Charlie López

Loosely based on Ed Ruscha’s photography book “Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass”, this is an essay about swimming pools: the ideas we have of them and what they can mean for the culture and collective memories. A playful exploration between class dilemmas, work, leisure, sex, and tragedy.

A faux-documentary based on archival material about Guido Pérez Hopper, the late editor of the society pages of Costa Rica’s main newspapers in the 1950s and ’60s—the country’s official gossip columnist.Inspired by the figure of the cicisbeo, this short film explores the platonic complicity between non-heterosexual men and glamorous women, as well as themes of closeted queerness and social climbing in mid-century Costa Rican high society. This project is dedicated to the female friends I’ve had throughout my life, from childhood playmates to my very own mother.