Beno Lieberman, a pioneer of folklore research in Mexico. Revisiting remote mountain and jungle villages, they listen to local musicians - some of whom Beno recorded in the 1960s and 70s - who continue to play the very same music today. As Ilán confronts the mystery and pain of his father's suicide, his son and two daughters pose difficult questions that address the reasons for the silence that often surrounds the act of suicide. While exploring the richness, intensity, and variety of authentic Mexican folk traditions, Ilán comes to terms with his feelings about his father by opening up to his children and sharing Beno's enduring musical legacy.

Bio 

Ilán Lieberman was born in Mexico City in 1969, and has had a 30-year-career as a visual artist. His body of work includes a significant focus on reflections on sensitive aspects of contemporary Mexican society, explored through diverse archival materials. His works, many of them long-term projects, have been presented collectively and individually in important museums in many parts of the world. He is an Associate Professor at the La Esmeralda Academy of Art and a three-time beneficiary of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte of Mexico. Beno's Son, his film debut, is an external voyage through the musical geography of Mexican sones ("son" is a genre of folk dance music), as well as an internal voyage through Ilán's father's tragedy, his feelings about it as a son, his relationships with his children, and the effect on his family. It is an homage to the beauty, intensity, and variety of Mexico's musical legacy.