Los Tres Antifaces: The First Body
From Peru to the United States, this experimental documentary tells a family’s diasporic history through television channels. A mother and brother are interviewed in Ohio, a grandfather’s last recorded song plays out from Peru, while a solo dancer recalls a familiar yet different routine. These memories flow altered by time from the perspective of a young filmmaker.
-
Angel RojasDirector
-
Angel RojasWriter
-
Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah SuiProducerMoving Room
-
Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah SuiDirector of PhotographyAsk the Birds, The Bread Knife
-
Project Title (Original Language):Los Tres Antifaces: The First Body
-
Project Type:Documentary, Experimental
-
Genres:Family, Diaspora, Immigration
-
Runtime:10 minutes 1 second
-
Completion Date:November 7, 2025
-
Production Budget:2,800 USD
-
Country of Origin:United States
-
Country of Filming:Peru, United States
-
Language:English, Spanish
-
Shooting Format:Digital
-
Aspect Ratio:16:9
-
Film Color:Color
-
First-time Filmmaker:Yes
-
Student Project:Yes - Clark University
Angel Rojas is a queer Peruvian-American filmmaker/video artist with Quechua roots whose work explores themes of diasporic memory, ancestral reconnection, and queerness as an emotion. Coming from a background of community organizing and mutual aid values, their artistic process contains a focus on anti-hierarchical and anti-capitalist ways of being. Through experimental film and video art, they craft works that document being in diaspora and the queer emotions that reside within that state of being.
The experimental documentary Los Tres Antifaces: The First Body is a short film that came out of my first visit to my parents’ hometown of Nazca, Peru in 2024. This archival-project-turned-experimental-documentary replays the confusing dichotomy of living in the diaspora and having recollections of a “home” that you’ve never known—an experience I based off of being the listener to many oral stories of Peru and Nazca in my childhood—while it threatens to get lost in the translation period of time.
The core themes I’m addressing through the film exist through the perspective of time spirality, a non-Western and indigenous thinking of time. Through this rethinking, this life is experienced with all our ancestors and all our descendants at once, feeling what they feel and vice versa, emphasizing connection over individualism. This indigenous way of thinking of time is a reflection of my family’s Quechua identity in the film.
The film is a living collage. The two interviews I solo-conducted of my mother and brother fit together like two sides of the same diasporic coin, resulting in scenes like the narration over close-ups of each television where they talk about their separate experiences of coming to / leaving Peru. Ultimately, their interviews serve as generational guides through this mixing of memories. During archival research of my family, I found one of the last songs my grandfather recorded on Youtube titled “Destino Equivocado” where he sings about never forgetting the love that will at some point be reunited despite where destiny will take them. His interludes in the film act as ancestral reminders that the homeland is also looking for the diaspora. I filmed my older sibling dancing to a cover of “Pio Pio” without prior rehearsal, as they used to perform traditional dance when they were a child, resulting in a scene that speaks to the familiar / unfamiliar memories that come with actively moving through the diaspora. I built a set of thirteen CRT televisions that replayed a collage of videos I recorded from my trip to Peru burned on DVDs, taking inspiration from Nam June Paik. Each television is meant to represent an altered memory of Peru that reflects the ever-changing nature of how I have experienced knowing the homeland up until my first visit.
The film is an expression of time spirality for me; I am always re-experiencing the generational traumas colonialism forced onto my ancestors.
