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(Tierra Narrative 2024)
Tierra Narrative is a film and literary production house dedicated to counternarratives emerging from the Central American isthmus and its diaspora. Founded in 2017, we create, curate, and bolster contemporary work that gives shape to cultural memory in a transnational context.
Tierra Narrative commits to adhering to the Palestinian international call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) and to complying with the underlying guidelines for the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).
"A community without its records is a community under siege, defending itself, its identity, and its version of history without a firm foundation on which to stand." - Jeannette Bastian
team
Génesis Mancheren Ab'äj is a Queer, non-binary Maya Kaqchikel actor, filmmaker, writer and producer, born and raised in New York City. As a screenwriter and director, they are interested in exploring Kaqchikel contemporary stories that include the supernatural, the surreal and the absurd. Upon graduating from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2017, they have worked extensively within film. Their written, produced and edited work has shown at Toronto Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, VR Arles Festival, Icaro Film Festival, Rooftop Films, as well as Open Society Foundation, Leslie Lohman Museum, Centro Corona and more. In 2022, they participated in Cine Qua Non Storylines Lab and in 2023 they were a Sundress Academy for the Arts resident and fellow. Génesis is currently an independent researcher and short-term fellow at the Newberry Library, working on their interdisciplinary project called Re Re’ Mayab.
Kenia (“Keni”) Guillén is a film director, producer, and interdisciplinary artist born in Chalatenango, El Salvador, and raised in Long Island, New York. Her cinematic practice engages the space between documentary, autobiographical cinema, and fiction. Her storytelling threads across traces of rural life, themes of grief, and the desire for connection. An Open Society Fellow and a Define American fellow, Keni’s work has been exhibited in Rooftop Films, El Museo De Los Sures, Open Society Foundations, Ícaro Film Festival, amongst others. In 2022, she was selected to be a part of PlayLab Films’ APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL LAB: FILMING IN THE AMAZON. She is a co-founder and producer at Tierra Narrative, and currently a community organizing co-lead at The Undocumented Filmmakers Collective.
Óscar Moisés Díaz is a poet-astrologer, translator, artist, and film curator. Currently, they serve as an inaugural Poetry in Translation Editor for FENCE alongside Maryam Ivette Parhizkar. They were a 2020-2021 Inaugural Curatorial Fellow at the Poetry Project as a member of Tierra Narrative. Recently they completed a writing residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Recent poems can be found in Copenhagen, Schlag, Annulet, and The Brooklyn Rail. They've exhibited in numerous museums and biennials around the world including The Queens Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Costa Rica, and The 10th Central American Biennial. They are the guest translation editor for the upcoming Issue #14 of Chogwa.
Maryam Ivette Parhizkar is a poet, interdisciplinary scholar, and educator. Her poetry and essay chapbooks include Somewhere Else the Sun is Falling into Someone’s Eyes (Belladonna* Collaborative, 2019), As for the future (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2016), and Pull: a ballad (The Operating System, 2014). For her poetry, she has been recognized as a CantoMundo Fellow. Representing Tierra Narrative alongside Óscar Moisés Díaz, she has served as a guest editor of translation at FENCE magazine and a curatorial fellow at The Poetry Project, where she co-developed transnational and multilingual programming bringing together writers from the Central American diaspora and isthmus.
Maryam grew up in Alief, southwest Houston, Texas, with familial roots in San Rafael Oriente/San Miguel, El Salvador and Tehran, Iran. She is completing doctoral work in American Studies and African American Studies at Yale University. She has facilitated independent critical-creatie workshops every summer since 2021, which you can learn about here.
Frisly Soberanis is a filmmaker, producer, cinematographer and video artist, from Queens, New York via Guatemala. His work has received support from the Tribeca Film Institute's New Media Prototype Fund, Center for Cultural Power, the Lotus Foundation, and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. He has produced and co-produced award-winning narrative short films that have screened at 50+ film festivals across the world including TIFF, BFI London Film Festival, Frameline, Outfest, Hollyshorts, Cinequest (Best Student Short), and Durban International Film Festival (Special Mention). He served as a producer on the forthcoming narrative short, Roots That Reach Toward The Sky (directed by Jess X. Snow) received support from the Sundance Institute and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, as well as The Beguiling (directed by ishkwaazhe Shane McSauby) which world premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Frisly's work has been shown at el Centro de Cultura Digital (CCDMX) in Mexico City, the IFP Made in NY Media Center, the LA Latino International Film Festival and the Queens Museum Science Fiction Festival
contact: tierranarrative@gmail.com