THE THEATER OF CONFLICT
Saturday, January 28 at 8 PM
The title of the Chilean film that opens this program, Somos +, means “We are more,” or “There are more of us than there are of you.” In the era of the Pinochet regime, this was asserted during certain organized acts of political resistance carried out by women, and the film shows how one such collective action functioned as a non-violent intervention into Chile’s rigidly-controlled public sphere. The remaining shorts of the program survey a very different sociopolitical and cultural climate, one in which forms of protest are now reliable fixtures of the street and the public plaza (even as some are still violently suppressed). This has led to a rethinking of the performance of resistance and staging of dissidence, a questioning of how they can be represented – and made manifest – in moving image culture, as demonstrated by the many fragmentary works here that were initially intended to be viewed on the Internet. CURATOR IN ATTENDANCE!
Doors 7:30 pm. $5 admission.
Program Notes:
Somos +, Pedro Chaskel & Pablo Salas, Chile, 1985, 15′
A documentation of a protest organized by Mujeres por la Vida (Women for Life), a group of women from different political orientations united against the military regime. Defying a yearlong national stateof siege, a female-only march was staged across Santiago’s central Avenida Providencia.
Retrato n. 1 Povo acordado e suas 1000 bandeiras, Edu Yatri Ioschpe, Brazil, 2014, 5′
During one of the 2013 protests, amidst “the awakened people and their 1000 flags,” a protestor stands her ground.
Lavado de Banderas, Ignacio Rojas, Chile, 2015, 1′
Hombre Encadenado, Ignacio Rojas, Chile, 2013, 1′
Estudiantes exigen respuestas, Ignacio Rojas, Chile, 2012, 1′
La batalla del 21 de mayo, Ignacio Rojas, Chile, 2011, 1′
Nos están matando, Josefina Buschmann, Chile, 2015, 1′
Iglesia Tomada, Juan Francisco González, Chile, 2013, 1′
Six shorts made for MAFI (Mapa Fílmico de un País – Filmic Map of a Country), according to the collective project’s formal parameters: immobile camera, brief duration, and direct sound.
Zonas de Rebelión / Dignidad en lucha, Los ingrávidos, Mexico, 2013, 2′
A “text-manifesto expressing the feelings of the majority of rural educators in Mexico,” produced during a five-month-long occupation of the Plaza de la Constitución.
Transmisión / Desencuadre, Los ingrávidos, Mexico, 5′
“…where the politicization and materialization of one aspect of the film grammar, the framing / misframing duality, spreads from the bustling (hormigueante) complexity of a process of transit.” (Los ingrávidos) Radio reports analyze staged photographs we do not see, showing the victims of a mass murder committed by Mexican soldiers.
2 de Octubre / Lejos de Tlatelolco, Los ingrávidos, Mexico, 2013, 4′
An acousmatic voice “for which an event impossible to internalize remains distant, an event that in its remoteness does not cease to make foreign the narration of an event that should not have taken place.” (Los ingrávidos) The voice reads from José Emilio Pacheco’s “The Voices of Tlatelolco,” about the military’s 1968 massacre of unarmed students.
Transmisión / Percepción, Los ingrávidos, Mexico, 2′
A brief dialogue between Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina) and Pierrot (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and a short description-reading from Pierrot le fou about painter Diego Velázquez – these intersect with a visual moment to constitute the outline of a perception and the occurrence of the Idea of el pueblo, ofa meeting. (Los ingrávidos)
Transmisión / Bruno 1600, Los ingrávidos, Mexico, 2′
A monologue-turned-fragment meanders, wanders, hangs around, and poses as a living thought in certain image. Thinking externalized by a voice materially sourced in the film Two or Three Things I Know About Her but that insists ideally as meditation and reflection of the Italian philosopher, poet, and martyr Giordano Bruno. (Los ingrávidos)
Inflamável, Rodrigo Abreu / Mariana Bley, Brazil, 2014, 9′
An artistic ritual, a consecration to the fire of words, anxieties, wishes, desires. Of all that needs and deserves to be transformed. Using the cultural and religious syncretism of Brazil – Candomblé, Umbanda, Catholicism, shamanism – this video performance proposes art as processing channel, as ritual, art, and revolution. (Abreu / Bley)