Identity is complex. These personal essays take us into other familiar places and settings but feel familiar.

In a small community in the Caribbean, a woman gives birth to her second child, during childbirth she dies ...

Yemaya

Farm worker Pablo Nimamac works five to seven months a year on a vegetable farm in Quebec since 2008. The rest of the year, he runs his family's strawberry farm in Guatemala, which he has been able to expand with the fruits of his labor abroad. Proud of his Mayan Kaqchikel origins, Pablo welcomes us to his home, introduces us to the family he leaves behind year after year and tells us what it means for him to share his life between Guatemala and Canada.

Nu Ulew (My homeland)

Nania 1988 is an experimental autobiographic documentary essay that tries to think about identity and territory through Diana's history, an ecuadorian girl that grew up away from her country. the author of this project is at the same time the narrative voice from her personal experiences: after living all her life away, she comes back to her country and tries to integrate to her own society who finds diana a stranger, an outsider… this reality comes to crisis and question the basic –and accepted- ideas about identity and nationality, answering at the same time the vital questions of who we are and where we belong to. From an introspective form of telling diana´s story, one can visualize a more general view of reality common to many people whose migration has transformed into universal beings. The story questions us basic subjects: what does it really mean to belong to a place? and most important: is the territory that we live in what defines us as people? With a great combination of family documents, poetic resources and cosmic imagens, this documentary short film takes the public to an unusual trip and deep thoughts.

Nania 1988

Sana Que Sana is an exploration of healing as emergence from betrayal. It approaches a family's discovery of their patriarch's biggest secret amid his accelerating dementia; his absolution. This short film navigates death and honor in the context of religion, culture, shame, and devotion. Sana Que Sana utilizes both documentary and interpretive elements to illustrate the cyclical nature of forgiveness, while offering the underlying question: who here is seeking the healing? Approached from a perspective two generations removed, Sana Que Sana layers intimate voice-over interviews with my grandmother over 16mm and 35mm footage shot in both Cali, Colombia and my home of New York City.

Sana Que Sana

It took Mr. Espejo several years to get his Identity Document (ID); Elvis has to live with the wrong picture on his ID until he´s finally eligible to renew it; Dante wishes he could have the awajun “ornaments” on his ID picture, but the government doesn’t allow it. In this short documentary we learn the stories of delays, tribulations, and confusion involved in getting a Peruvian ID as told by members of the ancient Awajun community in the Peruvian Amazon. The testimonies reflect their feelings about identities and the different ways of being Peruvian in a country with around 45 different languages. “Aents: Identity and Territory” underscores the relevance of different Peruvian identities in the context of 200 years of the democratic republic.

Aents: Identity and Territory

Testimonials of three Awaijun men reflecting on their feelings about identity and the different ways of being Peruvian in a country with around 45 different languages.

A dreamlike portrait of Barcelona, shot in double exposure on reversible 8mm film, is interwoven with an intimate “I remember” voice, creating a collage of memories à la Brainard and Pérec. The director’s personal micro-memories, as a woman, filmmaker and immigrant, evoque the spirit of a time that may never return, constructing a communal heritage. The act of making this film, involving the haphazardous double exposure and the fragility of the physical film itself, becomes a metaphor for the perpetual tension between memory and oblivion.

Water and more water

A film made through a collage of current and archive images in Super 8 and digital, set in a Copacabana as an epicenter of intercultural, social and sensory experiences. An experimental work narrated by the significant speech of the poet Fausto Fawcett, and sonorized by the musician Arnaldo Brandão.

Kopacabana

United States of America

Home & Identity Shorts

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A showcase of films by Latin American, Spanish, and US Latino filmmakers. All genres though opting for more independent films and provocative social justice documentaries.

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