audience

We all try to connect with our roots, and strain to grow beyond them

…want positive social change, and the ability to act to make this happen

…hope to connect with our neighbors, and be something completely different

…come from identities in constant movement—at times small, at times spectacular


People, to a great extent, feel politically powerless, unable to effect their social and political landscape. In addition to being doubtful of our ability to change our future, modern individuals are uprooted from their past, perhaps because we are practically all immigrants, more or less recent. Maybe this is why the Western world is so fascinated with indigenous cultures, and with countries undergoing revolutionary change.

The characters in Spectacular Movements feel politically empowered through a connection with their past, both their heritage and their memory of recent history. They act in order to influence their society, boldly and peacefully. Their spectacle, in the tradition of Agosto Boal, is not aimed at passive spectators, but at fellow actors, creative and social, and at the whole society.

People hopeful of moving their world using creative and culturally grounded communication will pay attention. It is rare that one hears youth speaking intelligently on television or in film, and rarer still to see indigenous youth at all. Upon closer look, the film will provoke and inspire all those, who like the youth, are drawn to the processes of identity formation and the mass expression of political critique, be it through theater, performance, protest, documentary or fiction.

Few know the story of Bolivia’s rapid change, and those that do wonder at the rise to power of an indigenous socialist president. Those familiar with the story usually are at ideological extremes, either fearful of the red scourge in Latin America or glorifying of the indigenous or left-wing conquest. Nobody tends to know how this rise came about, or who led it, or why.

This film provides the story without exoticizing or glorifying, from the perspective of youth who live and are participating in that change. Their satisfaction and critiques, expressed in the most creative ways, bring to life the extraordinarily particular vision of artistic youth from El Alto. Their hope, dissatisfaction and action is unique in its expression: a mix of Spanish, Aymara, theater, ritual, performance and seriously joking around. The circumstances are absolutely particular: El Alto is the highest city in the world, the most rebellious of Bolivian cities (a country known for constant social convulsion), and at a turning point in history.

These particularities, however, will resonate with everyone interested in the diversity of human identity, expression and struggle—and their limitless capacity for adaptation, change and movement.