Still Moving: A Transborder Film Showcase initially screened at Mingei International Museum.

Curated by Brandy Wang (founder of Sorry Not Sorry), the program’s films that explore themes of (im)mobility, migration, and border crossing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Still Moving brings together filmmakers from both sides of the border and draws an analogy between moving images and migrating bodies.

The filmmakers’ works locate migrating bodies, affects, and memories through relics, artifacts, and ruptures in spacetime, traversing mediums and experimental methods.

Presenting these films in conversation, Still Moving questions the continuity of colonial time and elevates the lives suspended between motion and stillness—the undocumented, the displaced, the disappeared, and the rendered ghostlike in this space we co-dwell. Through this program, we call out violent border regimes, colonial forces, and capitalist extractions that loom around collective experiences of migration across the U.S.-Mexico border. At some times, our migrating bodies become an exhibition of the border; at other times, the bodies become the border itself.

Speaking in the present continuous tense, Still Moving is a call to bear witness and take action: migrating, gathering, resisting and remembering. This screening aims to bring our local community together and cultivate a shared space for reflection, connection, and healing. Following the films, we invite all audiences and filmmakers to join small group conversations and share their thoughts and experiences.

COMMUNITY PARTNER SUPPORT

Our thanks go out to Otherwise Film Festival, San Diego Asian Film Festival, and San Diego Latino Film Festival, for providing community partnership support.

PROGRAMS

Priscilla and Her Sisters

Dir. Omar Lopex, United States, 2019, Docu-fiction, Experimental, 5:21, English with subtitles

Priscilla & Her Sisters brings to light the previously untold true story of the Bilingual civilian women who worked for the Office of Censorship (division of OSS, later to become the CIA) as telephone spies, during World War II. These women worked in secret in towns along the US/Mexico border listening in to phone conversations between the two countries. They were taught what secret codes and words to look out for, and documented any suspicious activity in daily logs. Fitting with the time, they were dubbed the "Invisible Apron Strings" and "Glamour Girls of the OSS". Priscilla & Her Sisters, highlights the story of Priscilla Yanez (1915-1999). The script was written utilizing interviews with Priscilla's surviving sister and daughters, as well as historical documents organized through the La Jolla Historical Society.

Omar Lopex is an artist, educator, and administrator working across the US/MexiconTransborder region for over two decades. Lopex is the founder of the Transborder Film Foundation 501(c)3. He also serves on the Advisory Council for the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts at the University of California San Diego.

Soy fronteriza | Fronteriza

Dir. Yadira Gutierrez (Yega), Mexico, 2022, Experimental, 8:17, Spanish with English subtitles

A video essay that narrates the filmmaker’s experience as a migrant mother juxtaposed with their everyday landscape, their personal archive and the border context they inhabit.

Yadira Gutierrez (Yega) is Zoe and Uma’s mom, a visual artist, programmer and master in cultural studies. In her work she reflects on image, archive and cultural memory through experimental practice. Her interest in the history of Tijuana, its spaces and its people has led her to carry out various research, photographic and audiovisual projects.

She was a grantee of the Programa de Estímulos para la Creación y el Desarrollo Artístico de Baja California (PECDA 2010), of FONCA ́s Fomento a Proyectos y Coinversiones Culturales (2021) and the Program: Fomento al Cine Mexicno (FOCINE)

CARAVAN

Dir. Hugo Crosthwaite, United States, Mexico, 2022, Animation, Experimental, 3:50

CARAVAN is a stop-motion animation done with handmade ceramic figurines that present the story of a group of migrants fighting to reach “The American Dream”.

Hugo Crosthwaite is a contemporary artist whose work is characterized by provocative images inspired by the U.S./Mexico border. In 2019 Crosthwaite won the Outwin Boochever National Portrait Competition from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. He also won the FEMSA XI Bienal de Monterrey in 2015. He is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte-FONCA and his animated shorts have been featured in several film festivals such as the Morelia International Film Festival in Michoacan México, the LGBT+ Los Angeles Film Festival and the Los Angeles Latinx Film Festival and the Guanajuato International Film Festival.

Primero, Sueño | First, I dream

Dir. Andrés Lira, United States, 2023, Documentary, 16:58, Spanish with English subtitles

Two anonymous farmworkers recount their adolescence growing up in rural villages and the lack of resources that ultimately led them to leave towards the state of California.

They reflect on the dangers they faced crossing through the southern border and the multiple risks they took getting to the U.S. even after being detained. The variety of crop fields stitch together and serve as a visual reference for the daily circumstances that come with living in the shadows as an undocumented farmworker.

Andrés Lira is a Mexican-American filmmaker and artist of Indigenous Purépecha descent. His work focuses on amplifying the underrepresented stories of Latino and Indigenous communities through the exploration of identity, culture, and social justice. In 2023, he was selected as one of ten worldwide emerging filmmakers for the Sundance Ignite Fellowship with his documentary Primero, Sueño. His film has screened at Sundance, SFFILM, Morelia, and won the Best U.S. Latino Short at LALIFF. He is among one of the recipients of the 2024 Sundance Latine Fellowship where he is currently developing his next project.

Enacting The Archive | Habitar el Archivo

Dir. Jill Marie Holslin, Yadira Gutierrez (Yega), United States, Mexico, 2025,

Experimental, 10:48, English with subtitles

An act of dispossession, erased by the archive and the bureaucratic apparatus, gives birth to another world, of white settler colonialism that wants to forget but cannot.

Enacting the Archive is a video essay that investigates the processes of colonialism that produce racial categories while silencing the history of Indigenous people. It combines images of the ancestral lands of the Dakota people with images of family photographs, maps, documents, and census records in the hands of the artist.

Jill Marie Holslin is a visual artist who engages with themes of place, belonging and memory. She uses her hand and body as active agents in her art works, holding and arranging archival materials, documents, and maps in gestures that reimagine the archive as a site of invention and creativity. She has an MFA from the School of Art and Design at SDSU and studied contemporary art in the Contemporary Photography Program (PFC) in Mexico. My photographic and audiovisual work has been exhibited in Mexico and Latin America, the United States, and Europe. She lives in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, since 2011.

Yadira Gutierrez (Yega) artist bio is the same as above (Soy fronteriza | Fronteriza).

Skin Destination

Dir. Adriana Trujillo, Mexico, 2012, Documentary, Experimental, 10:17, Spanish with English subtitles

Skin Destination proposes a reflection to the state of emergency that Mexico lives from the perspective of the body as an agent. Using found footage film in Skin Destination elapses in a cross-border manner (as well as in the city of Tijuana) different formats, narrative strategies and staging.

Adriana Trujillo is an artist-filmmaker and curator from the Tijuana–San Diego border region. Her work has been featured at Berlinale Docs Station, Jihlava Emerging Producers, Ibermedia, the Vincent Price Museum, FACT Liverpool, Medellín Arts Biennale, MECA Art Center Almería, Spain, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, OKK Gallery Berlin, Habitat Center in Nueva Delhi and festivals such as Guadalajara,

Los Angeles and Sydney HMFF, Iowa, Morelia, SDLFF, DOCSMX, Pop-Up Space Finland and Curta Doc Brasil among others. Recent exhibitions include Being Here With You (2021), Occupy Thirdspace (2022), and NO_NEWS_AGENCY (2025). She has received support from the Mexican Film Institute, National System of Art Creators, Film Center Serbia, and Film Center Srpska. She is currently a programmer at the San Diego Latino Film Festival and Artistic Director of Cinema Parallels.

Ghostly Pulsations

Dir. Adriana Trujillo, José Inerzia, Mexico, 2014, Experimental, 5:26

Debris of memory, those things that went un-filmed and un-caught. A piece that attempts to recover the marginal worlds, opening possibilities for celebration, turning back to look at childhood, at those unforgettable trips and Disneyland; all found in the domestic archives of the border region between Mexico and the United States.

Adriana Trujillo artist bio is the same as above (Skin Destination).

La Bi-vencia

Dir. Mariana Gongora-Reyes, Analaura Cardenas, United States, Mexico, 2022,

Documentary, 15:00, Spanish with English subtitles

Drawing on images from a non-existent border between Santa Elena, Chihuahua, and Big Bend National Park in Texas. La Bi-vencia explores the reunion of a ghost town next to the Rio Grand that was abandoned after 9/11.

Mariana Góngora is a Chihuahuan-American documentarian from the U.S./Mexico border. With a deep passion for storytelling, she has produced short-format documentaries. Her work has been featured in diverse multimedia outlets. Mariana most recently served as producer and director of Why Is NASA Interested In This Upside Down Cave? for PBS Terra, as well as the award-winning short documentary La Bi-vencia. She was a 2023 fellow of the PBS Ignite Mentorship for Creative Voices and a 2022 recipient of the Femme Frontera documentary fund. In addition, she is currently pursuing an M.A. in Documentary Journalism in Argentina.

Analaura Cárdenas (Chihuahua, Mx, ‘96) is a transdisciplinary artist working with audiovisual media, art/photography direction, and writing. In 2024, she directed Bolsas de piedra and produced the exhibition How Do We Observe What We Observe?: Returning the Gaze. She has participated in Ambulante, the Biennial of Women in the Visual Arts, and the Chihuahua Film Festival. Her work has been shown at the El Paso Museum of Art and through the Field Work residency in Marfa, TX. She’s received support from FOMAC and Femme Frontera’s La Frontera Lab, co-directing La Bi-vencia in 2022.

Ella se queda | She Stays

Dir. Marinthia Gutiérrez, Mexico, 2024, Fantasy, Experimental, 10:00, Spanish with English subtitles

In Tijuana, Mexico, Laura is accepted to a dance master’s program abroad and has to quickly make a decision. She goes out with her friend, Ana, who assumes that she won't accept the offer because she's still hung up with her ex, José. Throughout the evening in the downtown district, Laura notices various girls that are carefully watching her wherever she goes. Distracted and anxious, she can’t make herself have fun like her friends, and is constantly annoyed by the assumptions they make of her. After an encounter with José later in the night, Laura takes his body to a coven of vampire dancers– the girls she saw throughout the night– and is initiated into the group.

Marinthia Gutiérrez, writer and director from Tijuana, Mexico. She graduated from the UCLA Theater, Film, and Television School in 2018 with a Bachelor’s in Film, & TV, emphasizing in Narrative Directing. Marinthia is drawn to tell stories that are character-driven and introspective in an almost surreal way– she likes being close to her subjects in order to show raw emotions through highly stylized images. Her tone can be described as atmospheric magical realism. Marinthia's horror-dance short film, Ella se queda (She stays), is the recipient of the 2022 Standard Fantastic Fellowship, which is sponsored by Kodak and Fotokem to shoot in 16mm film, Official Selection at Semaine de la Critique - Cannes and Guadalajara International Film Festival.