Aire Libre film screening + open house for community engaged humanities scholars

Thursday, October 9, 2025
4 – 6 p.m. | 314 Royce Hall

All community- and publicly engaged scholars and students in the humanities are invited to a community event with a screening of the film AIRE LIBRE. The event is cosponsored by the Division of Humanities, the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, and the Center for Community Engagement.

Admission is free; visit this page to register.

Visit this page to read more about the film.

AIRE LIBRE is a dance-based film that examines the disproportionate effects of toxic air and soil pollution on lower-income communities of color in LA County who live amid the heavy industry, infrastructure, and polluting facilities that underpin our fossil-fuel-based economy. AIRE LIBRE is a collaborative project led by artist Erin Cooney, bringing together East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Company, L.A.-based poet Rocío Carlos, and vocalists Carmina Escobar and Joung-A Monica Yum.

AIRE LIBRE features the stories of East Yard members and CONTRA-TIEMPO dancers, whose movement materializes the interconnectedness of our bodies with the air we breathe and the ground we tread. The footage documents a range of environments—from transportation hubs along the I-710 Corridor, including ports, freeways, and rail yards, to industrial zones comprising warehouse complexes, refineries, and oil derricks—as well as the residential areas and parks situated within these industrial and manufacturing landscapes. Exide Technologies, which has contaminated the soil with arsenic and lead and is associated with higher rates of cancer in nearby communities, figures prominently in the piece.

Find out more about AIRE LIBRE and the team behind its creation at erincooney.com/airelibre.

Screening duration: 30 minutes, followed by a panel discussion. Panel features Erin Cooney, assistant adjunct professor in the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies and visual artist; East Yard’s Honey Bizarro and Guadalupe Valdovinos; and Ana María Álvarez, director of CONTRA TIEMPO Activist Dance Company and associate professor in theater and dance at UC San Diego.

Reception to follow.