El Signo Vacío / The Empty Sign

Kathryn Ramey

2023 / 76 minutes
United States / Puerto Rico
Spanish with English Subtitles

El Signo Vacío is a feature-length anthropological journey through the United States’ occupation of Puerto Rico. The film weaves together over a hundred years of found footage—including tourism, agricultural, and propaganda films—with contemporary portraits of local artists and activists, all set to Puerto Rican punk rock and noise music. It reveals how carefully crafted American narratives of "democracy" and "debt" obscure an ongoing capitalist and military domination. Moving between old and new, Spanish and English, paradise and environmental destruction, El Signo Vacío serves as a “re-educational” film, challenging viewers to rethink modern colonization, its mechanisms, and its responsibilities.