Director: Irene Sosa
Music: Diego Silva
Subtitles: Selva Nebbia
Sound Mixing: Leslie Lavelanet

With the generous participation of:
Edith Silva, Roberto Guerra, Helena López, Beatris Peña, Rafael Peña, Marcela Cordero, Narcisa Valdez, Samuel Sánchez, Igor Roa, Esther Durán, Isai Victoria

Synopsis:
Why do we shop? Why do Latinos shop? Shopping to belong, answers these questions in an engaging documentary that touches on issues of identity, citizenship, and the loss of homeland faced by the Latino immigrant.

Shopping to Belong is a 30-minute documentary in Spanish with English subtitles about the relationship between consumerism and the sense of belonging and citizenship in the Latino community. It aims to explore the hypothesis that immigrants use shopping as a way to feel part of this country, given that it is one of the, if not the main, cultural activities in the United States.

This documentary shows this process through interviews with 10 first generation immigrants who come from various parts of Latin America: El Salvador, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic. They all have different immigration histories and have been here from only a few months to as long as 25 years. The interviews are combined with compelling visuals of shopping as we perceive the millions of bits of information that push us to shop

Directors’s Bio: Venezuelan filmmaker Irene Sosa began working in Super 8 films in 1982 and since then has made over 30 documentaries, worked as camera person in film and video, and collaborated with other artists in many multimedia installations and dance performances. A Fulbright Scholar and CUNY professor, her work has been shown in many national and international venues. Her latest work has dealt with the sense of loss immigrants have for their homeland and how they claim space and their rights in this new society.

Irene Sosa recently completed her documentary Shopping to Belong, a 30 min. video documentary about the relationship between consumption and the sense of belonging and citizenship of the Latino immigrant community.

Shopping to Belong premiered on September, 2007 at the 15th Providence Latin American Film Festival and was followed by a screening at NYU’s Cantor Film Center later in 2007.

In 2003 she was commissioned by the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea in Galicia, Spain to make an anthology of her work on artist Nancy Spero (13 documentaries) as part of a retrospective of the artist. Two of these documentaries are included in the DVD Spero/Golub produced by Kartemquin films.

Since its completion in 1999, Sosa's "Sexual Exiles" has been shown in more than 30 national and international venues, and continues to be invited to festivals, exhibitions, and other events. The documentary is about gays and lesbians who left their homeland because of their sexual orientation.

The venues where Sosa’s work has been shown include: Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas and Centro Cultural Chacao, in Caracas, Venezuela; Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea in Galicia, and Cículo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain; EXIT ART, WNYC Channel 31, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; Festival Du Films Sur L'Art, in Montreal; the Chicago Art Institute; the University of Illinois; The American Center in Paris; Centre George Pompidou in Paris.

She collaborated with choreographer Merián Soto on several multimedia dance projects at the Joyce Theater and Dance Theater Workshop in NYC as well as in other important venues. She also collaborated with photographer Susan Unterberg on "Close Ties," a photo/video installation presented at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City and at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, Ohio; and with artist Pepón Osorio in several of his multimedia installations.

In 1995 she presented her own multimedia performance piece titled "When I Grow Up," at the Rompeforma festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico and at PS122 in New York City. In response to the bombing of Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, Sosa made two experimental videos that was presented at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture as well at an artist exhibit in the Grace Church in Jersey City.

In 1998 Sosa was a recipient of the Individual Artist's Fellowship in video from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a fellowship from The Andrea Frank Foundation; and in 1995 she received an Individual Artist grant from the New York State Council for the Arts. She has received five PSC-CUNY Research Awards. In 2003 she was given a Brooklyn College Creative Achievement Award.

www.irenesosa.com

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