Todo parecía posible (Everything Seemed Possible), is a new film from filmmaker Ramón Rivera-Moret. A live Q&A with the director and film historian Pedro Noel Doreste Rodriguez (Michigan State University) will follow.

In Everything Seemed Possible, Rivera-Moret traces the desire to imagine Puerto Rico anew through the internationally award-winning films produced in rural communities during the 1950s and 1960s by the Film Unit of the Division of Community Education (DIVEDCO), weaving together his own family histories with excerpts from the restored films.

Rivera-Moret reflects on Puerto Rico during a complex, utopian moment, highlighting the work of artists who drew from the daily lives of rural communities to craft films that resonated with the hopes and aspirations of the time. The 1950s marked a period of transformative change in Puerto Rico under Governor Luis Muñoz Marín, who launched a campaign to promote a modern, democratic vision of the country using cinema as a tool to inspire collective action.

Presented by: The Department of Art and Art History, The Department of Africana, Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies, and the Division of Inclusive Excellence.