Terminals, passengers and resignification of spaces in Maracaibo

documentaries by Yanilú Ojeda

Abstract

Through the analysis of the documentary films The Passenger Terminal (2006) and Shawantama’ana: meeting place (2012) both by the Venezuelan director Yanilú Ojeda, we can tackle the problems of the dynamics of displacement, the interaction with urban space and also the resignification of non spaces undertaken by passengers of both Terminals in Maracaibo, Venezuela, known as a city-region due to the closeness to Colombia as well as the cultural diversity in evidence both by the presence of the Wayuu ethnic group and Colombian immigrants (Zacarías, Guillén and Chourio, 2007).The analysis evolves around the theoretical interpretations of James Clifford and Marc Augé concerning displacements and the correlative anthropological meaning of places, as well as the process of hybridization and cultural heterogeneity according to Antonio Cornejo-Polar and Néstor García Canclini. The films are contextualized in the framework of recent Venezuelan cinema focused on indigenous people; as well as the so called Third World Cinema and its particular implications in the Venezuelan socio-political context (Arreaza and García, 2009). In spite of the vulnerability of marginal subjects in those Terminals as well as their becoming invisible for the official discourse, the films show extremely dynamic relations both in the political understanding of people as in the resignification of cultural and social identities and places.