Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
CLACS

Screening & Discussion | Raspando Coco | Pilar Egüez Guevara

Raspando Coco Pilar Equez Guevara

Thursday, March 21, 2024

5:30-7:00 p.m.

True North Classroom (101), 280 Brook St.

5:30 p.m. Reception
6:00 p.m. Screening
6:30 p.m. Discussion

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Join The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (IBES) for a screening of the award-winning documentary Raspando Coco, followed by a conversation with Pilar Egüez Guevara, documentary director and cultural anthropologist. This event is the third in our year-long collaborative Consumable Commodities Film Series.

About the Documentary
Raspando coco is an award-winning film about the culinary and medicinal traditions of Afro-Ecuadorians. Since its premiere in 2018, it has been screened in three languages to audiences in Latin America, the United States, Europe and Japan. The film documents the health impacts and culinary traditions surrounding coconut as remembered and experienced by Afro-Ecuadorians on the coast of Ecuador. The movie positions communities of color as important knowledge bearers about health and food and shows the tensions that can arise when development and public health authorities label staple foods, like coconuts, unhealthy. This film will appeal to students and faculty interested in food justice and sovereignty, race and racism, Afro-Latin America, oral history and ethnography, public and community health, and sustainable development and agriculture.  

About the Speaker
Pilar Egüez Guevara, PhD is an Ecuadorian cultural anthropologist, writer and award-winning filmmaker. Over the past 20 years she has lived, worked and carried out research and community-based projects in and about Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Japan. She is co-founder and director of Comidas que Curan (Foods that Heal), an independent food education and media company dedicated to researching and promoting traditional foods and knowledge through ethnographic research and film. Her award-winning documentaries have been screened in three different languages across North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. Through her research, public speaking and films, she amplifies the voices of older men and women who are the bearers of traditional knowledge about food and medicine in Latin America. She has brought this work to communities in Ecuador through filmmaking and research education projects, as well as to US college students in the United States through film screenings and lectures. She is a published author and speaks internationally on topics ranging from cultural history, food heritage, health, nutrition and conflict transformation. She is currently lecturer at the Anthropology Department of University of Massachusetts Amherst.