Selfies of the Crossing: Mediating Migration through the Darien Jungle

The Moynihan Institute’s Program on Latin America and the Caribbean welcomes Tatiana Rojas Ponce, documentary filmmaker and doctoral candidate at NYU.

For Venezuelans, undertaking an overland journey to the United States without a visa was, until recently, outside the realm of the imaginable. This changed as thousands began to document, on social media platforms, their passage through the Darien Gap—a dense and hazardous jungle spanning the border between South and Central America. In #Darien, a documentary by Tatiana Rojas Ponce, three Venezuelan migrants now living in New York share the audiovisual materials they produced during their crossing, offering firsthand narratives and critical reflections on one of the most dangerous segments of contemporary migratory routes.

Following a screening of the film, a conversation with the director will serve as a point of departure to examine the production of migrant subjectivities through visual self-representation, the ambivalent role of social media as both a life-sustaining and potentially lethal force, and the complex circulation of affect, imagery and meaning within communities in transit.

Light refreshments will be provided.

This event is co-sponsored by:

• The Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics

• Centro de Estudios Hispánicos

Tatiana Rojas Ponce is a Venezuelan researcher, activist and documentary filmmaker. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University (NYU), where she also completed a certificate in culture and media. Her research explores economies of the image and the intersection of subjectivity with technologies of visualization, reproduction and detection. She has collaborated on numerous audiovisual projects, primarily focused on Indigenous movements and feminist struggles in Latin America. Her work has been recognized with two Best Editing awards at the Santiago Álvarez International Documentary Film Festival in Havana. "Hashtag Darien" marks her directorial debut.