Hi all, I've been working on this creative documentary for over a year and a half but the funds have stalled, and I need to ask for your help to get enough to cover the remaining costs. The funds will be used for locking in the picture (and creating a trailer for it), hiring a sound designer, colorist, graphics/subtitles, and covering festival fees. Any additional support will help offset the personal funds invested so far. This project has been a labor of love, and I'm excited to tell you why!

Here's the premise of El Aquí:

What starts as an unsanctioned academic conference by a group of Hispanic Studies scholars evolves into a meditation on what it means to move toward a third space of experiential thought. This space, loosely referred to by the group as 'infrapolitics', raises pressing issues regarding the insular and often toxic culture of academia, and the urgent need to resist its demand for doctrinal homogeneity.

Here's what it means to me:

As some of you know, I left academia in January 2020 to pursue filmmaking full-time. It's so far gone great!

Since then, I finished a film, Sine die, alongside Inicia Films, which has had a wonderful run in festivals, winning the Young Jury Award for Best Short at Corsica.doc and being shortlisted as a candidate for both the 2023 Gaudí and Goya Awards (Catalan/Spanish equivalents of the Academy Awards, respectively).

I've been working diligently on a pitch deck for what I hope will be my first feature length fiction (don't worry, I won't ask for your money on that one!), and have a few other ideas I've been scribbling away at.

Here's the thing though:

I felt it was important for me to self-produce El Aquí and enjoy the journey of this not only being a new film, a new creative endeavor, but also a film that speaks to my transition out of academia, and a lot of the toxicity inherent in the field. It's also film that is deeply connected to my family life/structure. My parents are part of the group of scholars filmed; it was filmed in their garage, and 'infrapolitics' is a concept they've been building up, down, and sideways for over a decade. There's no film without them, but to make a film about them without acknowledging how much of their time goes toward work - toward thought - wouldn't feel right. So, although not a traditional film about family, it is inextricably linked to everything this film is.

I also think it's simply an important film. It breaks down the precarity of the academic structure, particularly for immigrant scholars, but allows for this sense of alienation to be shared by the larger public. In other words, it's not a 'jargon' film, it is simply about being a person at odds with your institutional life, your corporate life, even after you've given your whole personal life to it. I think all of us can relate to that whether we'd like to admit it or not.

El Aquí has so far received a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Support Grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and Durham Arts Council, local grants administrator. I'll keep my eye out for further grants I'm eligible for, but your donation will go a long way!

Thank you so much, in advance. Your name will appear in the credits as having helped to support this project! If you'd prefer it didn't, just let me know.

Abrazos,

Camila