El Signo Vacío (The Empty Sign)
El Signo Vacío (The Empty Sign) is a feature-length anthropological journey through the United States’ occupation of Puerto Rico. Mixing over a hundred years of found footage - tourism, agricultural and propaganda films - with contemporary portraits of local artists and activists...
Time & Location
Mar 19, 2025, 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Bok Auditorium , 800 Mifflin St, Philadelphia, PA 19148, USA
About the Event
El Signo Vacío (The Empty Sign) is a feature-length anthropological journey through the United States’ occupation of Puerto Rico. Mixing over a hundred years of found footage - tourism, agricultural and propaganda films - with contemporary portraits of local artists and activists and Puerto Rican punk rock/noise music, the film reveals how carefully crafted American fictions of “democracy” and “debt” obscure a capitalist and military domination that is ongoing. Moving between old and new; Spanish and English; between paradise and environmental destruction the El Signo Vacío becomes a “re-educational” film challenging the viewer to re-think about modern colonization, its mechanism and responsibilities. (Kathryn Ramey, US/Puerto Rico, 2023, 75 min.) In English and Spanish with English subtitles
Followed by a conversation with the director