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Synopsis:
The Killing of Diogenes is a story of a child,
P, an 8-year-old living in Guatemala City, and P's efforts to break free
from his dysfunctional family. In his home, P is surrounded by violence
and he lacks loving attention. Delfina, P’s mother, escapes reality
by compulsively crocheting. P’s father, Don Paco, has a drinking
problem, and is all but absent from the house. Whenever Don Paco returns
to their home, however, he creates an unpleasant scene, terrorizing P.
As the story develops, the narrative shifts between P and Don Paco, and
we witness the action from both points of view. The juxtaposition of these
narratives, marked by elements of fantastic excess, evokes the layered
realities of magical-realism, in which the marvelous coexists, unremarkably,
with the banalities of the everyday. The Killing of Diogenes
is adapted from the short story "...y Diogenes tambien.",
by Guatemalan author Augusto Monterroso, and is dedicated to his memory.
Utilizing a sophisticated visual language to describe multiple, overlapping
realities, The Killing of Diogenes recasts Monterroso’s
short story as an allegory of Guatemala during its thirty-year long civil
war, and the struggle of the urban ladino middle-class to come to terms
with the violence done against indigenous peoples in the countryside.
The violence of P's life reflects the violence of the civil war, just
as P's attempts to understand the violence in his family suggests the
ongoing effort to comprehend the horror of the war, and the more than
200,000 who were killed.
http://www.lamuertedediogenes.com |
