Alex Rivera
Every time Alex Rivera crosses my radar, I get excited and inspired.
Seeing this video blew me away. Here was a kid who had taken all the all the 'isms' of critical social theory and found a way to tell a totally engaging, accessible story. As if that's not hard enough, he even went as far as to use the formal devices of the medium as part of the story. In other words, Alex didn't just create a straight documentary with talking heads and formulaic cutaways. His use of animation and motion graphics, for example, creates an alternative space in which his story can unfold.
My last year in college, I decided to create a video documentary as my thesis project. At the time, it was the biggest project I'd ever taken on in my life. I was trying to tell a smart story about social change, exploring what it means to be an activist and work towards an ideal of the 'common good'. I was trying to sublimate all that I'd learned from the discplines of critical social theory and experimental documentary video. I was in way over my head. Frantically, I read and watched everything I could get my hands on, searching for a path to follow. In the coffers of my college library, I dug out copies of thesis project videos left behind by graduates. This is where I found Alex's video, Papapapa.
I leave it to him to describe:
Papapapa (U.S.A., 1995) is an experimental documentary about immigration. Looking at the potato, which was first cultivated in Peru as an Inca food staple, Papapapa paints a picture of a vegetable which has traveled, and been transformed. The video follows this immigrating vegetable North as it eventually becomes the potato chip, the couch potato, and the 'French Fry'.
While following the potato's journey and transformation, Papapapa simultaneously follows another Peruvian in motion, Augusto Rivera. My dad, Augusto Rivera was raised in Lima, Peru, but moved to the United States forty years ago. The stories of these two disparate immigrants, the potato, and my pop, converge as Augusto Rivera becomes a Peruvian couch potato, sitting on the American sofa, eating potato chips and watching Spanish Language television.
Papapapa is a humorous look at race and immigration, television and nostalgia, distance and the many ways people deal with it. Papapapa examines how bodies (people and vegetable) are remade within the new societies they encounter.
Alex Rivera wins my heart by daringly and deftly transgressing the traditional borders of the documentary medium, taking on tough intellectual and political issues, and doing so in a way that communicates a message clearly and effectively to the rest of the world.
From Alex, I am learning how to wield humor and subtlety as powerful weapons.
Check out this short video of Alex speaking about his work.
Or visit his website: www.alexrivera.com
