Screening of Ixcanul followed by a lecture on "The Mayans and the Myth of Collapse"
A drama by Jayro Bustamante, starring María Mercedes Coroy, María Telón, and Manuel Antún. 1 hour 33 minutes. Guatemala, France.
Maria, a 17-year-old Mayan girl, lives with her parents on a coffee plantation on the slopes of a volcano in Guatemala. She longs to escape her fate, the arranged marriage that awaits her. The big city she dreams of will save her life. But at what cost...?
Lecture: "The Maya and the Myth of Collapse" by Chloé Andrieu, archaeologist and researcher at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research). She has worked in Central America for twenty years and has been directing the excavation of a Mayan city in Guatemala since 2016.
Maya: the word evokes images of abandoned pyramids, fallen cities of gold exuding a sense of adventure. It suggests ancient wisdom, a connection to pristine nature imbued with magical powers. Centuries of fascination with vanished or distant cultures have fossilized around these four letters. The shadows surrounding their history have fueled the imagination. Each era has exploited the supposed collapse of the Maya to project its own narratives onto it. The ambition of this book is to lift the veil that has shrouded them for so long, a veil woven from our own fantasies. Far from clichés, this is the story of a people with a rich and still vibrant culture, whose struggles and ways of inhabiting the world could inspire us today.
Chloé Andrieu is an archaeologist and researcher at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research). She was Vice-President of the Société des Américanistes (2019–2024) and a member of the editorial board of the journal Ancient Mesoamerica (Cambridge University Press, 2022–2025). A specialist in Mesoamerican archaeology and the Mayan world, she has worked in Central America for twenty years and has been directing the excavation of a Mayan city in Guatemala since 2016. She recently published *The Mayans Have Not Disappeared* (Allary, 2025).
Maria, a 17-year-old Mayan girl, lives with her parents on a coffee plantation on the slopes of a volcano in Guatemala. She longs to escape her fate, the arranged marriage that awaits her. The big city she dreams of will save her life. But at what cost...?
Lecture: "The Maya and the Myth of Collapse" by Chloé Andrieu, archaeologist and researcher at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research). She has worked in Central America for twenty years and has been directing the excavation of a Mayan city in Guatemala since 2016.
Maya: the word evokes images of abandoned pyramids, fallen cities of gold exuding a sense of adventure. It suggests ancient wisdom, a connection to pristine nature imbued with magical powers. Centuries of fascination with vanished or distant cultures have fossilized around these four letters. The shadows surrounding their history have fueled the imagination. Each era has exploited the supposed collapse of the Maya to project its own narratives onto it. The ambition of this book is to lift the veil that has shrouded them for so long, a veil woven from our own fantasies. Far from clichés, this is the story of a people with a rich and still vibrant culture, whose struggles and ways of inhabiting the world could inspire us today.
Chloé Andrieu is an archaeologist and researcher at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research). She was Vice-President of the Société des Américanistes (2019–2024) and a member of the editorial board of the journal Ancient Mesoamerica (Cambridge University Press, 2022–2025). A specialist in Mesoamerican archaeology and the Mayan world, she has worked in Central America for twenty years and has been directing the excavation of a Mayan city in Guatemala since 2016. She recently published *The Mayans Have Not Disappeared* (Allary, 2025).
