Behind that screen

A visual journey through the experience—fascinating yet demanding—of assuming, for the first time, the shared management of an environmental film festival in Peru, giving rise to an encounter between subjective gaze and documentary record.

These images, taken with an analog camera and a cellphone during the 2024–2025 edition of Sembrando Cine, represent contemplation breaking through the rush. Each photograph was captured in moments of relative calm, amid the complex tasks required to carry out Peru’s longest-running itinerant environmental film festival.

More than a record of successful activities or audience reception, this selection of photographs reveals the mix of fascination and responsibility awakened in those who manage an environmental film festival for the first time, while also seeking to visually capture their lived experience.

All the black-and-white and the two central color analog photographs, taken in contemplative moments, contrast with the mostly color images captured with a cellphone in situations of stress. Arranged in collages and a deliberate sequence, these images embody the essence of pivotal moments in the festival: bringing together professionals from diverse fields, traveling to remote locations—some difficult to access in the Peruvian Amazon—for film screenings, transporting technical equipment such as an inflatable screen weighing more than 40 kilograms, and embracing different understandings of what natural resources mean to human beings.