Archives, Cameras, Microphones: Material Residues in Latin American Cinema
Department: Latin American Studies
Date and Time: April 14, 2021 | 12:00 PM-5:00 PMEvent Location: Online
Event Details
Zoom Registration: https://uci.zoom.us/j/94535901858
The Department of Spanish and Portuguese cordially invites you to attend (via Zoom) the first of two events under the title "Archives, Cameras, Microphones: Material Residues in Latin American Cinema". These two events will focus on the crossroads between filmmaking, the use of notebooks or diaries, found footage and personal archival material in Colombia and Argentina. This is a new tendency that has marked the production of audiovisual culture in Latin America during the last decades. In this follow-up colloquium we will investigate: how does the interaction between different media like film and photography force us to rethink the place of images today? Does the use of personal archives and found footage propose another type of storytelling? How do these new forms engender different ways of relating to the world? What sort of claim do they present to other social forms that seem to be in crisis, i.e. the family; the nation; gender and sexuality?
The event will be organized around the projection of a film titled Como el cielo después de llover (2021) directed by Mercedes Gaviria and a short documentary Revelaciones (2020) directed by Juan Soto.
Como el cielo después de llover, Mercedes Gaviria, Colombia, 76 min
After studying abroad, Mercedes returns to Colombia to work on the next film by her father, the famous ViÌctor Gaviria. Fluctuating between admiration and reproach, Mercedes constructs a private diary that goes beyond familial conflicts to question the place of women in the film world, which is still strongly ingrained with a patriarchal mindset.
Revelaciones, Juan Soto, Colombia, 29 min
I called my mother with a very specific question, and the conversation ended up having the structure of a potencial film. When blending her words with some old 16mm footage and some photography rolls a cuban friend had asked me to develop, the images started to burn, and their ignition posed questions about the nature of memories, how we archive and preserve them, and which ones vanish without leaving a trace. According to Didi Huberman, to look at an image requires being able to discern the place where it burns.