School of Media Studies

Neyda Martinez, Associate Professor, Media Management, School of Media Studies and Co-Director, Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative is part of a select international cohort invited to participate in the Sundance Producers Summit with the documentary film she is currently producing “Bartolo,” directed by Leandro Fabrizi-Rios.

Projects invited to participate in the Sundance Producers Summit include documentary features in progress: “8 Stories About My Hearing Loss” (Chile), “Bartolo” (U.S./Puerto Rico), “Boycott” (U.S.), “Cult Foods Project” (U.S.), “Florence From Ohio” (U.S.), “Hakucha Munayta” (Peru), “Higher 15” (U.S.), “La Bonga” (Colombia), Untitled Prison Hunger Strike Film (U.S.), Untitled Vinay Shukla Project (India), and “We Are Volcanoes” (China) and fiction features “Calma Chicha” (Argentina), “Chalino” (U.S.), “Late Bloomers” (U.S.), “Lords of the Earth” (U.S.), “Malpelo” (Colombia/U.S.), “Motherhood” (Tunisia/Canada/France), “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo” (Chile/France/Mexico), “Neon Tilapia” (Kenya/U.S.), “Stampede” (U.S.), Untitled Opa Locka Project (U.S.), and “Wounspe Wankatya: A College Education” (U.S.).

Tucked in the remote coffee-growing mountainsides of Lares, Puerto Rico, “Bartolo” follows an isolated community of 12 unhoused families who seize a chance for a new beginning. Hard hit by the legacies of Spanish and U.S. colonialism, systemic government neglect, and climate change, they transform an abandoned school building to address their most pressing need — shelter. Despite communal ties dating back generations, can this mutual aid project survive competing individual needs and the formidable will of an outside activist?