Solutions from Below

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X15600172
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Author: Kristi M. Wilson,Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli
• Date: 01 September 2015
• Subject Matter: Film Review

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 204, Vol. 42 No. 5, September 2015, 148–151

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X15600172

© 2015 Latin American Perspectives

148

Film Review

Solutions from Below

Pedagogical Documentaries and Praxis

by

Kristi M. Wilson and Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli

Alejandro Ramírez Anderson Tierralismo: Stories from a Cooperative Farm, 2013.

José Cohen H2Omx, 2013.

En este valle verdusco, antes corrían ríos rutilantes, cenizos, castaños y cárdenos,

púrpuras, perdidos y pardos; quebrajosos, vocingleros, berreando bajaban de la mon-

taña humeante, salían a los llanos lerdos, tentaban a la temprana Tenochtitlán. Hoy

van mugiendo entubados, menguados, pesados de aguas negras, crecidos de mierda;

ríos sin riberas, risibles, con riendas, rabiosos, rabones, ruidosos de coches; avanzando

a tumbos por la ciudad desflorada, desembocando en los lagos letales, y en el marcado

mar, que ya no los ama.

—Homero Aridjis

Part of the rich documentary film tradition includes pedagogical films. The best of

these documentaries successfully incorporate the strange combination of artistic and

pedagogical innovation in their efforts to educate and encourage audiences to bring

about social change. In the past decade, a new type of documentary about sustainability

has made itself a prominent feature of sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook. These

documentaries vary in quality and length, from feature-length films about activists who

oppose the depletion of natural resources to instructional videos about how to build an

adobe house. Two recent pedagogical documentaries distributed by Icarus Films that

stand out from the crowd include José Cohen’s 2013 H2Omx (Mexico) and Alejandro

Ramírez Anderson’s 2013 Tierralismo: Stories from a Cooperative Farm (Cuba).

To say that global warming and climate change have resulted in great crises in the

world is an understatement. Latin American activists have mobilized against deforesta-

tion and mountaintop removal among other forms of environmental degradation. In

two of the largest cities on the continent, São Paolo and Mexico City, residents have

rallied to protest water shortages. As its title suggests, H2Omx is a documentary about

the water problem in Mexico City. The film delicately maps the traffic of water into the

city and, more important, offers an efficient and practical method of combating the

effects of urban growth and climate change—flooding and drought. Tierralismo profiles

the Alamar, a world-renowned organic cooperative farm in Cuba whose members pro-

pose that their practices of small-scale farming could provide a model for sustainable

agriculture in their country and the rest of the world.

600172LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X15600172Latin American PerspectivesWilson and Crowder-Taraborrelli

research-article2015

Kristi Wilson is an associate professor of rhetoric and composition and affiliate associated profes-

sor of humanities at Soka University of America. Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli is a visiting assis-

tant professor of Latin American studies at the same university.