Squatters

Catalina Santamaria

Colombia – USA / 2021/ 88’

NATIONAL PREMIERE

At the end of the 80s, two abandoned buildings from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a zone of the ‘little trick’ and the ‘somersault’, were occupied by young artists, the most part of them immigrants, who renovated the buildings and made them into a self-sustainable home at the margin of the state, at least during two decades. Catalina Santamaría gathers registers from different sources, supporting documents, and data to assemble the chronicle of the transformation of Puerta 10 and Umbrella House based on the stories of its peculiar protagonists. Part of the used material belongs to an audiovisual file recorded by themselves in the buildings’ adaptation process aimed at the filming of a documentary, maybe one of a community that with their bare hands build a house its own way. This homage film embraces that desire adding the reverse of difficulties that a collective utopia, the fragility facing time, and the lurking system bring along.

By Juliana Arana

Producer, Photography, and Editing: Catalina Santamaría |

Available from October 26th to November 1st, on the Virtual Theatre MIDBO for Colombia and Latin America