A 2009 Tribeca Film Festival award-winner, Here and There tells the story of what happens when a down-and-out saxophonist from New York moves to Belgrade and marries a woman he hardly knows, with orders to bring her back to the city for $5,000. It’s a tale of two cities where unexpected adventures and quirky romance occur. Serbo-Croatian and English with English subtitles. Admission is $6 for all University of Miami faculty, staff, alumni, and non-UM students; free for UM students. General admission is $8. The film screens on Friday, June 25 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, June 26 at 3:30 and 8 p.m.; and Sunday, June 27 at 3:30 and 8 p.m. For more information, visit www.cosfordcinema.com.

Directed by Juan José Campanella, The Secret in Their Eyes won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Benjamín is a former criminal court employee in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who wants to write a novel about a case he investigated in the 1970s, in which a young woman was brutally raped and murdered. He confides his intentions to a judge with whom he’s been secretly smitten for years, but she expresses reservations about the idea. Meanwhile, flashbacks recount the drama surrounding the case itself; ultimately, the two narratives converge in an emotionally complex conclusion. Admission is $6 for all University of Miami faculty, staff, alumni, and non-UM students; free for UM students. General admission is $8. The film screens on Friday, June 25 at 9 p.m.; Saturday, June 26 at 5:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.; and Sunday, June 27 at 5:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.cosfordcinema.com.

This Olmec mask, circa 1500-400 BCE, is among 175 Mesoamerican objects on view at the Lowe Art Museum this summer.

The University of Miami Lowe Art Museum’s summer exhibition will include objects from ancient Mexico through Panama that explore the complex relationship between art and the natural world. Jaguar’s Spots: Ancient Mesoamerican Art from the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami will be on view from June 26-October 31. A preview lecture and reception will be held on Friday, June 25 from 7 to 10 p.m. The lecture will be presented by exhibition curator, Traci Arden, University of Miami associate professor of anthropology.

The Lowe Art Museum has been collecting pre-Columbian art since 1956, and this comprehensive exhibition includes a selection of 175 objects from the permanent collection, many of which have never been displayed before. A very fine and rare codex style Maya vase with text and mythological imagery was acquired especially for this exhibition and will be a featured piece in the show and accompanying catalog.

The jaguar, panthera onca, is the third largest cat in the world and the most powerful predator of the New World tropics. During the time when the art in this exhibition was produced, jaguars roamed from the southwestern United States through Mexico and Central America and deep into South America. Today jaguars remain an endangered, poorly understood, and understudied large cat, but the ancient peoples who lived in Mexico and Central America prior to European contact had great respect for jaguars and were very familiar with their habits. Indigenous people from southern Mexico all the way to Panama chose to portray the jaguar in their artistic creations, and Olmec and Maya art are both known for their striking images of this fierce and beautiful creature. One of the themes explored in this exhibition is the close interconnection between the ancient peoples of Central America and the natural world in which they lived. Objects selected for the exhibition span a period of more than 2,000 years, from the earliest signs of social complexity in the Olmec area to the height of cosmopolitan urbanism in the Aztec capital. Throughout this massive span of time, the powerful creatures of the natural world remained a primary metaphor for artistic expression and the communication of social values.

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