YSC Film Screening Feb 22nd “Mulberry Tree” by Iliana Pagán ❤️‍🔥 3pm – 4pm EST

“Mulberry Tree” is an 8-minute experimental film that portrays the poetic migration journey of a 100-year-old mulberry tree and a Caribbean woman across oceans to a metropolis where they connect to heal from postcolonial harm. 

“In bed with long covid for over a thousand days, I could touch an enormous 100-year-old mulberry tree from my bed window until a future neighbor ordered my tree sanctuary cut. ‘Mulberry Tree’ honors the healing relationship between a sick Latinx migrant woman and a 100-year-old tree. It is an homage to the life of trees and women. It reminds us of our vital connection with the natural world. It is a poem of loss and grief, but also a memory of resistance that denounces how migrants, both trees and humans, are exploited and then discarded or cut down when they no longer serve a capitalist purpose. This film advocates for the intrinsic value of disabled bodies and of trees that constitute living wealth in the expanse of a universe where all life is precious.”

— Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum

---

Yoga for Social Change is profoundly honored to host a screening of “Mulberry Tree” on Zoom followed by discussion and Q & A with author, poet, and film director Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum. This event takes place on Monday, February 22nd from 3pm – 4pm EST. It is free and open to everyone.

View the Film Preview:

ILIANA PAGÁN-TEITELBAUM (she/ella) is a Puerto Rican filmmaker, writer, and educator. She has a PhD from Harvard University and teaches Latin American film at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on media and equity in Latin America. Her book Violencia invisible: Narrativas de la exclusión en América Latina (Invisible Violence: Narratives of Exclusion in Latin America) is about engaged cultural discourse, violence, and inequality. As a filmmaker, Iliana directed the experimental short film Mulberry Tree, which won Best Experimental Film by a Female Director in Brazil; My Crip Kin, a short for a collective film project on processing pandemic grief produced by Kit Blamire; and received a Leeway Foundation Art and Change grant and a Los Fellows PHLAFF Film Residency for her upcoming nonfiction film Lenguas gemelas/Twin Tongues about multilingualism in the Latinx diaspora. She is part of the SIFTMedia 215 Collective of Black and Latinx Women Filmmakers of Philadelphia, Thunder and Lightning Disabled Poets Collective, and is founder of Pillow Writers en Español.