Ana Elena Tejera

Film

The piece, an experiment that begins on the skin, in the skins of a family that spoke in silence about a tropical dictatorship in the 1980s, the dictatorship of a house. The skins whispered silently and their voices were heard in the corners, on the walls, in the cooking pot, on the soupspoon, on the wet beans. As the soldiers marched in the streets, the echo of their footsteps resonated in the walls of the home of a military man’s family, a house where the words were forgotten. With few oral resources, some photographs and some stolen confessions, the director proposes an exploration that goes from the personal to the political through a fictionalized experience of the family story related to the dictatorship of Panama. In this hybrid film, with real characters who interpret documentary conflicts in fictional contexts, we see “She,” the director's grandmother, living a lonely monotonous life, her days a routine of repetitive actions. Then she stops and becomes silent. She remembers the body of a man struck down by war. She tries to free herself of the memory, but the memory goes through the skin. A biographical performance between the director and her grandmother aiming to confront the domestic tyranny of their family.

Ana Elena Tejera

Ana Elena Tejera is a multidisciplinary artist from Panama who works with film and performance. She created the Festival de la Memoria, a performance-cum-installation, around the urban spaces of Panama, and has contributed to the restoration of the Panamian film library at the Filmoteca de Catalunya. Panquiaco, her first feature film, was presented at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and her latest short, A Love Song in Spanish, was in the official competition at the Berlinale and at MoMA.

Production

Credits