Not Your Cinema Paradiso Winner: The Conger Beasley Jr. Award for Nonfiction Selected by Jason Brown
Elisabetta La Cava The first time I heard Papá rage was the evening of the defecation incident. “They shit in my theater,” he said, pouring whiskey on ice. Cine Anauco had a partially open ceiling, a view of the stars. The half-roof was a grand idea for a theater, but shows were often interrupted by rain, or flying debris. This time, someone had defecated into newspaper cones, tossed them over the outer wall into the cinema. Literally—shit rained over moviegoers. He grabbed his worn-out deck of Neapolitan cards and began a game of solitaire. I recognized the details of his worry, the selfcontained misery. Word got around fast in our town, and the Anauco would soon shut down. No one would want to take that kind of chance. In Venezuela, we’d become movie people. It’s how my family committed to dinner at eight. I was no longer a city girl, nor my father a vessel for music. We’d joined a repetitive motion that circled, like film returning to the same scene, bearing the same emotion. My father came home every evening after ticketing the seven p.m. showtime. The table would be set by then, my mother in the kitchen preparing dinner. There was always the sound of keys at the front door, the unlocking of the deadbolt. I was eleven and entranced by my father—the way he engaged his hands, carefully placing his cards on the white tablecloth. Sitting