October 18 – October 22, 2022 Walter Saxer’s SEPA: OUR LORD OF MIRACLES Limited Engagement Limited Engagement | Los Feliz 3
The American Cinematheque is proud to present the new 4K restoration of Walter Saxer’s long lost film, SEPA: OUR LORD OF MIRACLES, courtesy of Dekanalog. SEPA: OUR LORD OF MIRACLES, 1987, Dekanalog, 79 min, Peru, Dir: Walter Saxer. Having languished in a closet for more than 30 years, this newly rediscovered film is a unique documentary record of a bold and troubling experiment in criminal justice. A collaboration in between Walter Saxer, the producer of Werner Herzog’s FITZCARRALDO, and the Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, SEPA: OUR LORD OF MIRACLES observes an open-air penal colony of the same name, created in 1951 by the Peruvian government in the Amazonian jungle. Tasked with growing crops on these colonized lands, the inmates were permitted to roam freely, commune with their families, and dance and cook together, yet they soon found themselves in despair, abandoned and forgotten by their country and the world at large.