Holiday

Pochonovela is a bilingual, bicultural blend of Latin America’s and the United States’ most popular television genres—the telenovela and the sitcom, respectively. The humor and madness of life in East Los Angeles are captured here in performances by members of the Los Angeles-based comedy troupe, Chicano Secret Service, and other U.S. Latino actors. This provocative comedy touches on political, social, cultural, linguistic, and family issues attendent to the cross cultural life of Mexican Americans living near or on the border—both psychologically and geographically.

Solstice is a music video illustrating the feelings inspired by this holiday song written by a young man I met in Atlanta, Georgia, Andy Ditzler. My students and I, at the San Francisco Art Institute, concocted the visuals to accompany the tune and the result should evaluate all those suffereng from blues of every shade and intensity.

In Xmas 1986, George Kuchar’s mother Stella has come to stay with him for the holidays. After a series of dinners with friends, Stella’s repeated discussions about her shingles and Kuchar’s ominous film-noirish narration, Kuchar rescues the morale of a dinner party gone bad thanks to an undercooked ham by presenting his hosts with a very memorable holiday gift.

– Kyle Riley

Performance artist/sculptor Ana Mendieta used the raw materials of nature: water, mud, fire, rock, and grass. The consciousness of her politics and the poetics of her expression fill her work with an emotionally charged vision that is powerfully conveyed in this posthumous video profile. Drawing upon the raw spiritual power of Afro-Cuban religion, Mendieta used her art as a ritualistic and symbolic activity to celebrate the forces of life and the continuum of change.