The Visual Studies department at Haverford College collaborated with creatives to compile film-focused experiences featuring non-fiction stories, centering on Latin-American history and culture. Todas Las Flores or All the Flowers, set a high standard as the first showing of the 2025 series.
On the frigid night of Wednesday, Feb. 19, a group of Bi-Co students made their way to the Bryn Mawr Film Institute for a free movie admission and a conversation with the director and creatives behind the work. The scene was reminiscent of a traditional film festival feature, with theatrics of cameras in the theater and a press table just under the screen. Before the film began, there was a short introduction to how it came to be, that is, the tenuous 20-year process of researching, filming, and fitting such a wealth of information into only 77 minutes.
The documentary is set in Bogotà, Colombia in the 20-block high-impact zone where sex work is legal, and spotlights the even smaller community of transgender sex workers, the owners of Tabaco y Ron. What unfolds is the story of how several individuals such as social worker and prior-sex worker Diana Navarro and former Colombian Senate Member Dr. Antanas Mockus played a role in the zone’s creation. This construction was controversial, as the first and only place where sex work has been legitimized in Latin-American law. Diana Navarro was also the first transgender woman to work for the Colombian government.
Focusing on Tabaco y Ron, we see strong relationships between the family running the business, which includes the apartments, a bar, and managing the sex work that takes place in the room. There is a reciprocal relationship between the work the family does for the women and the work they provide for the family that goes beyond economic transactions. The film concludes with the annual pageant show for the girls, spearheaded by the owner’s daughter, who explains that the show is about more than beauty, but the strength and value of the women.
In the post-screening conversation, director Carmen Oquendo-Villar, producer Alejandro Ángel Torres, and activist Charlotte Schneider Callejas explained their relationship with the community in Bogotà, especially concerning the many years over which they made the film. Their process was one of gradual trust-building with the community, which takes their controversial and nuanced position into account. The taboo of sex work and transgender people meant that the creators needed to break through the private impulse of those trying to protect their community to fully delve into the relationship of individuals to the collective. This discovery includes how people operate and view situations and their desires for the future. Callejas explains how the film changed her and her collaborators as they made it, giving people the agency to tell a story that is so often appropriated and warped.
