EL SIGNO VACÍO (the empty sign) is a feature-length anthropological journey through the United States’ occupation of Puerto Rico. Mixing over a hundred years of found footage – tourism, agricultural and propaganda films – with contemporary portraits of local artists and activists and Puerto Rican punk rock/noise music, the film reveals how carefully crafted American fictions of “democracy” and “debt” obscure a capitalist and military domination that is ongoing. Moving between old and new; Spanish and English; between paradise and environmental destruction the EL SIGNO VACÍO becomes a “re-educational” film challenging the viewer to re-think about modern colonization, its mechanism and responsibilities.
Supported by Creative Capital, LEF New England Moving Image grants, Puffin Foundation, Harvard Film Studies Center, Yaddo Artist Retreat, Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, the Marble House Project, a Light Cone/Atelier 105 residency and Emerson College.
WORLD PREMIERE: Havana film festival aka Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano en Habana, CUBA. – http://www.habanafilmfestival.com/official-selection
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 16mm Harkat Film Festival, Mumbai India
HONORABLE MENTION – BEST EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE: SEVIFF • Sevilla Indie Film Festival 2024, Sevilla, Spain
AGANTRO Award for Anthropology Excellence at the MICE 19th International Ethnographic Film Festival, Galicia, SPAIN The jury, composed by Iria Vázquez Silva, Víctor Villar Caamaño, and Iñigo Sánchez-Fuarros, members of the Galician Anthropology Association, highlighted the “excellent composition and editing job”, and the director “created a real style guide for field work in ethnographic description” with it.