Thesis ProposalProf. Aaron Kerner

“¡DALE!”A film by: Guillermo Alejandro Vázquez

Logline:

After breaking a federal law for stealing an AMERICAN FLAG in

the none-incorporated US territory of Puerto Rico, four high school

friends, Rafa, Ignacio, Lara and Arturo (a Revolutionary, a Joker, a

Lover and a Thiefve) try to escape their small country and build their

ideal family among themselves in the neighboring Caribbean island of

Saint Martin. Soon they get caught up in a crime spree trying to

finance their getaway; running into obstacles that challenge the ties

they have with each other till they become their own ENEMY.

Synopsis:

Four Catholic School teenagers fantasize about trying to escape

the obstacles in their lives by running away from them. Lara wants to

hide an unexpected pregnancy and her relationship with Arturo. Arturo

wants to be with Lara and is afraid of his father’s’ reaction towards the

pregnancy. Ignacio has confessed his love for Lara to his best friend

Arturo, unaware of the baby or the relationship between them; also he

wants to run wherever Lara might go. Arturo holds back the truth from

his friend by staying silent. On top of everything, Ignacio is purposely

trying to get expelled from school to avoid moving to the United States

with his mother and her boyfriend; this contributesattributes to his

desire to escape. Finally Rafa, trying to gain personal sovereignty,1,

rounds up the gang by dangling hope in front of them as a way to get

to Saint Martin2 for little money. The four get stopped by a cop for

smoking pot. With a stolen American flag in their hands, they think

they are going to be charge with a federal crime. This forces them to

go on the run, which is their dream of utopia.

They manage to escape the police, but are seen trying to steal

provisions for their getaway from a rich classmate, having her birthday

party. This pushes them into panic mode while they escape from the

party without any money but they manage to steal jewelry causing

them to acquire another felony. As a result, it drives them further

away from home. Though they make it to the boat terminal they never

get any further; the ferry has left them.

1 To be sovereign over one's self is to be free of the control or coercion of others - to truly direct one's own life. Most citizens of advanced nations believe that they control their own destiny, yet they are generally mistaken. Practically all have it within their power to achieve such control, with the result being a quantum leap in individual productivity, wealth and happiness.2? Saint Martin is a tropical island in the northeast Caribbean, approximately 300 km (186 miles) east of Puerto Rico. The 87-km² island is divided roughly in half between France and the Netherlands Antilles; it is the smallest inhabited sea island divided between two nations. The southern Dutch half comprises the Eilandgebied Sint Maarten (Island area of St. Martin) and is part of the Netherlands Antilles. Marihuana is legal on this half.

As they figure out what to do, Ignacio unearths Arturo’s secret

relationship with Lara and becomes jealous. He insists they are

betraying the group and he must get money to get to Saint Martin as

soon as possible. Ignacio takes all the stolen jewels and heads to a

pawnshop. Rafa agrees to go with him but they are robbed trying to

pawn the jewelry for money. They lose everything and try to hide it

from Arturo and Lara. Ignacio becomes more suspicious as Rafa claims

to have more jewelry to bribe the ferry ticket lady. Arturo and Lara

fight with Ignacio and all their secrets come out. Arturo goes to the

station alone after learning that Lara is not actually pregnant. There he

discovers that there is no ferry to Saint Martin from Puerto Rico. He is

about to renounce his friendships when Lara drags Ignacio in. He was

beaten unconscious trying to get back the jewels that were stolen from

him.

Everyone becomes worriesd about Ignacio, which causes them to

forget their differences, and getaway plans. They rush him to the

hospital and call Ignacio’s mother. Ignacio’s mother meets them at the

hospital and announces to Ignacio that she is staying with him in their

homeland.

Each of them learns it takes much more character to stay and

face your problems instead of running away when life brings

challenges that seem insurmountable.

Style:

Movies such as City of God, The Dreamers, Y Tu Mama Tambien,

La Ciénaga and Amorres Perros have demonstrated the potential

success of films that are rich with cultural details. The success of these

films is also dependent on the quality of the story and its authenticity

in its cultural context. “Dale” intends to incorporate refreshing digital

cinematography, acting workshops, and detail intensive directing to

produce a quality art form similar to the aesthetic of the films mention

above.

Form:

To achieve a complete sense of contemporary realism, the

project will be visually approached as a documentary. The actors will

be encouraged to improvise, and they will have the time to explore

and adopt the text to their own interpretation. These performances will

be filmed mostly on a hand held digital camera that will provide the

versatility to capture a sense of realism. Filming on digital video, the

common aesthetic of documentary, will assist to create this

environment.

Research and Theoretical Framing:

The first thing one has to do at the time of analyzing the concept

of nation is to be aware that nations are cultural artifacts. When I say

artifact I mean it in the literal sense of the word, therefore nations are

artificial constructions made by manpeople, and as other political

constructions, they are not innate or eternal.

The concepts of nation and nationalism where born in the XVIII

century in Latin America for a variety of reasons; once born they

became powerful tools to attract loyalties. Before this period nobody

talked about nations or nationalism. Other things generally associated

with a common dream or religion, defined identity. Benedict Anderson

in his book Imagined Communities supports this idea about nation and

nationalism.3 Anderson defines the nation as an "imagined political

community that is imagined as both inherently limited and

sovereign.".4

He states that nations are political communities because all their

members belong to the same political group, and that group feels

strong bonds of union among themselves. According to Anderson this

sentiment of strong comradeships is what generated such a high

number of deaths for the idea of a nation.5

Political communities are also imagined, because is impossible

that all the inhabitants of that particular community will know all of its

integrants. Although in the mind of each member lives the idea of

communion with one and other.

Nations imagine themselves limited because even the largest

ones, that accommodates millions of living humans, has frontiers and

borders, even if elastic, outside there are other nations. It is precisely

31 Creole States and Nationalism: Anderson defines Creole states (new world colonies) as communities that were formed and led by people who shared a common language and common descent with those against whom they fought. He affirms that "Creole states" were among the earliest to develop conceptions of nation-ness, way before the notion of nationalism blossomed in Europe. 4 Imagined: That is, the possession of citizenship in a nation allows and prompts the individual to imagine the boundaries of a nation, even though such boundaries may not physically exist.53 Community: Because the nation is "always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship". Regardless of the dissent and inequalities within the nation, the imagined alliance among people of the same imagined nation is so strong as to drive men to heroic deaths in nationalistic sacrifice.

that idea of the others, that is inherent to nations and a fundamental

idea for nationalism, due to the idea that an enemy or simply some

one different is more definable thant what constitutes the nation or the

nation in it self. Defined limits and concrete inhabitants inside those

limits are more than enough elements to reinforce a national

sentiment.6

Apart from limited, nations also imagine themselves sovereign

because only sovereignty (expressed in the form of sovereign national

State) can guaranty the freedom to the nationals. One has to keep in

mind that nationalism was born during the illustration and the

revolutionary period against the old regime; is during this time that

freedom is considered the most claimed right.7

Allegorical Concepts:

I. The Title:

¡DALE! comes from a slang expression used mostly by

contemporary youth in Puerto Rico signifying: “do it” or “let’s do it”.

6 Limited: The fact that nationalists are able to imagine boundaries suggests that they recognize the existence of partition by culture, ethnicity, and social structure among mankind. They do not imagine the union of all under one massive, all-encompassing "nationalism."7

? Sovereign: Because "the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm . . . nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so". The sovereign state, therefore, is symbolic of the freedom from traditional religious structure. It provides the sense of organization needed for an orderly society, without relying on the then weakening religious hierarchy.

The word derived from the colloquial word “andale”, from the verb

“andar” meaning: “to go”, “to leave”. This refers to the positive

response that our four characters give to the choice of building their

own community or “nation”, apart from the imaginary limits that

colonialism has built around their intangible concept of “nation”.

II. Family Bonds:

The relationships between the characters and their family

context allude to the relationship between Puerto Rico and its

colonizer, The United States of America. The plot reflects the conflict of

the non-conformist Puerto Rican with the socio-political situation of

the country, and at the same time manifests an urge to depart from

insularity and isolation, both common evils of island colonies. Absent

and dysfunctional family figures function as portraits of decay in

the first “nation”, family. They also symbolize the citizen that is

willing to cooperate with the system in a passive way.

III. Authority Figures:

The stolen flag denotes frustration against an untouchable

and indifferent enemy. Policemen take on the roll of colonial

authority. Historically they have been annexationists recognized

for their violent contempt against separatist’s youth movements.

IV. Utopia:

The island of Saint Martin makes reference to their ideal

dream state. 8 Our four characters submerge themselves in an

autonomist discourse satirize by the ignorance of escaping to

another colony. Exposing the lack of education that the Puerto

Rican adolescents struggle against.

V. Class:

The party represents the clash of different social classes

that coexist in a nation, it also brings up issues of segregation

due to class and political ideals.

VI. Voyage:

By escaping, our young protagonists encounter the rural

population of their nation. This is an illustrative way to render the

city as a nation within another.

VII. Imagined Communities:

The relationships among our four main characters allude to

the construction of an imagined community, where each of them

assumes that the other aspire the same big ideal.

Bibliography

1. Abbad y Lasierra, Iñigo. Historia Geográfica, Civil y Política de Puerto Rico. Madrid, 1788.8 Utopia is a name for an ideal community, taken from the title of a book written in 1516 by Sir Thomas More describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean, possessing a seemingly perfect socio-politico-legal system. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempted to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in literature.

2. Anderson, Bendedict. Imagined Communities (New ed.). London, New York: Verso, 2006.

3. Castro-Klarén, Sara and Chasteen, John Charles eds. Beyond Imagined Communities:reading and writing the nation in nineteenth-century Latin America. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003.

4. González, Jose Luis, El país de cuatro pisos y otros ensayos. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Huracán, 1980,

5. Kristeva, Julia. Strangers to Ourselves New York: Columbia University Press,199.

6. More, Thomas (2002). George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams (eds.). ed.. Utopia. Raymond Geuss and Quentin Skinner (series eds.) (Revised Edition ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.

7. Pabón, Carlos Nación Posmortem: ensayos sobre los tiempos de insoportable ambiguedad, Puerto Rico: Callejón, 2002.

8. Solanas, Fernando and Octavio Getino, "Towards a Third Cinema" in: Movies and Methods. An Anthology, edited by Bill Nichols, Berkeley: University of California Press 1976.