Buenaventura and Nuquí are two Colombian Pacific territories; both regions are mainly inhabited by Afro-descendant communities that, through processes of territorial resistance, are facing state abandonment, inequality, structural violence and processes of dispossession that miners, drug trafficking and private entrepreneurs are carrying out in search of the mineral and geographical wealth of these areas. The communities in the territories coexist daily with the incidence of these projects and at the same time with the disinformation about their advances and their real social implications.

From this notion of development, the Sociedad Arquímedes, formed by mostly Antioquian businessmen, has been promoting for more than 10 years a project to create a maritime port in the Gulf of Tribugá north of Nuquí. A multipurpose port that presents itself on two levels: the first as a tourist port, to increase the demand for international and national tourism with the construction of infrastructure that can supply this need and that responds to the levels of massive tourist services; the second as a cargo port, that aims to move 250,000 tons of goods per year, in turn this port will contribute to the development of industrial fishing in the area.

The concept of a maritime development project such as this brings with it a change in all the social structures of the community and with it a new direction in local policies and in the lives of its inhabitants. The intention to modify the landscape and the economic north of the territory has generated all kinds of feelings and above all many questions in the inhabitants and the organisations that are present there.

Postcards from the Future is a process of audiovisual exchange between the communications collectives EN PUJA (Nuquí), Puerto Creativo and Tura Hip-Hop (both from Buenaventura), which in recent years have worked in a residency format to create audiovisual letters that explore the notion of future and the port that intertwine the reality of these two territories.

Through documentary cinema it promotes and shares reflections, visions and feelings that are born of two territories crossed by the notion of a port: Buenaventura, a city with a port; Nuquí,a municipality with a project of construction of a port and a tradition of conservation and a fight for the territory.

FIRST STAGE – 2017

In its first phase, Postcards from the Future was a meeting to share the visions that are born from these two territories to work with ideas such as: development, good living, autonomous management of the territory, conservation of biodiversity and the maintenance of cultural traditions, understanding how they are affected by the construction of a mega-project such as a sea port.

From the process of training in documentary filmmaking for the Puerto Creativo and En Puja collectives, the short documentaries Tribugá and Juntos Somos Más were made.

SECOND STAGE – 2018

In its second phase, through a documentary creation residency in charge of the technical and academic team of Más Arte Más Acción, Ambulante Más Allá and Tierra Digna; the advice of local leaders and the rapprochement with their communities; the communication collectives En Puja and Puerto Creativo, engaged in a dialogue on the important current issues of their territories.

Once again, topics such as development, governance, good living, autonomous management of the territory, conservation of biodiversity and maintenance of cultural traditions were established as the conceptual axis of the learning exercise, resulting in two short documentaries that portray the current position of these communities (Ánimas and Alabadas).

THIRD STAGE – 2019

To close the anthology of audiovisual documentaries/postcards, in the third version of the project two more short documentaries were made: El Barrio and Silencio.

The various shorts have been screened in the community of Nuquí and the surrounding villages and also in other venues such as the Art Museum of the National University of Colombia (Bogotá), the Film Festival for Human Rights (Cartagena and Bogotá), the meeting / exhibition “Carretera al mar” (Cali), Espacio Odeón (Bogotá), MIDBO 2019 (Espejos, voces y miradas Afro) among others.