El Signo Vacío / The Empty Sign

Director: Kathryn Ramey

Producers: Kathryn Ramey

USA Premiere

Country of Production: Puerto Rico

Date of Completion: 2023

Duration of Film: 75 Minutes

EL SIGNO VACÍO (the empty sign) is a feature-length anthropological journey through the United States’ occupation of Puerto Rico. Mixing over a hundred years of found footage - tourism, agricultural and propaganda films - with contemporary portraits of local artists and activists and Puerto Rican punk rock/noise music, the film reveals how carefully crafted American fictions of “democracy” and “debt” obscure a capitalist and military domination that is ongoing. Moving between old and new; Spanish and English; between paradise and environmental destruction EL SIGNO VACÍO becomes “re-educational” film challenging the viewer to re-think about modern colonization, its mechanism and responsibilities.