LIMITED ENGAGEMENT (NOV. ONLY): “No se ve desde acá”

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LIMITED ENGAGEMENT (NOV ONLY)

Description
A spatial exploration of Miami and the endless pursuit of the American Dream, in an era of immigrant mass mobilization and the absurd dominance of wealth and border securocracy.

Runtime: 19 minutes 42 seconds
Best Viewed: Any Screen, Cinema Presentation, Projection

Director Biography - Enrique Pedráza-Botero
Enrique is a visual artist, filmmaker and media executive from Bogotá, Colombia. He was recently appointed to co-lead the Documentary Film Initiative at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School, working to support new research, analysis, innovation and provocation around core issues facing the documentary field.

His latest film, Alpha Kings, premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2023, and was acquired for distribution by The New Yorker. It was recently selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick. His work has screened at True/False Film Fest, AFI Fest, SXSW, Festival de Nouveau Cinema, Museum of Moving Image, Camden International Film Festival, among others. Enrique is currently working on his first feature-length project.

He served as Senior Manager of Sundance Institute's Documentary Film Program for six years, running the Edit and Story Lab, Music and Sound Design Lab, Art of Editing Lab, and leading the program’s international strategy in Latin America, and the Middle East. He also contributed to awarding $2 million/year in unrestricted grants to documentary filmmakers globally. He was Director of Programming for Ambulante Documentary Film Festival in its California edition, and has served as consultant and Juror in numerous selection committees for nonprofit institutions and media funds, including Sundance’s Documentary Fund, John Hopkins’ Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund, Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Points North Institute, Proimagenes Colombia, IMCINE Mexico and Concordia’s Fellowship Program. Enrique is currently part of the selection committee for the Tribeca Film Festival.

He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film & Television from the New York Film Academy and a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Film & Video from Stanford University.

Director Statement
No se ve desde acá aims to document the contrast held by communities arriving in the U.S. under starkly different circumstances. Much like the people it is about, the film is suspended in that stasis between arriving and finding belonging, moving associatively through observational vignettes in contemporary Miami, juxtaposed with a disruptive collection of video and sound archives that range as far back as the 1930’s, revealing an obsession with American individualism and alluding to an immigrant population that is in constant flux.

As major countries in Latin America shift to the left in reaction to vast inequality, uncertainty spreads across the immigrant population. The film begins with Gustavo Petro’s appointment as the first leftist President in Colombian history, as questions arise for immigrants about cultural identity, individualism and economic opportunity.

With a fragmented sonic landscape and interruptions of re-recorded political speeches, the film aims to play with pixelation to allude to the puzzling intensity of news media, bringing a sense of density and disorientation contrasted to the more calibrated way in which the rest of the contemporary spaces are shot. It was important to register the anxieties and political stress of the immigrant population, as well as the ways in which the immigrant population find community, while navigating processes of adaptability, solidarity and cultural assimilation.

I was interested in examining spaces that welcomed immigrants to the city of Miami, visualizing a stark contrast marked by differences in class and economic opportunity. Rather than only focusing on the current border crisis, I wanted to highlight the process of arrival for immigrants and the bureaucracy of the country’s legal system. I had been doing research about the real estate market in Florida, and the influence of the Latin American population in its massive growth, looking into people who could opt for quick investor visas if buying a house or creating a business, while the backlog of immigration cases pending at court for immigrants seeing asylum was at its highest – about two million cases in 2022.

Credits & Specifications
Enrique Pedráza-Botero (Director)
Faye Tsakas (Producer)
Enrique Pedráza-Botero (Producer)
Enrique Pedráza-Botero (Cinematography)
Dan Olmsted (Sound Mix)
Robert Arnold (Color Grading)
Sruti Visweswaran (Location Sound)
Natalia Almada (Consulting Producer)
Sara Archambault (Consulting Producer)

Completion Date: June 11, 2024
Country of Origin: Colombia
Country of Filming: Colombia, United States
Language: English, Spanish
Shooting Format: Digital
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Student Project: Yes - Stanford University