JUSTICE MATTERS, DC4Reel
East Coast Premiere

The Most Beautiful Deaths in the World

Las Muertes Más Bellas del Mundo

QUIQUE AVILES, ELLIE WALTON
USA, 2024
71 minutes, Color
Official website

In Person: Directors Quique Aviles and Ellie Walton

Beginning in 1980, the brutal 12-year, U.S.-backed war in El Salvador brought tens of thousands of refugees to Washington, D.C. This mass migration leant vibrancy to the city's culture and made the corner of 15th and Irving Streets in NW D.C. the epicenter of an artistic movement that continues to inspire succeeding generations of "Wachintonian" artists. Famed Flamenco performer Edwin Aparicio, photographer and multi-media artist Muriel Hasbun, Afro-Caribbean musician Ivan Navas, and punk rocker Alirio "Lilito" Gonzalez (Machetres) use their craft to explore truths their Salvadoran families lived, including the traumas that made exiles out of the lucky ones. In the beautiful title poem, poet/performer Quique Avilés narrates his desire to reclaim his dead, a quest that takes him back to Salvador's rural and mountain villages. This film offers a fascinating angle on D.C., on a vibrant diasporic culture, and on the particular joy of making art out of sorrow.—Judy Bloch

In English and Spanish with English subtitles