Territorio I 2016 I 1 h 06 m I Doc.
EFFNY2017 I JURY SPECIAL MENTION
​
​
Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Alexandra Cuesta I Cinematography Alexandra Cuesta.
SYNOPSIS BY FRAN GAYO – BAFICI PROGRAMMER
​
Alexandra Cuesta quotes eternal wanderer, Henri Michaux as one of the inspirations of her first feature. It’s odd, then, that the opening sequence of Territorio (the first film Cuesta shot in her native Ecuador) shows a boat heading for the shore. It is very likely that, to Cuesta, the image of water hides the same connotation that it does to the author of “The Sea of Breasts:” returning home, being sheltered in the mother’s womb. Without detouring from the formal approaches of her previous work, Cuesta traces a journey that crosses the country from north to south. In so doing she draws a human cartography in which the aim is to achieve an impossible balance between the foreign traveler’s gaze and the earnest familiarity of those who return home temporarily.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
​
ALEXANDRA CUESTA (b.1980)
Filmmaker and visual artist. Lives and works in the United States and Ecuador. Cuesta’s films document the public sphere and are in dialogue with experimental and avant-garde film traditions. Her cinematic approach emphasizes formal considerations of image making along with an improvisational and associative process. Her films have screened at several film festivals, including: New York Film Festival, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum -New York, Viennale International Film Festival - Vienna, Centre Pompidou - Paris, Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes – Mexico City, Museum of Contemporary Art – Los Angeles, Habana Film Festival, BFI Film Festival - London, Queens Museum of Art, International Film Festival Oberhausen. She recently had solo exhibitions at Kino Palais and the BAFICI Film Festival in Palais and the BAFICI Film Festival in Buenos Aires, the Valdivia International Film Festival in Chile, Off Off Camera in Courtisane - Belgium, Anthology Film Archives in New York, and more. She has an MFA in Film and Video from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design. She teaches in the Cinema Department at Binghamton University – State University of New York.