We are pleased to report that our documentary short film, The Oasis, has been selected to screen at the prestigious Beverly Hills Film Festival on Sunday, April 18th.

The BH Film Festival draws more than 20,000 film industry people to Beverly Hills every year from around the world. The Festival has become a magnet for international media attention every April, generating an estimated half billion media impressions last year. We are thrilled to have been selected for this special screening.

Luciana Slaen and Daniel Franco are embarking on a journey from Buenos Aires, Argentina through the Andean nations into Central America and Mexico at the end of this month. They will be reporting to us on various facets of America, past and present, as they travel. They will also connect with some of the people we have met in our travels over the past 18 months from Jujuy to La Paz to Guatemala.

Luciana holds a BA degree in Social Anthropology from the Universidad Nacional del Centro in Buenos Aires. She is also a multi-lingual translator who assisted with the translation of our site. She has even worked in France as a Spanish language teaching assistant!

Luciana is an avid and passionate photographer who uses photography in "...search of a new way of feeling and interpreting the world around us." During this trip, Luciana will use her linguistic and photographic skills to help us find new answers to the question “What is America?”

Although Daniel has a degree in electrical engineering, it was his lifelong passion for travel and exploration that resulted in his plan for this trip. Daniel was born in Tierra del Fuego, where he grew up living an outdoor lifestyle exploring nearby woods and lakes. He has maintained this lifestyle and his love of travel and adventure his entire life. After a 5-week journey through Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador and Colombia last year, he knew that he had discovered his real passion. He shared his vision for this current trip with Luciana, and they have both left behind their jobs to explore America from Argentina to Guatemala and beyond.

We wish them well and look forward to their updates in the Journal and via our Twitter site!

An exhibit titled "Exploring the Early Americas" at the U.S. Library of Congress has been in the news lately because it displays two of the most important historical maps of America. They are the Matteo-Ricci and Waldseemüller maps drawn by the Italian and German cartographers whose respective names they bear. The maps raise intriguing questions not only about America's past, but our present.

Matteo Ricci Map
Matteo Ricci was a Jesuit priest born in 1552 in a small provincial town located within the Papal States in east central Italy. He entered the priesthood at age 19 and arrived in Macau in south China on his 30th birthday. He would subsequently rise to become the Superior General of the Papal mission in China before his death in 1610.

Many of you will remember Felix, the brother of our director Nicolas, from his visit to Los Angeles earlier this year.

Felix is now back in Argentina with his own theater troupe! They are mounting a fascinating project called ¡Lazaro! - with Lazaro being a fictional historical character, a plot device to explore both human history and the history of theater. Felix's previous performances of his Cervantes program in London led directly to the original ideas that he and his troupe used in the creation of ¡Lazaro!