Posts tagged ‘Documentary film’

Mar 22

Afro-Uruguay: Forward Together

Our March article for Being Latino focuses on Afro-Uruguay: Forward Together, a documentary film dedicated to capturing the Afro-Uruguayan experience.

Through the lens of the video camera, two U.S. filmmakers immerse themselves and their family in Uruguay, capturing history as a small country tackles a big issue.

I have a deep fascination and profound interest in Afro-Uruguayan culture. Perhaps, this desire to know more is because I know so little about the country many call South America’s best kept secret – Uruguay.

Through pure serendipity, I stumbled across a beautifully written blog entry, “Uruguay, Mon Amor” by Carolina de Robertis. As a Californian of white Uruguayan parents, Carolina expressed her sorrow about the recent beating of an Afro-Uruguayan activist Tania Ramirez by a white Uruguayan. The violent exchange has sparked a national discussion in Uruguay regarding race.

Carolina, author of two critically acclaimed books and her spouse, African American filmmaker Pamela Harris, have relocated their family to Montevideo, Uruguay. The couple is dedicating 2013 to chronicling through the film the wide-ranging Afro-Uruguayan experience. The genesis of the film, Afro-Uruguay: Forward Together was sparked by the California couple’s 2004 honeymoon to Uruguay and an introduction to Candombe during a Llamada (The Call). Candombe is a musical experience originating from the Bantu people of Africa who were enslaved in Uruguay. Percussionists play three large curved, barrel shape drums (repique, chico and piano).

During a Llamada, percussionists, artists, dancers and people from the community drum rhythmically moving from one neighborhood to another, responding to “The Call.”

Jul 3

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A Filmmaker’s Mission: Shining Light on Afro-Bolivian Invisibility

So, you want to make a documentary film. Should be pretty easy, right? Just grab your camera, shoot, edit and you’re done. Not so fast. The multi-layered processes associated with making a film tends to be a bit more complicated and peppered with lots of starts and stops, especially financing issues. Plus everything else imaginable and some things you just can’t imagine.

In the world of filmmaking, taking on the untold story, the unimaginable and the unthinkable are often what makes film projects so incredibly appealing. Capturing history — whether its life’s smallest moments or biggest events– is often the attraction.

New Yorker Sisa Bueno, an adventurous Latina of African descent and a self-described political junkie, is learning first hand about the starts and stops of filmmaking. As a graduate of the prestigious New York University Film School, Sisa admits, “I had the naïve thought that documentaries were much easier than traditional fiction films, which is completely untrue.” Read more