Breadfruit & Open Spaces
Breadfruit & Open Spaces explores the journey of a group of Pacific Islander immigrants from the Federated States of Micronesia who are now living on Guam. After much sacrifice to purchase land and build their homes, these new landowners and residents are devastated when the Guam Environmental Protection Agency threatens to evict them. With their new livelihood at stake, they band together to hold their ground and fight back. This documentary profiles the struggle of Micronesian communities to find a voice on a new island while maintaining ties to families on their home islands.
What Academic Reviewers Are Saying
“Culturally speaking, Bautista observes many parallels between the Chuukese residents of the subdivision and the indigenous Chamorro people. Notions of land, space, family, kinship, food, and some traditions are similar.… For example, Bautista’s subtle exploration of gendered Chuukese culture understandings of space—including potent issues of shame bearing on the body, with respect to clothing choices, the placement of public outhouses, and the gendering of domestic space in family homes—is all the more remarkable for her taut, concise filmmaking.”
— The Contemporary Pacific Journal
“The title of this film, Breadfruit and Open Spaces explains the imagery captured by Quan-Bautista as she mingled and became a part of these Micronesian families. She saw the deep value these people had in being connected to the land. She saw how they managed their space through a shifting of her Chamorro lenses to that of her promise sister Kathy Martin’s lenses. Key to Quan-Bautista’s successful documentary was this very relationship with Kathy.”
— Pacific Studies Journal