University Library News Release
Date: October 29, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Jeanette Smith, NMSU Library, (575) 646-7492, jcsmith@lib.nmsu.edu
Film About "La Llorona" to be Shown November 3
A free public screening of a feature film about the La Llorona legend, "The Cry," is scheduled for Saturday, November 3, at 2:00 p.m., at NMSU's Creative Media Institute, Milton Hall Room 171 on the NMSU campus. The director, Bernadine Santistevan, will be on hand to discuss the film.
The film is the final program in the Big Read series, which celebrates themes in Rudolfo Anaya's novel Bless Me, Ultima and reading in general. The Big Read is sponsored by the NMSU Library, the Thomas Branigan Memorial Library and community partners.
"The Cry" is a contemporary supernatural thriller based on Santistevan's discoveries about "La Llorona," the crying woman. In the U.S. alone, an estimated 28 to 35 million Hispanics have grown up with stories of this vengeful ghost, the majority in California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Illinois.
According to the film's web site, http://www.lallorona.com/, the legend began with the companion of Hernan Cortés, La Malinche, who was said to have killed her children circa 1522, and was given the name "La Llorona."
The first documented appearances of La Llorona after La Malinche's death occurred in Mexico City in 1550. Sightings of La Llorona spread throughout the Americas, and modern women who killed their children such as Susan Smith, Bernadine Flores and Andrea Yates have also become known by the name.
Santistevan was born and raised in a remote area of Northern New Mexico. She studied engineering at Stanford University and business at the Wharton School of Business, and left her job as a venture capitalist in New York City to pursue her dream of making "The Cry."
Visit http://lib.nmsu.edu/bigread/ or call (575) 646-6925 or (575) 646-5792 for more information.
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