Puerto Rico: Filming Resistance and Survival followed by Q&A with filmmaker Juan C. Dávila Santiago and activist Marisel Robles Gutiérrez

For the last four years, Puerto Ricans have experienced challenges that will leave an indelible mark on their collective memory and history. In 2016, the U.S. government started to implement extreme austerity measures on the island and in 2017, the island experienced one of the most devastating hurricanes from the past 100 years. In 2019, weeks of massive street protests resulted in the successful ouster of former governor Ricardo Rosselló, the first governor to ever resign in Puerto Rico’s history. Over the course of this period, filmmaker Juan C. Dávila has been traveling back-and-forth to Puerto Rico to film these historic moments in Puerto Rican history. This event will showcase his most important work from this time.

Born, raised, and graduating from college in Puerto Rico, Dávila is able to provide a unique perspective through his camera lens. Filming under disaster conditions and getting tear gassed by Puerto Rican special forces, Dávila has risked his life many times to film this footage. The films showed at the event will reveal both an evolution in Dávila’s filmmaking craft, alongside the emergence of some of the most important resistance movements taking place in Puerto Rico.

As part of the program, we will screen a short film as well as a work-in-progress about his new upcoming long-form film project, which follows the resistance movement #SeAcabaronLasPromesas (The Promises Are Over), a movement that was born in 2016 in opposition to the new colonial measures imposed by the U.S. Congress over Puerto Rico. Dávila explores the organization of the movement as they occupy the streets, and engage in the necessary community work that is part of any social movement uprising. The films capture the voices of the young and unemployed, the elderly without pensions, the peasants without land, the communities without schools, and the survivors of over 500 years of colonialism. This advance screening of Puerto Rican films is not to be missed!