Santiago Torres
Of Time and Memory, by Santiago Torres
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Santiago Torres
Sunday October 12, 2025, 7:30 pm
At 2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90057
In person: Santiago Torres, with curator Diego Robles
Tickets: $15 general, $10 students/seniors, free for Filmforum members
https://link.dice.fm/m2fd2f47ee38
Modernity halted or in-process and in-construction? Is Mexico City expanding or collapsing? The edges of the metropolis perforate the towns around it. Its center is sinking, yet like needles cables, wires, and buildings reach toward the heavens. The films of Santiago Torres observe the urban harmony inherent in the chaos, while also engaging the painful sprawl embedded within its cacophony. An avid cinephile since early in his life, Santiago has been an active agent in the photographic and cinematic community in the city, gradually making his way to UNAM’s University Center for Cinematographic Studies (now ENAC/UNAM), where he studied Documentary Film Directing and Cinematography. The films in this program begin here, in this historic Mexican and Latin American film school, where his meditative audiovisuals usher you into a state of mind that merges the contemplative and transcendental with the mundane and abandoned. His films upon graduating begin an inventory of various sociological-ecological investigations into loneliness, isolation, the way we remember and see the world around us, and how media and cinema find their way as interventions into our consciousness and reality. Please join us for the World Premieres of “Sobre el amor y la soledad” & “Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park”, and the US Premiere of “Habitantes,” “Of Time and Memory”, and “Embodied Knowledge” - and in welcoming Santiago Torres and his films from 2008-2022.
- Notes by Diego Robles
Santiago Torres is the Secretary General of the National School of Cinematic Arts at UNAM (ENAC). He holds a Master’s degree in Cultural and Creative Industries from the National Taipei University of Arts and is a graduate of both ENAC and Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School. His filmmaking practice includes cinematic essays, observational documentaries, and work as a director of photography in film and television.
His personal projects revolve around themes of otherness, perception, memory, and cinema, utilizing non-fiction filmmaking as his primary research method. His personal works include the documentary essay El tiempo y la memoria (Best Mexican Short Film DocsDF 2012), the film project Nuestra Imagen Actual (screened at the opening of the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC/UNAM), and the installation El Último Otoño de la Era Heisei (The Last Autumn of the Heisei Era). Together with Susana Bernal and Gabriel Herrera, he founded the production company Black María.
Habitantes
Habitantes
2008, 16mm to digital, color, sound, 11.5 minutes. US Premiere!
A non-fiction film about the city we fail to see — its phantoms and invisible inhabitants. A hypermodern urban world: artificial, designed, hermetic. It devours the past, erases the abandoned. And yet, little by little, it reclaims its origin.
Mundo Flotante
Mundo Flotante
2008, S16mm to digital, color, sound, 16 minutes. US premiere!
She leaves everything behind — a life, a past, a name. And enters an old house, silent and forgotten, built at the dawn of the 20th century. There, time lingers. Memory seeps through the walls. Alone, she begins again — or disappears.
Of Time and Memory
Of Time and Memory
2012, S16mm to digital, color, sound, 23 minutes. US premiere!
A film essay that explores the relationship between cinema and memory, beginning with the filmmaker’s own personal recollections. Through an autobiographical lens, the film moves from the individual to the collective, tracing how memory is shaped by the images we consume.
From Chris Marker to Hitchcock, and the Zapruder film, the memory of cinema merges with our own history, until the two become inseparable.
Uyway (The Seed)
Uyway (The Seed)
Co-directed with Gabriel Herrera
2016, HD, color, sound, 14.5 minutes
‘UYWAY’ (the seed) tells the story of a spiritual journey made by Quechua farmers bringing their cherished potato seeds from the Potato Park in Peru to Svalbard, Norway. It is a voyage from potato fields high in the Andean mountains of Peru to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault: a fail-safe seed storage facility built deep inside a mountain on a remote island, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.
Comipems 2017 Atención Aspirantes con Discapacidad Sub
Comipems 2017 Atención Aspirantes con Discapacidad Sub
2017, HD, color, sound, 12 minutes.
An observational documentary that follows the efforts of students with disabilities preparing to take the high school entrance exam in Mexico. Alongside them, a group of dedicated volunteers supports their path toward education.
Sobre el amor y la soledad
Sobre el amor y la soledad
2019, HD, color, sound, 3 minutes. World Premiere!
A film about waiting, longing, and the quiet distance between strangers. A friend once called it the opposite of a mockumentary, a false fiction.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
2020, HD, color, sound, 10 minutes. World premiere!
Almost 50 years after the bomb at ground zero. The chronicle of an instant on Hiroshima's emblematic peace park and its museum. Echoes of other moments in history and film.
Embodied Knowledge
Embodied Knowledge
2022, HD, color, sound, 4 minutes. US premiere
A poetic documentation of the course Art and Craft Curation taught at Taipei University of the Arts. Through a particular methodological approach the students bodily experience the craft of indigo dyeing. The group of students comes from two different disciplines (Heritage Studies and Cultural and Creative Industries). Theory, practice and exhibition are weaved by the physical involvement of teachers and students, their efforts aimed beyond the university walls guided towards a critical understanding of craft, environment and sustainability. The documentary itself follows a Sensory Ethnography approach, closely observing key moments of the course, including a field trip to Nantou, several workshops and the final exhibition entirely put together by the students. The voice over narration gives us an insight into the teacher’s philosophy, the reasons behind the motivations and choices that lead to the design of the course.