Films by Pedro Ángel Rivera Muñoz
DESALAMBRANDO
Based on the book Desalambrar by Liliana Cotto Morales, this film is a narrative about the social struggles for housing and land during the 20th century, known in Puerto Rico as rescates de terrenos and their relevance for our present. It is contextualized within the history of the lands appropriations from Spanish colonialism to today’s coloniality in the face of adversity. The film also highlights the impact on the island of social processes in the continental United States. The type of land seizures that it documents are a form of collective actions also found in countries of the Great Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Genre: Documentary
Rating: NR
Running Time: 1:00
PLENA IS WORK, PLENA IS SONG.
Plena is a Puerto Rican music and social happening with many analogies to the American Blues tradition. This film is our way of making a Plena in audiovisual images, based on oral story, sound, visual memories, and impressions. Featuring a generational cross-section of voices from the barrios where Plena was born and raised.
Plena connotes fullness of experience carved out of rudimentary materials and tools, transformed into percussive counterpoints stemming from the sounds of dried animal skins and scratching gourds, with lyrical and sardonic chorus of voices in call and response with a lead and changing storyteller's voice.
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“Un país sin cine documental es como una familia sin álbum de fotografías.” Patricio Guzmán
I started my teaching ventures at the Grover Cleveland High School in Buffalo, N.Y., where I taught courses about Puerto Rican history and culture.I then moved on to New York City to pursue my instinctive passion for documentary film. In New York City I was able to combine and develop my interests and skills as a teacher while becoming a filmmaker; a path I took while working with teenagers in media community action programs, particularly one known as the Young Filmmakers Foundation, where I met my future collaborator Susan Zeig. With Ms. Zeig, With Ms. Zeig I explored the possibilities of the experimental film movement and eventually we developed a long-term partnership that led to the production of Manos a la Obra: the story of Operation Bootstrap (1983) and Plena is Work, Plena is Song (1988). Both documentaries have been critically acclaimed. Manos a la Obra received a "Best non-print material Choice Award" while Plena is Work, Plena is Song was Winner of ‚ “Best Documentary” at the Festival de Cine San Juan and described as "...a well-crafted and enlightening recognition of a vivid folk art." In addition, both works have had a nationwide network of distribution throughout U.S.A. universities, as well as through PBS TV networks.
Through out these years of work in media and teaching, I have also engaged in multimedia work with performing artists and musicians. Since my return to Puerto Rico I have remained active in the making of documentary work and teaching, working with universities, public schools, labor unions and community cultural groups. My latest works have been focused on cultural concerns, particularly in the field of music and literature. However my main passion is still focused on the riddles of my homeland's collective stories. Over the past few years I have also added still photography as a more personal and intimate way of exploring the inner side of my collective experiences.
My latest film work entitled Desalambrando, is a documentary exploring collective memories about the land occupation movement in Puerto Rico during the early 70’s through the early 80’s.
Currently I am engaged in an experimental documentary project Buscando a Juana/In search of Juana, an exploration of a legendary afro descendant woman whose historical legacy contains many narrative riddles and silences which comprise the compass of our search.
On the other hand I am also engaged in exploring, on a collaborative basis, chronicles from our local communitarian struggles against the long term ravages over more than 100 years of colonial and capitalist exploitation of the natural and human resources of Puerto Rico, my homeland. The project entitled ¿Quién le debe a quién? : crónicas de la verdadera deuda. ¿Quién le debe a quién? would be produced in segments defined as chronicles of specific instances of struggles which problematize the current financial debt in the context of capitalist colonial dispossession of Puerto Rico’s natural and human resources.