Saya: Dance and Survival in an Afro-Bolivian Village
In the coca heartland of Bolivia, slavery and liberation are still matters of living memory. In this twenty-minute film, we visit the town of Tocaña, where African descendents worked as slaves until 1952, and local people still perform dances rooted in their African cultural heritage. The film highlights the dilemmas of cultural survival and emergence for an endangered subculture in an era of global saturation. Saya premiered at April 2013 at Austin’s Cine Las Americas, and screened in May 2013 at the Latin American Studies Association Film Festival in Washington DC. Saya was also an official selection of the San Diego Black Film Festival, the Pan African Film Festival, and the Africa World Documentary Film Festival.