Luis Valdez elevates Chicano narratives to cinema through Zoot Suit and La Bamba, overcoming political and industry pushback to create landmark films that broaden and honor America's cultural story.

ASK E. JEAN is the thrilling story of E. Jean Carroll’s life, from her early days as Miss Cheerleader USA to her rise as a trailblazing journalist, author, and beloved advice columnist.Carroll broke barriers as the first female editor at Esquire, Playboy, and Outside, helping to redefine women’s roles in media with her sharp wit and fearless voice. In recent years, she reignited public discourse by standing up to power, becoming the only woman to beat Donald Trump twice in court, and sparking a national conversation about truth, accountability, and resilience. This film is a portrait of an indomitable woman who proved it’s never too late to reclaim your voice, rewrite your story, and change the world.

Please join CCA for our ongoing Community Reading Series in the Munoz Waxman Gallery. This event features Richard Chess, Emily Hyland, Priyanka Kumar, and Santana Shorty. Readings are curated by former Santa Fe poet laureate Elizabeth Jacobson with support from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry.

The feature film in this year's Confluence series is the documentary Requiem for a River, which explores the New Mexico stretch of the Rio Grande — an iconic but endangered American waterway — in a time of climate change and calls for environmental justice. Through lyrical imagery and in-depth interviews with a diverse range of residents — Native, Latinx, Indo-Hispanic and Anglo — this visually poetic documentary reveals the once-mighty river’s role as a lifeline in the desert and asks whether the keys to a more sustainable, equitable future lie in New Mexico’s ancient past. The evening opens with The Hidden Life of the Santa Fe River. A vivid cinematic journey into the colors, stories, and stewardship of the Santa Fe River—revealing the lively, complex watershed that flows through the heart of Santa Fe. Official public premiere.

Sandbox Music and CCA are Co-hosting a two-day workshop and two concerts with Fred Frith on the weekend of September 11th through the 13th. Friday September 11th at 7:30 Fred is joined by Tara Khozein, Edie Tsong and David Forlano for a concert of duos and trios. Over the weekend Fred will work with a dozen local musicians in a conducted improvisational ensemble to perform on Sunday September 13th at 4:30. The ensemble will work together in ways that move the music while keeping the creative vibrancy of free improvisation. A repertoire of communication and group dynamics will guide the ensemble into a rare and very special performance. Bringing the history and vast experience of Fred Frith to our local community of musicians and a larger audience is truly a unique event.

London is terrorized by a vicious sex killer known as The Necktie Murderer. Following the brutal slaying of his ex-wife, down-on-his-luck Richard Blaney is suspected by the police of being the killer. He goes on the run, determined to prove his innocence.

The bold Tira works as dancing beauty and lion tamer at a fair. Out of an urgent need of money, she agrees to a risky new number: she'll put her head into the lion's mouth! With this attraction, the circus makes it to New York and Tira can pursue her dearest occupation— flirting with rich men and accepting expensive presents.

Thursdays, 4:30-6:30p Sept 17, 24, Oct 1, 8 Cost: $250 (For all four classes) Location: CCA Conference Room his fall, poet Elizabeth Jacobson is offering a new session of her popular workshop series Intimate Immersion. During this four-week in-person intensive, the focus is on generating new poems, critiquing each participant’s work, revising poems, and looking at elements of craft. Each meeting, participants are invited to bring a new poem (with copies for everyone) for workshop discussion. Since this is the first look, the process creates a deep, concentrated attention different from preparing critique notes ahead of time. Additionally, contemporary poems are provided as a catalyst for the following week’s writing prompt. This is an intimate, focused immersion to reinforce the writing practice and foster the evolution of new poems. No class fees can be refunded after two weeks prior to start date. Elizabeth Jacobson was the fifth Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her third collection of poems, There Are as Many Songs in the World as Branches of Coral" is just out from Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press. Her previous book, "Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air” won the New Measure Poetry Prize (FVE/Parlor Press, 2019) and the 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for both New Mexico Poetry and Best New Mexico Book. She is the reviews editor for the online literary journal Terrain.org. This program is supported by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry

In the Atlantic during World War II, a ship and a German U-boat are involved in a battle, and both are sunk. The survivors from the ship gather in one of the boats. They are from a variety of backgrounds: an international journalist, a rich businessman, the radio operator, a nurse, a steward, a sailor, and an engineer with Communist tendencies. Trouble starts when they pull a man out of the water who turns out to be from the U-boat.

A Parisian tailor finds himself posing as a baron in order to collect a sizeable bill from an aristocrat, only to fall in love with an aloof young princess.

In 2093, young filmmaker Kuve travels to the remote village of Umata to document the aftermath of a devastating war that outlawed post-2040s technology and brought ancient kingdoms back to life. There he meets Mumbi, a local filmmaker who challenges him to make his film without relying on AI, using only his hands, eyes and heart. As Kuve searches for his own voice in this unplugged world he slowly begins to understand that even in a broken world there is beauty to be found in the small human moments we so often overlook.

Ignited by what may be the most hilariously disastrous meet-cute in cinema history, MY SASSY GIRL reinvented the romcom with wild aplomb. An unassuming young man’s whole world is turned upside down when a beautiful and ferocious female force of nature takes his life by storm. Their ensuing tumultuous relationship both scales the heights of blockbuster movie fantasies and descends the poignant depths of heartache in this outrageous and uplifting ode to true love. Based on a South Korean netizen’s blog of reportedly true stories about his girlfriend, the film proved a massive sleeper hit and one of the most influential Asian films of the 21st century. A must-see contemporary classic, MY SASSY GIRL is an “unabashed crowd-pleaser that mixes genres with the audacious abandon that makes Korean cinema so much fun” (Film at Lincoln Center). Presented newly restored in 4K from the original negative.

Following the conviction of her German father for treason against the U.S., Alicia Huberman takes to drink and men. She is approached by a government agent (T.R. Devlin) who asks her to spy on a group of her father's Nazi friends operating out of Rio de Janeiro. A romance develops between Alicia and Devlin, but she starts to get too involved in her work.

Sunday, August 30, 2-3:30 pm In-person in the CCA Conference Room How can poems enact and invite this listening and relationship with the living world around us? The practice of ecopoetry becomes a practice of attending, of deep listening, and poetry can become a reciprocal practice that deepens our attention to our own interiority and helps us connect more deeply with the living land. The poet Mary Oliver guides us, “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” Poetry begins with a practice of deep, open listening with all our senses to the living world inside and outside of us. In this workshop, we’ll look at several poetic moves that can help us to evoke a sense of wonder and relationship with different living beings we encounter. We’ll read poems together that exemplify these different strategies and we’ll use these poems as prompts for our own writing and exploration in class. Please bring your writing tools. Anne Haven McDonnell teaches as a full professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her most recent collection Singing Under Snow won the Wheelbarrow Prize with MSU Press (Feb. 2026). Her other books include Breath on a Coal, winner of the Halcyon Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Living with Wolves from Split Rock Press. She is co-creator of the forthcoming Rocky Mountains Literary Field Guide: Art, Ecology, and Poetry (Mountaineers Books, spring 2027). Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, a MacDowell fellowship, and poetry prizes from Narrative Magazine, The Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry, and a Terrain.org poetry prize. This program is supported by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry

Saturday, Sept. 26, 2-3:30 pm In-person in the CCA Conference Room Once a poem, at some point in the writing process, begins to come into focus, we devote our time to sharpening the focus that has emerged. But, what might happen if we resisted the urge to “finish” the poem? What if, instead, we paused and considered new directions suggested by a line, a sentence, or a stanza--maybe even a syllable, vowel, or consonant! --that point toward a different focus, a different vision for the poem, a vision perhaps far from our original intentions? What might happen if we were to “dwell in possibility,” as Emily Dickinson suggests? In this workshop, we’ll take Dickinson as our guide. Grounded in a variety of contemplative practices, we’ll read a few poems by others and, informed and inspired by those, we’ll draft our own poems. We’ll identify new directions to explore, suggested by what we’ve already written. As we head in one or more of these new directions, we will gain a sense of how our work can grow in ways we may only discover by “dwelling in possibility”. Please bring your writing tools. Richard Chess is the author of four books of poetry, including Love Nailed to the Doorpost (University of Tampa Press 2017) and The Loneliest Monk (Orison Books, July 2026). His work has been included in Best American Spiritual Writing 2005 and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary American Jewish Poetry. He is a regular contributor to “Close Reading,” the blog hosted by SLANT Books. He was a founding member of the board of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry. He also served on the board of Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center. He is professor emeritus from the UNC Asheville, where, for 30 years, he directed UNC Asheville’s Center for Jewish Studies. www.richardchess.com This program is supported by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry

Visionary director Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow) presents a new kind of horror remake in TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA. Bursting with imagination and surreal wit, their latest genre-bending wonder affirms there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure. After years of slapdash sequels and waning fandom, the Camp Miasma slasher franchise is due for resurrection. And one young director (Hannah Einbinder) is more than up to the task. But when she visits the original's star, a now-reclusive actress (Gillian Anderson), the two women fall into a blood-soaked world of desire, fear, delirium — under threat from the spear-wielding Little Death. Winner of the Queer Palm, this transformative Cannes favorite leads its protagonists to true fulfillment, encouraging us to ask how we can reach our own.

Passengers on a scheduled train out of the mountainous European country of Mandrika are delayed by a day due to an avalanche, and thus get up close and personal with each other out of necessity in the only and what becomes an overcrowded inn in the area. Once the train departs, the one person who it is uncertain is on the train is a middle aged English governess named Miss Froy. Iris Henderson, who was vacationing in Mandrika with girlfriends before heading back to England to get married, is certain that Miss Froy was on the train as they were in the same compartment and they had tea together in the dining car, but all those people who can corroborate her story don't seem to want to do so. Iris' thoughts are easily dismissed as a possible concussion as Iris was hit over the head just before boarding the train. Iris will take anyone's help in finding Miss Froy, even that of an Englishman named Gilbert, a musicologist with whom she had a not so pleasant encounter at the inn the evening

A serial killer known as "The Avenger" is on the loose in London, murdering blonde women. A mysterious man arrives at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting looking for a room to rent. The Bunting's daughter is a blonde model and is seeing one of the detectives assigned to the case. The detective becomes jealous of the lodger and begins to suspect he may be the avenger.

While attending a medical conference in Paris, American physician Dr. Ben McKenna, his wife, retired musical theater actress and singer Jo McKenna née Conway, and their adolescent son Hank McKenna decide to take a side trip to among other places Marrekesh, French Morocco. With a knife plunged into his back, Frenchman Louis Bernard, who the family met earlier in their bus ride into Marrakesh and who is now masquerading as an Arab, approaches Ben, cryptically whispering into Ben's ears that there will be an attempted assassination in London of a statesman, this news whispered just before Bernard dies. Ben is reluctant to provide any information of this news to the authorities because concurrently Hank is kidnapped by British couple, Edward and Lucy Drayton, who also befriended the McKennas in Marrakesh and who probably have taken Hank out of the country back to England. Whoever the unknown people the Draytons are working for have threatened to kill Hank if Ben divulges any information ...

Provincial lord of the Arioka Castle, Murashige Araki, rebels against tyrannical despot Oda Nobunaga, and makes a stand at his stronghold castle. He decides to take siege but is subsequently surrounded by Oda’s forces, leaving its denizens isolated and in need of allies. With the sensitive support of his wife Chiyoho, Murashige struggles to keep his hot-blooded retainers in check, while also protecting the castle and its people. One day, a young samurai is murdered within the fortress with the mysterious killer unknown. A succession of bizarre incidents follows. The suspects are Murashige’s close retainers and the people inside the Arioka Castle’s land. Outside, enemy troops lie in wait. Inside, traitors lie to conceal themselves. As suspicion runs rampant, Murashige seeks the help of a prisoner in his dungeon—dangerous master tactician Kanbei Kuroda—to solve the mysteries.

A wealthy but neurotic Southern belle finds herself trapped in the hideout of a gang of vicious bootleggers. The gang's leader lusts after her, and is determined not to let anything stand in the way of his having her.