NCLAFF: Historias del Canal | Panama Canal Stories

Five shorts by Abner Benaim, Carolina Borrero, Luis Franco Brantley, Pinky Mon, Pituka Ortega-Heilbron. Panama. 2014. 106 min. PRAGDA SERIES

English and Spanish with English subtitles

This impressive, sweeping historical drama chronicles five incredible stories of people who helped build the famous canal and Panama itself. Spanning a century, from 1913 to 2013, the film weaves together the tales of five remarkable characters: Clarice, a young Jamaican laborer forced to choose between love and survival at the hands her American and British bosses during the Canal's construction; Jake, the son of an engineer who grows up in the "American zone" in 1950s Panama but who really wants to be with his Panamanian friends; José, a student caught up in the 1960s political unrest and his love for a pretty American girl, Lucy; Silverio, a chauffeur who drives visiting U.S. politicians and who is hired to spy on them by local political activists in 1977; and Clarice Jones, a jazz singer in New York City who discovers that her great-grandmother worked on the canal and decides to go to Panama to explore her roots.