Raza Oral History & Videography Project

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Activities

The Raza Oral History and Videography Project was established in 2018 with two goals: 1) preserve community knowledge about important events and figures in Latinx cultural, social, and political history from the local to the global, and 2) provide students and broader community members with ideological and technical training and experience in subaltern historiographic methods.

All projects are generated from student, staff, faculty, and community initiatives and recommendations. For each film or video, teams are formed to record studio interviews and live events by artists, activists, intellectuals, and participants in specific actions and struggles of historical significance. All team members work on a specific task (e.g., research, script, lighting, sound, camera, interview, logistics, etc.) under the direction of experienced film and videography students and instructors as well as contracted film professionals.

Specific end-products—educational films, vignettes, as well as edited and unedited raw footage—vary based on the event and immediate purpose of the production. Past and ongoing films and videos in production include interviews with artists, activists, and lay persons involved in important local educational, cultural, and political struggles; educational videos focused on specific Latinx poets and writers; interviews with and profiles of specific Latinx revolutionaries from the 1960s to the present; and also full-length documentary films of various topics.

All materials produced by The Raza Oral History and Videography Project are posted on The Global Latinidades Project YouTube site and are available free for public use.

Past Videography Projects and Works in Production

The Raza Oral History and Videography Project has completed several videography projects that include:

  • Oscar Lopez Rivera and the Fight for Puerto Rican Independence: Profile of a Puerto Rican Independentista and Former US Political Prisoner (2018)
  • Chicanx Queer Cholo Poetics and Queer Masculinity—A Poetry Reading and Roundtable Discussion with Poet and Educator Joe Jimenez (2018)
  • The Decolonial Turn in Chicanx Studies—An Interview with Roberto D. Hernández by B. V. Olguín (2020)

Additional videography projects on past and upcoming programming are in various stages of production, and include:

  • Your Healing is Killing Me: A Dramatic Performance and Plática by Vicki Grise
  • Prisoner Solidarity: Reform or Revolution—Outlaw(ed) Intellectuals Conference Keynote Address by Joy James
  • Raza Critical Masculinities: Reorientations and Futurieis—Conference Keynote Address by T. Jackie Cuevas
  • Isla Vista Radicals: A History of Revolutionary Movements in the California Central Coast
  • Who Was Damián García?: Profile of a Chicano Revolutionary  
  • Literatura Chicana en Español: Una Lectura y Pláctica con autor Jesús Rosales
  • Jasminne Mendez and AfroDominicana Poetics of Health and Healing
  • Say It Loud and Proud: AfroPanamanian Performance Poetry with Darrel Alejandro Holnes

Collaboration Protocols

The Raza Oral History and Videography Project welcomes all proposals for new projects and also is available for co-sponsorship on select projects relevant to the vision, mission, and goals of The Global Latinidades Project. Proposals can be presented directly to the Global Latinidades Project via email, and requests for co-sponsorships should be submitted through the online application for co-sponsorship (see Funding).

See Our Latest Videos Below

 

Oscar López Rivera Between Torture and Resistance Tour (2018)

Oscar López Rivera and the Struggle for Puerto Rican Independence (2018)

This documentary film features Oscar López Rivera, former Vietnam War Veteran, Puerto Rican Independentista, and former US Political Prisoner. In conversation with grassroots community members as well as students, activists, scholars, and international human rights officials at UCSB, López Rivera chronicles his struggles as a US political prisoner and his lifelong and ongoing commitment to Puerto Rican fight to end the US colonial domination of Puerto Rico.

Roberto D. Hernández Interview with B. V. Olguín (2018)

Roberto D. Hernández & the Shifting Decolonial Locus of Enunciation (2018)

Global Latinidades Project Director Ben V. Olguín interviews Decolonial theorist Roberto Hernández about the proposed epistemic shift pursued by Decolonial Studies. He discusses what can happen when we reject imposed binaries and hegemonic notions of the natural world order to instead refashion our understanding of world history, and the history of the world, by remapping it from the margins.