Austral Films

Sonia Soberats is a sixty-six-year-old Venezuelan woman who lives by herself in a modest apartment in New York City. The pain caused by the death of both her sons resulted in her total loss of vision. She takes care of everything she needs. Today she is a blind photographer.
Through different stages of Sonia’s life and work we will see how two apparently contrary concepts coexist in harmony: a whole new tendency in photography bringing together this expressive art and sight deficiencies.

In Cuba, they have more than 15 years researching a treatment based on a type of indigenous Scorpion venom, which is a great palliative for some types of cancer patients since the venom attacks the cancer cells. We will visit the facilities of the pharmaceutical company (Labiofam) that makes it, we’ll go hunting the Scorpion with Cuban biologists, we sure the director of Labiofam, as well as doctors and Cuban patients and foreigners who had come from all over the world.

Paraguay, April 2008.
After 35 years under Stroessner’s dictatorship and 17 of power and corruption lead by the Colorado Party (the only one allowed after the democratic transition), Fernando Lugo, a former bishop who is running for President, represents the hope to build a better future.
Internationally recognised as an activist for Human Rights and discoverer of the Archives of Terror, Martin Almada leads a lonely and exasperated battle to expose the links between the old dictatorial system and the current corrupted democracy.
Guillermina Kanonnikoff, courageous activist and General Secretary of the Tekojoja Movement, is accompanying Fernando Lugo on his path up until the elections on April 20th.

Puerto Rico’s secret police, supported by the FBI, during decades spied and persecuted those who disagreed with the government. All collected information was classified in archives known as “the files”. An entire network was set up so that this “subversives”, were denied certain jobs through which they could exert some influence or authority (police, university, journalism). On the jobs they were hounded till they resigned. Many citizens had to emigrate since they could not find jobs in Puerto Rico. In some families they even followed the children.

Puerto Cultura is a TV series aimed at exploring the life, work and thoughts of outstanding personalities of various intellectual, artistic and social fields.
Only one person is interviewed in each program; this allows for a more thorough conversation and for delving further into certain concepts which are worth highlighting.
The show is shot live with an audience composed of members of several universities, educational organizations specialized in different areas, schools of journalism, schools of art, and organizations of other types. In the last segment of each episode, the audience takes an active part by asking questions to the interviewed personality, thus creating an environment of interaction among all the people present in the T.V. studio.

GOUDOUGOUDOU is the name Haitians invented for the 2010 earthquake. For those who made it through, the notion of ‘being alive’ was superseded by that of ‘being survivors’ in a world turned upside down by death and chaos. This intimate and penetrating documentary explores how people, in the aftermath of tragedy, grieve, struggle to regain a semblance of normality and aspire to new dreams.