Argentine-British filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland has developed a cinematic style that privileges tactile and immersive storytelling. Her newest film, Collective Monologue, is set to make its US Premiere at the Museum of Modern Art’s Doc Fortnight — an annual showcase of cutting-edge nonfiction films — this evening. She will also present a lecture around her installation Extramission: The Capture of Glowing Eyes at Union Docs on February 27. To coincide with these events, we’re pleased to present Puerta a Puerta, a recent short film Rinland co-directed with Venezuelan filmmaker Luis Arnías.

Commissioned as part of the inaugural experimental film showcase at Mexico City’s FICUNAM film festival in 2022, Puerta a Puerta documents the assembling of a care package being sent from the United States to Venezuela. Rinland and Arnías, who share an affinity for haptic cinema, film the boxing of the package through their subjects’ hands; in turn, revealing the care and labor behind Venezuela’s remittance economy.

“With the proximity of an image, distance is created, because you don’t see its context. You only see details. There is a rupture, a distance that is created by not showing a wider image of place. Although sound allows you to imagine it. It’s not only the distance of an object’s journey from the US to Venezuela you imagine in the film, but the journey from one image to another in montage.” JESSICA SARAH RINLAND”

 

For me, the closest thing to the idea of Venezuela is a kind of void, a negative element full of my own ideas. What I hear from there are stories on WhatsApp, because it really is very difficult to be present in two places at the same time and for me reality is like that void.” LUIS ARNÍAS

Remittances have long contributed to Venezuela’s economy given the numerous sanctions levelled at the South American nation by countries such as the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Although Puerta a Puerta is designed to look like it shows a care package being built, transported and delivered, it does not. Instead, Rinland and Arnías use their film to emphasize the distance the US has created between itself and Venezuela. What comes into focus is the difficulty of sending small goods like ibuprofen and shampoo to a nation under embargo, the nerve wracking uncertainty of knowing whether that package will ever arrive, and the sense of relief that accompanies a message of receipt.

Jessica Sarah Rinland received a BA in Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins and an MSc in Arts, Culture and Technology from MIT. Her films have been the subject of retrospectives at Anthology Film Archives, Open City Documentary Festival, and Flaherty Film Center, among other institutions. She has also been awarded prizes at Locarno and Ann Arbor Film Festival. Her practice extends to book-making and installation work, as in the recent presentation of Extramission: The Capture of Glowing Eyes at IFFR. Luis Arnías is a Boston-based Venezuelan filmmaker. He graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 2009 and received an MFA in Film/Video from Bard College. His films have screened at Doc Fortnight, TIFF, NYFF, and the Berlin Critics’ Week, among other festivals. He was a fellow at Harvard University’s Film Study Center and recognized as a Boston Artadia Awardee in 2023.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer.