Velez writes: "This and That is a road movie about forgetting — and being forgotten. Shot over a period of six years while traveling through France, Spain, Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, and Puerto Rico, it is a document of failed loves, death and how neither vengeance nor pardon can modify the past."
Elena Feder, writing in the catalogue for the 2003 exhibition Nations, Pollinations, Dislocations: Changing Imaginary Borders in the Americas, states: "This exquisitely shot, multi-layered journey though the labyrinthine corridors of memory and forgetting by New York based, Puerto Rican born pioneer video artist Edin VĂ©lez is nothing short of dazzling. Poetic, meditative, and structurally evocative of the rhythms and pacing of World Music, the film chronicles the invisible narrator's six year journey across countries, continents, and emotional places... The result... allows the conventional first person narrative voice to all but disappear into the folds of its ultra Baroque fabric. Richly textured as a visual collage of still and moving images, electronic effects, aural and visual metaphors, graphic manipulations of the written word, and a multiplicity of global cultural signifiers. This and That... will long remain as an aesthetic milestone in the postmodern articulation of a globally savvy diasporic identity in the making."
Video/Camera/Editing/Sound Design/Additional Text: Edin Velez. For: Edin Velez, Sr., 1925 -2001. Text: Isabel Allende, Pablo Neruda. Music: Jarboe, Luz, Marrero, Nine Inch Nails, Sigur Ros, Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, Beatles, Julie London. Special Thanks: Kelly Anderson. Funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation.