EL SIGNO VACÍO – THE EMPTY SIGN
Kathryn Ramey | USA, Puerto Rico, France 2023 | 75 min. | English, Spanish with English subtitles
WEDNESDAY, 22.05. | 5:30 pm
Kino De France, Saal 1 | TICKETS
Austrian premiere
‘This is not your land, es de nosotras’ is emblazoned as graffiti in the streets of Puerto Rico and written into the history of the country. A steady stream of images and found footage from the last hundred years reveals how carefully crafted fictions of US ‘democracy’ and ‘debt’ mask continues capitalist and military rule. Tourism, agriculture, and propaganda films, as well as contemporary portraits of artists, activists and Puerto Rican punk rock converge in resistance to the US occupation of Puerto Rico.
EL SIGNO VACÍO encourages us to question the sovereignty of interpretation of historical narratives and invites us through experiential filmmaking to reflect on modern colonialism, its mechanisms and responsibilities.
Director: Kathryn Ramey
Cinematography: Kathryn Ramey
Editing: Kathryn Ramey
Sound: Joel Rodriguez Vargas
Production: Kathryn Ramey / rameyfilms
SCREENINGS & AWARDS
WORLD PREMIERE
Havana film festival aka Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano en Habana, CUBA, 2023
OFFICIAL SELECTION 16mm Harkat Film Festival, Mumbai India, 2023
(MICE) 19ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA ETNOGRÁFICO, Santiago de Compostela (A Coruña) Spain, 2024
(GIEFF) German International Ethnographic Film Festival, Goëttingen, DER, 2024
HONORABLE MENTION – BEST EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE: SEVIFF • Sevilla Indie Film Festival 2024, Sevilla, Spain
BIOGRAPHY
Kathryn Ramey (1967), Vancouver, WA / USA. A Guggenheim and Creative Capital fellow with an MFA in film and a PhD in anthropology who has made over a dozen films and installations, contributed numerous articles to anthologies and journals and written the essential text “Experimental Filmmaking: BREAK THE MACHINE” (2015). Her films operate at the intersection of experimental analogue processes and ethnographic research and are characterized by hand-processing, optical printing, and animation. She has screened at several festivals such as Toronto, Ann Arbor, TriBeca, Ji.hlava, and 25fps, among others.
SAYOR (short, 2022)
LIMEN (short, 2019)
ENOLA EM EVAEL/LEAVE ME ALONE (short, 2016)
WEST What I know about Her (short, 2012)
Flying A (WEST # 1), (short, 2010)
Yanqui WALKER and the Optical Revolution, (short, 2009)
