Decades earlier, Mama Icha moved to the United States to help her daughter with the care of her grandchildren. However, she never lost sight of her hometown of Mompox, spending years sending money to build her dream house there. Now, at the end of her life, Mama Icha boards a plane and flies back to Colombia where she finds joy and heartbreak in her return to the place her heart never left. La Casa De Mama Icha broadcasts on Monday, October 18th at 10pm on PBS (check local listings) and streaming online at POV.org.
La Casa de Mama Icha is part of the film team's Mi Casa, My Home Transmedia project thatinvites us to think about the meanings of home in the current circumstances of migration and imbalance in the opportunities for reaching prosperity. This project focuses on stories of migrants who, from their host countries and financed with remittances, build the houses they have always dreamed of in their countries of origin. Over time, many migrants, after investing years of savings and with a great transnational effort, repeatedly postpone their return. Many of the houses remain incomplete, others are abandoned or remain uninhabited for years: large-scale containers of that deferred dream of returning to the land of origin and a visual testimony of an illusory economic viability.
Oscar and Brenda's interview with HOMinG: The Home-Migratio Nexus, a project that aims for a novel understanding of the home experience and of its determinants, along several comparative axes: migrant categories and household profiles; migration corridors; ethno-cultural backgrounds; countries, local contexts and spatial backgrounds of origin, transit and settlement.
Oscar and Brenda attended a Q&A session with the filmmakers of La Receta de Alma at the Philadelphia Latino FilM Festival moderated by Joy Soto.
In The News
Select press coverage, interviews and related stories
“'La casa de Mamá Icha', la historia de una inmigrante que cumple el sueño de volver a su país" - interview on Telemundo
Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, Reva & David Logan Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding comes from Nancy Blachman and David desJardins, Bertha Foundation, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Charitable Trust, Park Foundation, Sage Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Chris and Nancy Plaut, Abby Pucker, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.
