19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil: Southern Panoramas | Film Programs – Program #1 | Landscapes And Territories + Program #2 | Unfolding The Real

Southern Panoramas | Film Programs comprises screening of selected films that approach pertinent issues to the geopolitical South.

Program #1 | Landscapes And Territories comprehends three films, with a total duration of 62’27”.

In Goran (2014, 10’38”), by Roberto Santaguida (b. 1981, Montreal, Canada), the filmmaker works in collaboration with Goran Gostojić, a resident of Novi Sad, in northern Serbia, who has Down Syndrome. Speaking with the director, Gostojić talks about his daily life and his reactions to situations of fear and joy. In a subtle way, the images portray Gostojić’s choices and his views of reality. At the same time, the director’s presence raises issues about the place of the author and the possibilities of self-representation.

Ghost Looking for its Spirit (3’43”) is a 2012 film by SLINKO (Ukraine/USA). The monologue on which this piece is based is a letter to Marx, combining references to the artist’s childhood under the Soviet regime, and her current life in the United States. The existential issues that the author enunciates produce a confrontation of communism and the neoliberal model. The video portrays the schizophrenic contemporary context in which the leftist political ideals find themselves stranded amid references to a utopian past that seems to have proved a failure.

The third and final film of Program #1 is Karolina Bregula’s (b. 1979, Poland) Fire Followers (2013, 48’46”). The systems of power that agency social relationships are a frequent theme of the artist’s videos, installations, photographs, happenings, and performances. With overtones of parody, Fire Followers is about a small town in northern Europe where fires destroy even its art collections. Scared by rumors that the burning of artworks was deliberate and necessary to rekindle creative thinking, the population starts avoiding museums, galleries, and collections, and trying to get rid of the art pieces they own.

Program #2 | Unfolding The Real also comprehends three films, with a total length of 73’22”.

La Huella [The Footstep] (2012, 18’) by Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski (b. 1981, Lima, Peru) features a collection of disturbing photographs, associated in a dreamlike sequence that underscores the fictional aspect inherent to memory. Produced during the conflict that took place in Peru between 1980 and 2000, the pictures were gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated the civil war in the country. The piece explores the marks that the armed conflict left on the Peruvian population: silenced, at times invisible, but indelible traces.

The Disquiet (2013, 20’) is a film by Ali Cherri (1976, Beirut, Lebanon). The four geological fault lines that run across Lebanon create an instability that can only be likened, in modern times, to the repeated political and war-related setbacks experienced by residents of the country – located, by the way, in the Middle East, one of the world’s most conflict-ridden regions. The artist employs a powerful analogy to comment on situations whose impact on the social fabric is comparable only to the immeasurable (and uncontrollable) destructive rage of nature.

Blood Earth (2013, 35’22”), by Kush Badhwar (India/Australia), revolves around Kucheipadar, a village in India’s Odisha state, rich in bauxite. Since the liberal reforms of the 1990s, the locality has witnessed violent clashes between a mining company and the Adivasis, an ethnic group considered to be the original dwellers of the Indian territory. Blood Earth alternates between footage of local musical tradition, of daily life in the village, and of the political struggle of its residents, delivering a powerful depiction of conflicts in modern-day India.

Film program A
4:30pm – Program #1 + Program #2
Sesc Pompeia | Theater: OCT/15 (thu), OCT/29 (thu), NOV/12 (thu), NOV/26 (thu) e DEC/02 (wed)
Galpão VB: OCT/20 (tue), NOV/03 (tue), NOV/17 (tue) e DEC/01 (tue)

Film program B
7:30pm – Program #2 + Program #1
Sesc Pompeia | Theater: OCT/22 (thu), NOV/05 (thu), NOV/19 (thu), DEC/01 (tue) e DEC/03 (thu)
Galpão VB: OCT/13 (tue), OCT/27 (tue), NOV/10 (tue), NOV/24 (tue)