A world premiere screening of Laredo-born filmmaker and TV producer Alfonso Gómez-Rejón’s latest feature film, “The Current War” is set for Wednesday, Sept. 25 at 6:30 p.m. at the Alamo Drafthouse.
Immediately following the screening, a Q&A session with Gómez-Rejón will take place.
The screening, a special TAMIU 50thAnniversary Celebration Event, serves as a fundraiser to benefit the Julio C. Gómez-Rejón, M.D. Endowment.
The film, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, and Nicholas Hoult, tells the story of Thomas Edison (Cumberbatch), an inventor who aims to bring electricity to Manhattan through a new type of technology.
His plans are thwarted by George Westinghouse (Shannon), who believes his partner, Nikolai Tesla (Hoult) holds a more advanced and superior technology to electrify the country. As Edison and Tesla vie to see whose technology will be utilized, their feud sparks one of the first corporate battles in the U.S.
The film also stars Katherine Waterston, Tom Holland, Matthew Macfadyen and Tuppence Middleton.
“My father was a physician with the soul of an artist,” said Gómez-Rejón, “Throughout my life, he exposed me to the arts and encouraged conversation about history, culture, art, and politics. He would be pleased to know that others are given the freedom to explore these topics because of him.”
The Endowment scholarship provides assistance to TAMIU students studying the fine and performing arts, as well as nursing and pre-med programs.
Gómez-Rejón was the director of “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” the 2015 Sundance Film Festival winner of the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award.
He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and his Master of Fine Arts from the American Film Institute. He began his career as a personal assistant before becoming a second unit director to Martin Scorsese, Nora Ephron and Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Gómez-Rejón has garnered Emmy nominations for his work as director and co-executive producer on TV’s American Horror Story: Coven and directed episodes of American Horror Story’s first four seasons, as well as the first four seasons of the musical comedy-drama series Glee.
A select amount of tickets remain as seating for the screening is limited. Tickets, priced at $100 each, can be purchased online at https://50.tamiu.edu/CurrentWarTickets.
For more information on the screening, contact Richelle Garcia at 956.326.2176, email txamiu50@tamiu.edu or visit offices in the Sue and Radcliffe Killam Library, room 260.
TAMIU is celebrating its 50th anniversary and its 25th anniversary at its north Laredo campus throughout 2019-2020. A dedicated website shares the University’s transformation from a hybrid upper-level university to a full doctoral degree-granting University. It includes a calendar of Anniversary events and more at tamiu.edu/50.
For more on the University’s story, contact the TAMIU Office of Public Relations, Marketing and Information Services at 956.326.2180, email prmis@tamiu.edu, click on tamiu.edu or visit offices in the Sue and Radcliffe Killam Library, room 268.
$100????!!!