Indigenous Cinematics in Latin America

María Sojob was born in the Tsotsil community of Chenalhó, Chiapas, Mexico. María has two daughters and for over a decade has been producing videos, short films and radio programmes in Tsotsil language..

María Sojob

María studied Media Communication at the Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas and subsequently the Masters in Documentary Cinema at the Universidad de Chile.

María has collaborated on a wide range of projects on Indigenous cinema, media and childhood, in the Centro Estatal de Lenguas, Arte y Literatura Indígenas de Chiapas, where she also developed a videocartas project with young Tsotsil girls and boys. She is one of the trainers for the Escuela Mesoamericana para Mujeres Indígenas, Negras y Campesinas de Centroamérica y el Sur de México, convened by the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Cine y Comunicación de los Pueblos Indígenas (CLACPI).

She has also delivered presentations in different cultural and academic spaces on the aeshetic, visual and narrative proposals of her films. In 2019, her chapter ‘Proyectar el ch’ulel a través del cine’ was published in Cine Político en México (1968-2017).

She is currently working on the filming of Por la vida (For Life) a feature documentary that addresses the struggle and resistance of Lenca women in Honduras who weave day by day towards Buen Vivir, a good life, by means of community alternatives to extractivism and patriarchy.

Filmography

María’s first feature documentary, Bankilal (Older Brother) (2015), was selected in a wide range of national and international film festivals, including the Native sidebar at the 65th Berlinale (2015), the 18th International Film Festival of Valdivia (Chile), the VI Ethnographic and Testimonial Film Festival in Porto Alegre (Brazil), and Edinburgh International Film Festival (2015).   […]

“Por la vida / For Life”

María is currently working on the development of Por la vida (For Life) a feature documentary that addresses the struggle and resistance of Lenca women in Honduras who weave day by day towards Buen Vivir, a good life, by means of community alternatives to extractivism and patriarchy.

How does the documentary “Por la vida” come about?

In August 2018 I was invited to participate as a teacher at the “Mesoamerican School for Indigenous, Black and Farmer Women of Central America and the South of Mexico”. I traveled to Honduras for the first time, a country of which little was known in these lands, but which began to feature in the media […]

The significance of “Por la vida”

The importance of this documentary lies in its intention to celebrate alternative economies and ecologies that have arisen in spite of—and in response to—the extractivist agenda in Honduras, one of the most aggressive of the 21st century. Over the last decade, the Honduran state has tried to expand its extractivist sectors (mining, silviculture, industrial agriculture, […]

Character development

Initially we thought about filming three characters in different cultural contexts: a Lenca woman, a Chorti woman and a Garifuna woman. But when we found out about the real life of Betty Vázquez we realized that that there was a whole new documentary centered on the stories of the women who revolve around Betty’s life […]