Lungta

Alexandra Cuesta cites eternal wanderer Henri Michaux as one of the inspirations for her first feature. It’s curious, then, that the opening sequence of Territorio (the first film Cuesta shot in her native Ecuador) shows us a boat heading for the shore. It is very likely that, to Cuesta, the image of water hides the same connotation than it does to the author of “The Sea of Breasts”: returning home, being sheltered in the mother’s womb. Without detouring from the formal approaches of her previous work, Cuesta traces a journey that crosses the country from north to south, drawing a human cartography in which the aim is to achieve an impossible balance between the foreign traveler’s gaze and the earnest familiarity of those who return home temporarily.

An afternoon exercise of piecing together minimal details for safekeeping: my grandmother's garden, her music, recipes for well-being.

An autobiographical collection of instances that describe the action of living in a post-industrial landscape, the end of a love story and the politics of what is private and what is public. The camera, as a device for recording and recollection, goes beyond evoking the past to become a tool for the appearance and exorcism of spectres.

Shot in Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles, this transitory neighborhood resonates with the poetry of local resident Mapkaulu Roger Nduku. Verses about endings, looking and passing through open up the space projected. A string of tableaus gather a portrait of place and compose a goodbye letter to an ephemeral home.

Moving from east to west and back, the windows of a bus frame fleeting sections of urban landscape. Throughout the day, images of riders, textures of light and fragments of bodies in space come together to weave a portrait in motion; a contemplative meditation on public transport in the city of Los Angeles. Isolation, routine and everyday splendor, create the backdrop of this journey, while the intermittent sounds of cars construct the soundscape.

Memory and identity are observed through textures of everyday life in a portrait of Jackson Heights, home to a large Latin American immigrant population. Images of street, people, and daily rituals render passing of time in a neighborhood that becomes a mirror not just of another place, but also of the past. The meaning of home is explored and built upon collective recollection.

A meditative film and counterpart to the eponymous album by composer and violinist Bryan Senti, interweaving neoclassical and indigenous Latin American music. Memories document something distant yet also familiar. Manu: A Visual Album is a documentation of the landscapes and traditions of Ecuador that are on the verge of disappearing. Filmed entirely on 16mm, it explores the highlands of the Andes, the coast of Ecuador and parts of the Amazon.