open sky / open sea / open ground

A group of musicians seem isolated from the world playing beautiful pieces. But in the darkness of the night, and from their minds, there are melancholies on earth, loves and families that they left behind. Their silences, their letters, these elements shape the poetic intention of this documentary.

Can a commune survive in the 21st Century? Engabao, a fishing commune in Ecuador, has historically been a site of land struggle between inhabitants and wealthy businessmen that threaten to convert collective lands into private property. Three founding members of the commune share their life stories, from which we discover that the struggle to survive, both individually and collectively, is one and the same.

How to make a film about an event for which there are no moving images? In my search to make a project about Ecuador's largest worker's strike, which ended in the massacre of hundreds or thousands of workers in 1922 (and of which there are no moving images), I turn to other work from that same year. Inspired by Hito Steyerl's essay "In Defense of the Poor Image", this found-footage essay-film reclaims the "poor image" in the context of past and present class struggles in Ecuador.