Disarm the Right to Violence!: Recent Mexican Experimental Short Films
With an introduction by Travis Wilkerson
August 27th, 2021
FREE OUTDOOR SCREENING!!!
(don’t worry the artists still get PAID!)
starting at 9pm (not punk time)
@ Buntport Theater parking lot
(bring your own chair)
[717 Lipan St, Denver, CO 80204]
If you aren't comfortable going to the program in person it will be on this page from the Aug 27th to the Sept 3rd.
We expect our audience to respect the distance boundaries of others (keep 6 feet y’all) and honor the fact that we are still in a pandemic.
If you’re not vaccinated STAY HOME. If you feel sick STAY HOME. If you wanna stay home. STAY HOME.
Statement: A selection of films produced between 2018-2020 in intensive filmmaking workshops at Catedra Ingmar Bergman and Filmoteca UNAM, in collaboration with DocsMX, led by Travis Wilkerson. The films open an impelling window into a dynamic Mexican avant-garde—at once deeply political, highly engaged, and formally stunning. Part monument, part call to action, these films confront pressing matters in Mexico: 1) the long history of horrific violence against students organizing for human and democratic rights; 2) the disproportionate direction of that violence against women—femicide. This group of films confronts these fraught subjects with poetic charge and lyrical hope. They don’t simply depict violence—they use a host of cinematic techniques to embody that violence. Working with an archive of 16mm footage selected by the Filmoteca, the filmmakers vandalize the image itself—they scratch, burn, bleach, and bury the film underground. Those analog, material enactments are then transformed into complex digital films—a hybridized expression, between film and digital, past and present, urgency and reflection, beauty and horror. Drawing on the lessons of the Third Cinema, these films confront horror with equal parts rigor, analysis, and aesthetic grandeur. These remarkable short films offer an early glimpse into an inspiring movement where politics and aesthetics stand shoulder to shoulder, and cinema itself is lifted skyward. —Travis Wilkerson
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Title: This Square Demands Justice
Artist: Pablo Ramos
Year: 2019
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Title: The Concrete Monster
Artist: Elías Martín del Campo
Statement: In the Jardines de Morelos neighborhood and its surroundings, dozens of women are killed every year. Although it has activated the "gender alert" - a set of measures coordinated by the government -, Ecatepec is the municipality where more femicides are committed. What lies beneath this concrete surface?
Year: 2019
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Title: Black Brigades
Artist: Macarena Hernandez Abreu & Arian Sanchez
Year: 2018
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Title: Fissures
Artist: Erik Mares & Andrea Rodea
Statement: The image is what appears before us. The image that a world of representations imposes on us is an evasion, it is of absolute blindness. To position oneself before the image is to place oneself critically before the world.
Year: 2019
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Title: How to Forget a Terror That Has Become Permanent
Artist: Gerardo M. Porras Garza
Year: 2019
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Title: Kill Two Birds with One Stone
Artist: Aurora Fragoso
Statement: Violence from the word, from the harmless appearance of everyday life immersed in aggression. Expressions privately and publicly in a state of constant violence, and silence as a response, as a way to normalize and perpetuate violence. There is nothing left but to resist from the word to dismantle the hate speech.
Year: 2019
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Title: The Appeared
Artist: Ileana Pichardo Urrutia & Facundo Torrieri
Year: 2019
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Title: I Got Home Okay
Artist: Gisela Gisela Guzmán
Statement: In recent years, insecurity and thousands of feminicides in Mexico have led women to seek greater protection and take more precautions to return home safely. I arrived well is a piece of appropriation that talks about how women use the means at their disposal with the intention of taking care of themselves in a violent environment.
Year: 2019
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Title: Ouroboros
Artist: Antonio Arango
Year: 2019
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