Film screening with UIC Social Justice Initiative: “Special Circumstances”

Join the UIC Social Justice Initiative and New Day Films for a free screening of “Special Circumstances,” exploring memory, exile and resistance in post-dictatorship Chile. This documentary follows journalist Héctor Salgado on his return to Chile to confront the legacy of torture and political repression under Pinochet’s dictatorship. At 16, Salgado was arrested and tortured by Pinochet’s military. In this documentary, he confronts the military officers responsible for a system of mass arrests and torture that targeted 35,000 Chileans during the 17-year dictatorship, raising questions about the cost of impunity, the meaning of justice in the aftermath of mass violence and the politics of memory in a post-dictatorship society.

Following the screening will be a panel discussion featuring activist and historian Margaret Power and Northwestern professor and author Michael Zapata exploring themes of memory, exile, justice and the long aftermath of state violence — both in Chile and across diasporic histories.

RSVP at go.uic.edu/SpecialCircumstances.

Margaret Power is professor of history emeritus at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She is the author of seven books, including “Solidarity Across the Americas: The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party” and “Anti-imperialism and Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Salvador Allende, 1964-1973.” She is on the board of directors of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago and co-chair of Historians for Peace and Democracy. She lived in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship and worked with the Resistance (Nov. 1976-July 1977).

Michael Zapata is the author of the novel “The Lost Book of Adana Moreau,” winner of the 2020 Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction; finalist for the 2020 Heartland Booksellers Award in Fiction; and a Best Book of the Year for NPR, the A.V. Club, Los Angeles Public Library and BookPage, among others. He is a recipient of a Meier Foundation Artist Achievement Award and the DAG Prize for Literature for his upcoming novel, “The Census Taker.”  He is on the faculty of StoryStudio Chicago and the master’s of fine arts faculty of Northwestern University. As a public-school educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools to drop-out students. He lives in Chicago with his family.