An Interview with Juan Jose García, President of Ojo de Agua Comunicación

Abstract

This is an interview with Zapotec video maker Juan Jose Garcia, president of the award‐winning media organization Ojo de Agua Comunicacion, in Oaxaca, Mexico. He presents a brief history of native video in Mexico and discusses issues such as indigenous video production and circulation, thematic content, communal practices, relation to indigenous communities, funding, and current projects of his group.

Indigenous Media Gone Global: Strengthening Indigenous Identity On‐ and Offscreen at the First Nations/First Features Film Showcase

“…A burgeoning field of scholarship on indigenous media has examined how media technologies are appropriated and transformed to meet the needs of local indigenous communities. This scholarship has revealed the ways in which indigenous media provide "screen memories" for local communities (Ginsburg 2002), the role of media in indigenous activism in the Amazon and Brazil (Conklin 1995;Turner 2002), community-based indigenous media initiatives throughout South and Latin America (Brígido-Corachán 2004;Cordova 2005;Himpele 2004;Wortham 2004), the impact of Inuit filmmaking (Bessire 2003;Ginsburg 2003;Huhndorf 2003), the politics of representation in Native American video (Prins 1997), efforts to decolonize the screen (Barclay 1990;Kilpatrick 1999;Langton 1993;Singer 2001;Todd 1993), analyses of national cultural policies supporting and constraining indigenous media production (Alia 1999;Buddle-Crowe 2002;Himpele 2002;Molnar and Meadows 2001;Roth 2005), and the emergence of indigenous aesthetics in indigenous media (Ginsburg 1994; Johnson 2000; Leuthold 1998;Masayesva 1995;Michaels 1993;Weatherford 1996). In an interview for a New Zealand tourism website, renowned Maori filmmaker Merata Mita noted the power of indigenous media proclaiming: "Swimming against the tide becomes an exhilarating experience.…”