Wexner Center offers politically themed films through rest of June

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's "The Survivors" is to be shown in the Film/Video Theater at the Wexner Center for the Arts on June 20.
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's "The Survivors" is to be shown in the Film/Video Theater at the Wexner Center for the Arts on June 20.

Besides exhibits, performances and other forms of artistic expression, the Wexner Center for the Arts — known as "the Wex" — offers expertly curated moviegoing experiences.

Located on the Ohio State University campus, the Wex is closing out June with four cinematic offerings, including two restored classics by the late Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, known for his keen observations of postrevolutionary Cuba.

In his 1979 drama, “The Survivors," an aristocratic family isolates themselves from the changes brought by the revolution. As time passes, they regress to increasingly older systems of political order. The film is to be screened at 7 p.m. June 20.

At 7 p.m. June 27, the Wex is to show "Strawberry and Chocolate," the first Cuban film with an openly gay lead and the last movie Gutiérrez Alea directed before his death in 1996. The Oscar-nominated hit examines the friendship between a gay, antiestablishment artist and a Castro-supporting student.

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Polish director-screenwriter Agnieszka Holland’s "Green Border" is to be shown at 7 p.m. June 28 and 1 p.m. June 29. In the 2023 film, refugees from the Middle East and North Africa trying to reach the European Union are pawns in a geopolitical crisis as they are lured by propaganda to the border between Belarus and Poland. The film was condemned by the government as “anti-Polish.”

Tickets for these three films are $7 for Wex members and adults 55 and older, $9 for the general public and $5 for students.

There's a $3 screening to enjoy at 7 p.m. June 21, but it's a secret — literally, since moviegoers won’t know the identity of the film until the opening credits roll.

All films are to be screened in the Film/Video Theater. To purchase tickets, visit wexarts.org/film-video.

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State University Wexner Center offers films with political themes