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DEFENSA 1464

By David RUBIO

Documentary - Completed 2010

A series of coincidences take "Bejuco", an Afro Ecuadorian "Marimba" group to Buenos Aires, where they discover to their surprise that what is an apparently European society has a strong Afro Argentinian heritage, one that has been denied and erased from their memory.

- Year of production
- 2010
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- ECUADOR, ARGENTINA
- Languages
- SPANISH
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 74 mn
- Director(s)
- David RUBIO
- Writer(s)
- David RUBIO
- Producer(s)
- Paul VENEGAS (Xanadu Films), Nicolas BATTLE (Magoya Films)
- Synopsis
- 15 years ago… Freda, an afro descendent from the ecuadorian coast, migrated to Argentina and founded with no economic resources a cultural center in the street Defensa 1464, which became the most important afro referent in Buenos Aires, a city where it’s said there are no blacks. Two years passed and the bad shape of the house left the cultural center without electricity, forcing her to subsist with two car batteries and candles, meanwhile keeping this initiative running. While trying to repair the electrical connections in the basement, they found a tunnel system that allegedly was used by the African slaves in the XVIII century. Paradoxically, the owner of the building received an offer to sell the house and asked her to evacuate the place. Freda in order to preserve this tangible evidence, initiated a campaign to turn those living quarters into a museum of Afro-Argentinean history, nevertheless, she ended up being evicted and in the streets empty handed.
  What happened with the afro-descendent population that in the 1800´s reached as much as 35% of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires? Where is their heritage? Through the universal and intimate human drama of Freda, we will meet the Afro Argentinean population and their struggle to reinvindicate their history in the creation of this country. The joy and music in the every day life of these characters takes us to a buried past unknown to the majority. Today, the house remains empty and Freda’s struggle to regain it continues.
  In order to understand our present is essential to know our past… all of it.