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Bleak Street
(La calle de la amargura)

Arturo Ripstein and Paz Alicia Garciadiego in Person
$12 Special Event Tickets
Directed by Arturo Ripstein.
With Alberto Estrella, Lety Gómez, Silvia Pasquel.
Mexico/Spain, 2016, digital video, black & white, 99 min.
Spanish with English subtitles.

Bleak Street extends, at times with dark absurdism, the hard critique of class inequity that has been a constant of Ripstein's films, here by revealing a vicious and unceasing cycle of exploitation that even drives the very poorest against one another. Bleak Street also introduces a newly ruminative tone into Ripstein’s cinema with its touching meditation on old age and obsolescence embodied by the weary figures of the aging prostitutes and battered wrestlers who find no escape from the brutal work that both defines and destroys them.

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    Paz Alicia Garciadiego and Arturo Ripstein at the HFA. Photo: Michael Hutcherson
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    Paz Alicia Garciadiego, Haden Guest and Arturo Ripstein at the HFA. Photo: Michael Hutcherson
  • Enlarge the image
    Haden Guest and Arturo Ripstein at the HFA. Photo: Michael Hutcherson
  • Enlarge the image
    Paz Alicia Garciadiego and Haden Guest at the HFA. Photo: Michael Hutcherson

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