Liborio by Nino Martínez Sosa
The Philadelphia-based BlackStar Film Festival is returning this year with an impressive lineup of films by Afro-Latinx and diasporic Latin American filmmakers addressing a wide variety of topics in a multitude of styles.
An annual celebration of the visual and storytelling traditions of the African diaspora and global communities of color, the BlackStar Film Festival prioritizes visionary work that is experimental in its aesthetics, content, and form and builds on the work of elders and ancestors to imagine a new world, uplift, and create spaces for Black, Brown and Indigenous artists working outside the confines of genre.
The 2021 edition is no different as it prepares to present thirteen works on Latinx topics by majority Latinx and Latin American filmmakers, including two feature documentaries, one narrative feature, six documentary shorts, three experimental shorts, and one narrative short representing a wide cross-section of the region from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Panama, and Venezuela, to the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Haiti, and Guadeloupe. This year’s festival will also present four works by U.S. Latinx filmmakers, including two experimental shorts, one music video, and one short narrative.
The BlackStar Film Festival is taking place from Wednesday, August 4 to Sunday, August 8, 2021 in-person and online. Read on for a complete list of this year’s Latinx and Latin American titles:
In the feature-length section, this year’s viewers will have the chance to catch the World Premiere of Mexican director Jorge Díaz Sánchez’s moving documentary Strength / Ska´yaa; Dominican director Nino Martínez Sosa’s narrative feature Liborio; and Colombian director Viviana Gómez Echeverry and Colombia-based German director Anton Wenzel’s Between Fire and Water / Entre fuego y agua.
Díaz Sánchez’s Strength follows Sergio, who arrives in the Oaxaca highlands to create a project for Indigenous kids to discover their capacity to dream through basketball. Through studying, effort, and willpower, they struggle to break the cycle of poverty around them and defeat their most powerful rival: hunger.
Martinez Sosa’s Liborio takes us to the early 20th century. A peasant, named Liborio, disappears in a hurricane and returns as a prophet. He says he’s been given a mission: to bring the good and take away the evil, curing the sick and teaching by example. People begin to congregate by his side, and they move to the mountains to have total freedom and develop the dream of an independent community. Everything changes when the invading U.S. Marines want to disarm and disband the community. Liborio wants to avoid a confrontation but knows that they can’t run forever.
Between Fire and Water by Viviana Gómez Echeverry and Anton Wenzel
Gómez Echeverry and Wenzel’s Between Fire and Water follows the story of Camilo, the adopted son of an Indigenous couple of the Quillasinga tribe from the Cocha Lagoon, in the southwest of Colombia. He is the only Black person in his community and has always felt different. For years he has been wondering about his biological parents. The Indigenous Quillasinga governor gives him ayahuasca, a sacred remedy for spiritual guidance. During this transcendent experience, Camilo has visions of his biological mother. Supported by his adoptive father, Camilo embarks on a journey to find his true identity.
In the Documentary Shorts section, BlackStar will present Lamar Bailey Karamañites, Pascale Boucicaut, and David Felix Sutcliffe’s Miss Panama, telling the story of Gloria Karamañites who made history by becoming the first Black woman to be named Miss Panama, in 1980; Margaret Mair’s UXO, a brief composition of sublime yet forceful sound and image that captures the history of the island of Vieques, used for over 60 years as a bombing range by the United States Navy; Michèle Stephenson’s Elena, the latest short from the award-winning director which traces the story of Elena, the young protagonist who’s Haitian-descendent family stands to lose their legal residency in the Dominican Republic if they don’t manage to get their documents in time; Mikey Cordero’s The War Against Our Schools, a documentary project that explores the short- and long-term impact of school closings and privatization of education in Puerto Rico;
Susy Peña’s This is Forever, a moving story about an Indigenous Bolivian single mother who applies for a visa to remain in the U.K. while embarking on a journey of healing the wounds of her past; and Rachelle Salnave’s Madame Pipi, which follows the lives of Haitian bathroom attendants working the nightclubs in Miami (who’s tips contribute to more than one-third of the GDP in Haiti).
In the Experimental Shortsw section, make sure to catch Janah Elise’s Melting Snow, a short archival documentary exploring the coloniality of Puerto Rico’s labor force through the symbol of water; Luis Arnías’ Malembe, a rhythmic montage and mix of observational and surreal imagery that forges oblique linkages between the United States and Venezuela, conveying the strange dissociation of being uprooted, of living between places; abd Wally Fall’s Plowing the Stars, a dream-like sequence that follows a woman in Guadaloupe as she reflects on her life; along the way, the country looks empty to her and, slowly, memories of past lives come back to her.
In Nuevo Rico by Puerto Rican director Kristian Mercado Figueroa, the one narrative short in this year’s program, a brother and sister stumble upon a celestial secret that changes their lives forever and propels them into reggaetón stardom, but they soon discover that their newfound fame comes at a deep price.
In the U.S. Latinx section, don’t miss the World Premiere of Between Starshine & Clay by directors Brontë Velez & Mer Aldao. This ritual story remembers an evening on MLK Day ’19, where Lead to Life, a collective that transforms guns into the otherwise, to commemorate Black folks and land impacted by the wake of violence, transforms guns into the constellations above Oscar Grant as they appeared 10 years prior, on the evening he was murdered. Also playing is Christian Padron’s experimental short film Process, a meditation on grief and loss featuring music from Samora Pinderhughes; Naima Ramos-Chapman’s In Place of Monuments, an autobiographical experimental short that recalls Ramos-Chapman’s own experience of being arrested at gunpoint as a teen in 2005 (in its World Premiere); and Ingred Prince & Tshay’s narrative short, Gales., about Nurse Indigo who needs shift coverage to attend a steamy weekend (also in its World Premiere).
The BlackStar film festival begins on Wednesday, August 4, 2021. For complete information on this year’s lineup please visit blackstarfest.org.
