Traversing A Continent With Documentaries

Griselda Moreno and Viviana García, two Argentinean women in their mid-30s, have been taking their love of films and documentaries all over Latin and Central America in a journey of some 80,000 km, the first phase of which will end later this year.

Moreno and García set off from the southern Argentine city of Córdoba on 28 June 2008 in a station wagon with a collection of films and screening and audio equipment. The Cine a la Intemperie (open air cinema) project was about “dreaming with eyes open”, that screening these films and documentaries would allow people to reflect on their social reality and help them “share social, political and cultural practices in the search of a new social identity in Latin America”.

The initial money came from García. Her father was among the many who “disappeared” in 1977. She bought a flat with the money she received as compensation and rent it out. This paid for half the costs. They have raised the other half from diverse sources while, on the road, they have lived off the hospitality and solidarity of ordinary people.

The open-air cinema very deliberately goes to isolated communities and people living away from the big cities. They speak to the communities and, depending on the experience of the hosts, choose from among the films/documentaries that would match their experience or most inspire them. Some of their preferred themes are human rights, gender equality, working class struggles, the fight against marginalisation, environment and caring for natural resources. They like to show documentaries that are simple but with a strong narrative and aesthetically pleasing and follow it up with debates and discussions.

They are in Venezuela now, penniless, having travelled all the way to Mexico’s “wall of shame” with the United States and back and expect to spend the next three months in Brazil before returning to Argentina via Paraguay and Uruguay. This is the first stage of the project, they say, and expect to keep going afterwards, though they haven’t worked it out. At the moment, they are more worried trying to raise money for new tyres.