Private Project

Listening to Images_Escuchar Las Imágenes

This is a research-art documentary from 2022-2024
Panama City- Colon. Cali, Colombia.
This documentary is based on research-based fieldwork (Dec 2022-Jan 2023) where seven Panamanian families of West Indian descent agreed to meet and share their family memories about being migrant workers who, in the XIX century, built the Canal and the Railway for the Fruit Company (Between Costa Rica and Panama).
With a dedication to Tina Campt's (2017) book with the same title as this project, I invite, as the author does, to synthetically “listen” to family archives and photography of that specific historical time. It wishes to challenge the archives' classic visual and bidimensional repository meaning, creating plural sensory registers to represent his- and her-stories guarded in memories of private family albums.
Most of West Indian descent families have lost their family photos due to post-Canal construction transnational migrations, the USA occupation- war in Panama, and the forced displacements from the Area Repartida the families faced.
This audiovisual and poetic project develops the synesthetic and emotional memories they keep. It works poetically on the absence of material culture, such as the disappearance of photographs, the sense of loss, death, and pain, but also of joy the family members “listened” to when connecting with those absences.

  • Maica Gugolati
    Director
  • Maica Gugolati
    Writer
    writer
  • Paul Donneys
    Writer
    postproducer
  • Cesar Torres
    Writer
    Sound engeneer
  • Maica Gugolati
    Producer
  • Giana De Dier
    Key Cast
    interview co-maker
  • Maica Gugolati
    Key Cast
    interview co-maker
  • Marylin Malaika Martinez Cumberbatch
    Key Cast
    "Malaika"
    author
  • Marva Loretta Bushell Standard
    Key Cast
    "Marva"
    author
  • Ricardo Antonio Gonzalez Edward
    Key Cast
    "Ricardo"
    author
  • Ricardro Richards
    Key Cast
    "Ricardo"
    author
  • Ayshane Garcia
    Key Cast
    "Ayshane"
    author
  • Gicela Liliana Edwards Bushell
    Key Cast
    "Gicela"
    author
  • Lorenzo Webster
    Key Cast
    "Lorenzo"
    author
  • Nyasha Warren
    Key Cast
    "Nyasha"
    author
  • Thays Parfait
    Key Cast
    "Thays"
    author
  • Parfait Claveau
    Key Cast
    author
  • Project Type:
    Other
  • Genres:
    Documentary, art, ethnography
  • Runtime:
    59 minutes 32 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 30, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    4,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Colombia
  • Language:
    English, Spanish
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Maica Gugolati

PhD in anthropology of art and performance, artist, movie maker, and author. Feminist decolonial thinker. Scholars specialized in the Caribbean region, Black studies, and urban dance. Invisible disable dancer. Living between Cali, Colombia and Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.

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