This year, Cinemaissi 2009 has chosen the title Peoples in Movement, with twenty award-winning films from twelve different countries presenting a broad picture of the discussions taking place on the South American continent, on issues related to migration, identity, and forms of democracy. The documentaries shown all examine peoples’ movements from a different perspective.

Below we give you a taster of what some of this falls best films have to offer.

Migration, whether voluntary or forced, and whether in one’s own country or a foreign one, leads one to question one’s own identity and belonging. Migration can also bring forth the individual’s story against a backdrop of broader historical conflict issues and development paths. Juan Martin Cueva’s Este maldito país looks at Ecuadorians’ identity as a mélange of indigenous people, but also as African and European descendants. The Panamanian Ana Mislov’s Curundú tells us about a photographer who documents their home street block, the life in the slum area of Curundú. The Chilean Juan Diego Spoerer’s documentary La sombra de Don Roberto questions whether a refugee escaping the cruelty of their dictatorial country might find solace in voluntary isolation. Ishtar Yasin’s El camino tells of children who embark on a journey from Nicaragua to Panama, in search of their mother who had left in the hope of finding a better life.

The forming of identity varies from country to country, and sometimes aspects arise only once one has left the home country. In Maya Da-Rin’s documentary Margem , we see how it is possible to be Brazilian, Peruvian and Colombian, all at once. Gabriel Stagnaro’s Un santo para Telmoshows what happens to a Brazilian who plays football in Argentina.

If football inspires people’s team spirit, passions and money, then mining seems to have similar effects as well. What is it that gets Chileans, Argentinians and Canadians to destroy the enormous Pascua Lama glacier on the foothills of the Andes? Gabriela Yepes’s Danzak tells the story of the hundreds of years old Taki Onkoy, the first cultural opposition movement. Today, the Danzak, or the “scissor-dancers”, continue to actively maintain this live tradition.

There is today a heated debate in Latin America about what democracy is in its different forms and contents. La minaccia, by Luz and Bellino, is a research trip to Chavez’s Venezuela, and touching on the same topic, El estado de las cosas by Loayza, takes us to Bolivia. The conflicts that have taken place within these countries, together with global changes, have left deep wounds on the continent. The word “minga” comes from the quechua language, and relates to communal labour. Yet, for the Cauca indigenous peoples of Colombia, minga means the rebuilding of the country after the destruction of a long civil war. Jorge Collantes’ Nipón 96: Después del ruído documents Peru’s victims of violent conflict and their hopes for the future. In Gustavo Lasier’s documentary Colegiales, asamblea popular , the local population of Buenos Aires’ Colegiales district create a local democracy.

The Brazilian MST (Movimento Sem Terra, or Landless Peoples’ Movement) has been referred to as the world’s most dynamic social movement. It consists of one and a half million rural farmers without land, who in Gibby Zobel’s documentary struggle for a more fair and just future for Brazil.

Welcome to our film festival!

Laura Gazzotti