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 2501 Migrants is a full-length documentary that explores questions of art, the artist, and indigenous community in the context of global migration. Daily, thousands of primarily poor and young indigenous Mexicans abandon their native homes. They start voyages to the “first world” in search of jobs and the hope of a brighter future--or, indeed, any economic future at all. In their wake, they leave behind the hollow footprints of a cultural and domestic abandonment. 2501 Migrants illustrates this through the story of Alejandro Santiago, a middle-aged artist and family man from Oaxaca, Mexico. Relatively affluent and erudite, Alejandro returns home after a brief self-exile in France. But upon arrival to his native Teococuilco, he is struck by what he perceives as a virtual “ghost town.” Alejandro experiences, first hand, the reality that Oaxaca has emerged as one of Mexico’s leading “exporters of human labor” to the United States. Inspired by this, he decides to create a monumental installation art piece: 2,501 life-size sculptures— an homage to each individual migrant who left his village.
Migrants succeeds in posing one of the central questions of our times: Is Alejandro Santiago an example of an “artist as catalyst for social change?” Is 2,501 Migrants an original model for creating art around community building? Synopsis | Website |
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A documentary about the bi-national experience of indigenous immigrants from Mexico. Sueños Binacionales tells the stories of the Mixtec people who have been immigrating to California for over 30 years and the more recent stories of the Chatinos who have been immigrating to North Carolina for the past 10 years. This film was made with generous support from The Rockefeller Foundation
15-minute video about the accomplishments of a group of Mixtec women who have created a mini-credit union to provide emergency funds for their community. This video was made possible by: A grant from the Ford Foundation to the department of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
15-minute video reflecting a group of indigenous women who are organizing the exportation of their product, the nopal cactus, to the United States. This project was funded by the North American Regional Development of the University of California Los Angeles with a grant from the Ford Foundation.
A 16-minute documentary about Ulises, an Indian Zapotec native who is a gardener in Los Angeles, California. The documentary follows the voyage of Ulises and his family returning back to their community to host a traditional party in the Northern mountains of Oaxaca.