Although Guillermo Arriaga wrote the trilogy of films directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel) that are among the most lauded of the past decade, he is not fond of being called a "screenwriter." His preferred title is "writer" or "escritor," indicating the continuity between his writing for the page and the screen. Arriaga had been a successful author for quite some time before he started writing screenplays, and, in a year in which our Cinema Arts Festival is devoting special attention to film and the literary arts, we are celebrating Arriaga's talents as an exemplary contemporary author.

On Thursday, November 12, Nuestra Palabra will join the Festival in hosting a reading by Arriaga from his novels and other texts as well as a discussion about his approaches to writing across media. That night, Arriaga will introduce Amores Perros, the film that first brought him worldwide acclaim. Finally, on Friday, November 13, Arriaga will be there for a screening and discussion of Arriaga's greatest screenplay, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, a modern classic set on the Texas-Mexico border.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12

Amores Perros
9:45 PM  |  Angelika Film Center, Houston TX

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13

Panel: Writing for the Page and Screen with Guillermo Arriaga
3:00 PM  |  Alabama Theater, Houston TX

THE MAKING OF A MODERN TEXAS CLASSIC:
THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA

Cinema Arts Festival Houston intends to honor each year an important Texas film production and explore its creation in depth. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which earned Best Actor and Best Screenplay awards at the Cannes International Film Festival, is a Texas film through and through. It is one of the most profound films ever made about the charged Mexican-American border, and is a collaboration of residents of San Antonio (director Tommy Lee Jones) and Mexico City (writer Guillermo Arriaga).

The film was based on the 1997 murder of Esequiel Hernández Jr., an 18-year-old American citizen, shot by fully camouflaged Marines hunting drug smugglers a few hundred yards from his family's home. A grand jury and congressional investigation led to no murder charges being pressed, but it did lead Tommy Lee Jones to condemn the injustice with the most powerful tool at his disposal: the art of filmmaking.

The film was shot on location in West Texas in late 2004 at locations near the town of Van Horn and the surrounding Davis Mountains and the Big Bend area further south on the Mexican border. Arriaga noted, "I wanted this huge, lonely landscape to be as much a character as anybody else." Jones added, "It wasn't always easy to work with, but it gave us a hell of a performance." Working together with renowned cinematographer Chris Menges, Jones succeeded in capturing the border country in all its manifold forms—unrelenting desert sands, thunderstorm sunsets, towering cliff faces, and stretches of moonscape limestone.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a study of the emotional, psychological, spiritual, and social implications of having an international border running through the middle of a culture.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13

Three Burials of Melquades Estrada
6:45 PM  |  MFAH, Houston TX

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14

Filmmaking Workshop: Setting the Scene Workshop
1:00 PM  |  Alabama Theater, Houston TX