California is an Island
16mm/dv video
19:19 minutes
2009

(Video screening at ATA and on video loop at SOMArts)

Drawing on accounts of the late career of conquistador Hernando Cortes, cartographies, and a romance adventure novel, California is an Island , a 19 minute experimental documentary, explores the intertwinement of history and fiction during the 16th Century 'discovery' of California. Using a framework and aesthetic informed by post-colonial, queer and feminist studies, the story follows Cort?s in his manic quest for an island, dramatizing how he becomes engrossed in a chapter about Amazons in the novel Las Sergas de Esplandian , from whence the name of California originated. A female narrator acts as interlocutor, complicating this narrative of empire, as the objects of Cortes' fantasies revolt and form a counter narrative. The film uses camp anachronistic re-enactments, animations utilizing maps and illustrations from the period California was mapped as an island (1540-1747), and 'silent' film titles to create a multivalent film that investigates projections of the New World.