The year is 1954. Jim Velasquez and Pete Guerrero are partners
working at the Central Intelligence Agency. Accidentally, Jim uncovers a top secret
file implicating the CIA’s involvement in the Iranian coup d’etat in 1953. In
order to strategize how to bring the matter to light, he decides to ask Pete
for help in executing his plan. Unbeknown to Jim, Pete is more than aware of
what’s going on. When Pete learns of Jim’s intentions, he asks him to arrange a
secret hotel meeting to discuss the matter.
The plot takes an unexpected turn when a deeper secret is revealed during their hotel rendezvous.
At the film’s climax, both Jim and Pete decide what course of action to take in
order to resolve their respective disclosures. How the two men choose
dramatically different measures to stay true to their allegiances, both
personal and political, builds to a disturbing finale.
OVERDRIVE
OVERDRIVE juxtaposes three separate stories to create an episodic narrative that is simultaneously circular and self-reflexive. Cold , set in 1957, investigates the relationship of masculinity, war and patriotism through the eyes of a closeted gay male CIA agent. Remote Control uses the relationship of two male siblings to interrogate the paternal and patriarchal order of a Latino family. Set in 1968, the two brothers confront, in a farcical, out-of-controlbrawl with each other, their respective “black/white” views of the world. The Sample uses the backdrop of the Los Angeles garment district in 1975 and the lives of a Mexicana sample maker and her daughter to explore assimilation, labor and the family.
FLOOD SERIES
Eugene Rodriguez has a way with words: cutting to the chase, revealing what has been hidden, and interrupting conventional practices and belief systems. From the start, his focus has been on the Latino family, but in a way that stands out from other Latino visual and media artists, whose work often locates political resistance within cultural traditions. In Straight, No Chaser (1995), for example, Rodriguez combines the American avant-garde film (and Warhol in particular) with the Mexican telenovela in order to produce a stylistic hybrid suitable to his subject: redefining the traditional notion of the Latino family in order to account for gay desire, sexuality, and relationships. (...)
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Buried and Unseen (Part I), 1997.
Buried and Unseen is a video trilogy that follows two Latino gay men, George and Dario, experiencing what it means to build a long-term relationship. George is an artist and Dario is a lawyer. They are both in their mid-thirties.
In the first segment, chiaroscuro, George is awakened in the middle of the night by a dream. The dream consists of juxtaposed scenes of his working class childhood in Southern California and teenage memories of when he walked/worked the streets of Hollywood. When George is awakened, he looks at his lover, Dario, and is frightened by the implications of the dream. As he tries to go back to sleep, he begins to think about their relationship and what they mean to each other. Will they remain together or will they separate?
What follows is an attempt to shed some light on two gay men trying to find their own way to express feelings for each other and the difficulties they encounter. They have been together for six months and are feeling a need to connect in a closer way, but don’t know how. The dream is a catalyst for both of them to express the conflicts in their relationship, their insecurities, past histories, as well as the parallels to their families.
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Buried and Unseen - Severence (Part II), 1998.
The second segment, severance, finds the relationship between George and Dario in turmoil. Three months have passed since we last saw them and their relationship is beginning to fracture. The episode opens on George having dinner with a friend, Bobby, while Dario dines with his friend, Victor. The narrative parallels their conversation, cutting back and forth between the two dinners. In the course of the video we see how different George and Dario view their relationship and their obstacles to intimacy.
The Middle of Somewhere is an experimental narrative which investigates media representation of Latinos, the mythologies of the melting pot and global citizenship in the 21st Century.
The Vanishing Point, 2005
Eugene Rodriguez new experimental narrative video is coming soon...
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