top of page
Tides - Reprise for Los Angeles (2014)
Synopsis

Tides is an experimental documentary that explores a hidden geography of Los Angeles through the sites in which three foreign and politically committed artists, the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, the Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros and the Filipino writer Carlos Bulosan, worked and lived during the decade of the 1930's.

Director's Statement

When I moved to Los Angeles, California, the city I had imagined confronted the cityscape I was now immersed in.

 

I realized that the city thrives in ethnic and cultural diversity constantly overlooked in its normative histories. To counter this phenomenon, those on the margins have become the keepers and producers of their own histories, knowledge that for a long time has been thought of as nonessential in understanding contemporary Los Angeles. These histories remain known mostly by the ethnicities that produce them.

 

Far away from Mexico, how could I, as a foreigner, claim a place for myself?

 

Tides could be understood as a map that pinpoints the sites where these artists lived, produced, and showed their art. The lives and works I gathered in this documentary compose a diverse and fragmented panorama about social struggle and art in Los Angeles. Taking into account the scope chosen, I do not intend depth but some amplitude, in an attempt to break with the historical lineages imposed to these particular histories. My desire is to contribute to an expanded cultural geography of the city.

    bottom of page