TH!RST

Genre: Dark Comedy

How do you come together during a pandemic?

Two men quarantined in their homes during the Covid-19 pandemic are brought together in an unexpected way. Desired life is love, to love is to face death – la petite morte.

Th!rst, Huitaca Films first fiction short.

_{Directed/Written by: Leandro Cortés Montaño}

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NORTH 5th STREET

DOCUMENTING BUSINESSES

This project is a collection of interviews carried out during the Summer of 2021 with business owners in the North 5^th Street, Olney neighborhood, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From hair salons and restaurants to quinceañera dress shops, business owners provided tips on how businesses could augment pedestrian and vehicular attention by changing the look of their storefront. This neighborhood has a lot of advice to give!  It was a Huitaca Films joint project with the Community Design Collaborative, Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce (Storefront Improvement Program), and the North 5^th Street Revitalization Project.

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WOODLAND AVENUE

DOCUMENTING COMMUNITY MEETINGS

The Woodland avenue is a commercial corridor in Southwest Philadelphia. It is home to a large diversely West African, East and South East Asian, and Black American Community. This double episode documentation, highlights community conversations that helped the development of storefronts, urban furniture, and landscaping that the inhabitants wanted to reflect the culture of their everyday life. The project was organized between the Community Design Collaborative (an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit organization) and ACANA ( African Cultural Alliance of North America). The goal to document, was a desire to record the inhabitants voice, so designers could listen and learn.

DRAWING BOGOTÁ

VIDEO COLLAGE

An exploration of the built space of Bogota, Colombia or as the original people of Bogota ( Muisca) called it, Bacata. Traversing through ancient Muisca geographies. A mix of cultural imagery & collage of contemporary Bacata. The lines that defined modernity, the lines that defined colonial suppression, the lines and landscapes that whisper the secrets of an indigenous civilization. It is impossible to not draw Bogota and its region without observing the intersection of lines that together define Bacata’s narratives of space.

QUESTIONS FOR PANATI

DOCUMENTING DESIGNER LED CLASSES

During the Summer of 2019, an education program was organized between the Community Design Collaborative (an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit organization) and the Allegheny West Foundation in Philadelphia. The program was designed to teach students how architectural, interior, and landscape design can reshape the built environment. Through a series of questions, spread through an eight-week period, students were asked to question the socio-cultural framework of their own community. How does the built environment shape us? How do we adapt to it? Do we learn more through questions or answers? Both?

VIOLENT GROWTH

DOCUMENTING AN INTERNALLY DISPLACED COMMUNITY

Colombia has 7.7 million internally displaced people (IDP), as a result of numerous civil wars, drug wars, and climate change. The Llano Verde neighborhood was designed and constructed to house IDPs in the city of Santiago de Cali. However, the construction of the neighborhood was done with little to no community input, failing to meet crucial needs for the community to thrive. The footage collected in the three-episode series, aims to explore the failures of its planning and construction as told by interviews with residents.