Mexico | 2008 | 54 min | Spanish with English subtitles

Director: Yolanda Cruz

Washington, D.C. Premiere.

To the communities they leave behind, migrants leave hollow footprints of cultural and domestic abandonment in their departure for a brighter future. This documentary is about the response of artist, Alejandro Santiago, to the impact of migration within his own Oaxacan community in rural Mexico. He is struck by what he perceives as a virtual “ghost town” and the reality that Oaxaca has emerged as one of Mexico’s leading “exporters of human labor” to the United States. This inspires him to create an installation art project that aims to repopulate his village with life-size clay sculptures as a homage to each individual who left his village. Despite the solemn truth about border crossing, Cruz presents an upbeat vision with this story. A discussion with the director will follow the film.

Yolanda Cruz hails from the indigenous Chatino community of Oaxaca, Mexico. She is an experienced and formally trained producer/director with seven award-winning documentaries under her belt. Yolanda has received the support of numerous prestigious organizations including the Rockefeller foundation, Latino Public Broadcasting, and the Ford Foundation. Her work has screened to much acclaim at film festivals and museums around the world including the Sundance Film Festival, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Park la Villette in Paris, the National Geographic All Roads Film Project and the National Institute of Cinema in Mexico City. Yolanda holds an MFA from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. She is a fluent English, Spanish and Chatino speaker and harbors a passionate drive to increase the representation of indigenous people in the media.

Women Hold Up Half The Sky-Three women filmmakers present an expressive collection of works from a distinct perspective.

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