In an English-dominant world, can a pair of Latinx twins learn English without losing their Spanish? Twin Tongues/Lenguas gemelas explores migration, languages, and power through a Puerto Rican-Peruvian family when their twins enter first grade. Shot in Philadelphia (United States), Puerto Rico, and Peru, this nonfiction film celebrates multilingualism as it wrestles with the choices that speakers make in relation to their languages today.
Dr. ILIANA PAGÁN-TEITELBAUM (she/ella) is a Puerto Rican filmmaker, writer, and educator. She has a PhD from Harvard University and teaches Latin American film at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her book “Violencia invisible: Narrativas de la exclusión en América Latina” (Invisible Violence: Narratives of Exclusion in Latin America) is about how engaged cultural discourse reveals the relationship between violence and inequality. As a filmmaker, she directed the experimental short film Mulberry Tree, which won Best Experimental Film by a Female Director in Brazil; and My Crip Kin, a short for a collective film project on processing pandemic grief produced by Kit Blamire. She is part of the SIFTMedia 215 Collective of Black and Latinx Women Filmmakers of Philadelphia, the Thunder and Lightning Poetry Collective, and founder of Pillow Writers en Español. Iliana received a Leeway Foundation Art and Change grant and a Los Fellows PHLAFF Film Residency for her nonfiction film Twin Tongues/Lenguas gemelas about multilingualism in the Latinx diaspora.
In the United States, bilingualism is perceived as a talent for white students but as a deficit for students of color. My film advocates for the right to speak one’s mother tongue and celebrates kids’ ability to speak multiple languages. Twin Tongues contributes to immigrant justice and the cultural preservation of Latinx cultures. Migrants from all over the world struggle to preserve their culture and language in the United States, where English monolingualism and Anglo culture are often seen as superior.
Twin Tongues explores the causes of language loss in migrant communities. Part 1 “Familia” (Family) introduces a Hispanic family in the diaspora of Philadelphia. Part 2 “Escuela” (School) follows Irene and Lautaro Guzmán Pagán, a pair of 7-year-old Spanish-speaking twins, into the English-language system of a Philadelphia public school. Part 3 “Raíces” (Roots) travels to post-hurricane Puerto Rico to understand family ties to the island and how Spanish became a language of resistance in the Caribbean island.
At a time when misrepresentation of migrants as criminals puts migrant bodies in danger, this film aims to empower migrant communities to represent and preserve their culture, identity, and languages. “Twin Tongues” opens a space for migrant communities to discuss and develop linguistic and cultural agency.
Contact: ilianapagan@gmail.com
