Calavera Highway with Renee Tajima-Peña
Thursday, 7:15 pm, Regal Downtown #3
Director: Renee Tajima-Peña
Writers: Armando Peña and Renee Tajima-Pena
Cinematographer: Jonathan Schell
Cast: Ry Cooder, Joaquin Cooder, Hugo Arroyo
Running Time: 88 min
When Armando and Carlos Peña start out to return their mother’s ashes to Texas, they embark on a profound journey, confronting a past haunted by their mother’s estrangement from her family as well as the specter of their missing father.
From the state of Washington to the U.S.-Mexico border, Calavera Highway is the story of two brothers retracing the same highways traveled in their youth, following the migrant stream that fans north of the border. As they reunite with five other brothers, the two men try to piece together their family’s shattered history. The brothers are irrepressible storytellers, but between the jokes and tall tales, an emotional portrait emerges. After the disappearance of their father, their mother, Rosa, was left raising seven boys and scraping by as a migrant worker. She and the boys went north each year to pick crops. Because of the poverty along the border, most of the brothers eventually left home to work up north and start their own families. By the time Rosa was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, the brothers were scattered across the West.
Why was their mother cast out by her family? What happened to their father, who disappeared during the notorious 1954 U.S. deportation program Operation Wetback? During his odyssey into the past, Armando feels a growing unease that the truth is catching up with him. When he finally returns to the place he was born, he discovers his mother had secrets he’d never even imagined. Calavera Highway is a sweeping story of seven Mexican American men grappling with the meaning of masculinity, fatherhood, and a legacy of rootless beginnings. This humorous and heartfelt road trip into the fine lines that define and divide family is directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña.
