A continental congress of the Latin American Studies Association
The short and feature films presented in this exhibit are two excellent examples of the intense relationship that developed between Latin America and Asia, interactions marked by economic history and geopolitics that shaped lives, environments, and identities.
Dr. Claudia Ferman, Curator
Philippines, 2021
17’
English w/ Spanish subtitles
Distributor: Shireen Seno (shireenseno@gmail.com)
My mother used to tell me that our dining table was as old as I am. I wonder how old the tree was when it was cut down to be turned into our table. I am fascinated by this kind of transmutation from the natural world to the human one, and how a tree takes on new lives long after it has been cut down. This short film essay incorporates archival photographs from the American Colonial Era in the Philippines (1898–1946) to explore the sticky relationship between humans and nature and the entanglements of both with Empire. Taking plants and trees as starting points, it aims to reflect on the intertwined roots of photography and capitalism in the Philippines.
WATCH FILM
Argentina, Japan, 2025
86'
Spanish, Japanese w/ English subtitles
Distributor: Fernando Krapp (thunderkrapp@gmail.com)
The film traces over sixty years of Yasuo Inomata’s work, Argentina's most important landscape artist, creator of the Japanese gardens in Buenos Aires, and a key figure within the Japanese community in Argentina. Yasuo Inomata was born in a village in northern Japan and settled in Escobar, a town near Argentina's capital, in the 1960s. Starting in Escobar, the film retraces Inomata's career and reaches Japan, the city of Tokyo, and the town of Kamaishi, where Inomata was born. “Through a great protagonist like Inomata, the film observes everything Japanese that exists in Argentina and vice versa, revealing a case of secret cross-pollination discovered by cinema (BAFICI catalog).”
