LA Film Forum Logo

POSTPONED - Disarm the Right to Violence!: Recent Mexican Experimental Short Films

POSTPONED - Disarm the Right to Violence!: Recent Mexican Experimental Short Films

POSTPONED Indefinitely due to concerns around COVID-19.  New date to be determined.

Los Angeles Filmforum presents

Disarm the Right to Violence!: Recent Mexican Experimental Short Films

Sunday, March 15, 2020, 7:30 pm

At the Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90028

US Premieres!

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, emerging 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

For more information: www.lafilmforum.org or 323-377-7238.

Biographies:

Andrea Rodea was born on January 4, 1989, in Mexico City. She studied communication in a private school and at the end (unsatisfied by the career) she goes to New York for 6 months to study a series of workshops at Mono No Aware focused on the realization of analog cinema, super 8 and 16 mm. After this trip she returned to Mexico and began to study a series of philosophy seminars focused on the image at Filmoteca UNAM and on Campus expandido MUAC. In turn, together with her best friend, she created a small production company called Rhizomes Films, where they begin to freelance audiovisual works and also explore their concerns within the image.

A chance meeting in Havana with legendary Cuban film propagandist Santiago Alvarez changed the course of Travis Wilkerson's life. He now makes films in the tradition of the “third cinema,” wedding politics to form in an indivisible manner. In 2015, Sight & Sound called Wilkerson “the political conscience of American cinema.” His films have screened at scores of venues and festivals worldwide, including Sundance, Toronto, Locarno, Rotterdam, Vienna, Yamagata, the FID Marseille and the Musée du Louvre. The NY Times called his most recent film Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? “an urgent, often corrosive look at America’s past and present through the prism of family, patriarchy, white supremacy and black resistance.” His agit-prop essay on the lynching of Wobbly Frank Little—An Injury to One—was named one of the best avant-garde films of the decade by Film Comment and a "political-cinema landmark" by the LA Times. His work with Erin Wilkerson in Creative Agitation was included in the Venice Biennale. His writings on film have appeared in Cineaste, Kino!, and Senses of Cinema. He has taught filmmaking at the University of Colorado, CalArts, Pomona College, and Vassar. He is also the founding Editor of “Now: A Journal of Urgent Praxis.”

This square demands

This Square Demands Justice

This Square Demands Justice

By Pablo Ramos

2019, Digital, 5:58

Concrete monster smaller

The Concrete Monster

The Concrete Monster

By Elías Martín del Campo

2019, Digital, 7:50

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?

Black Brigades smaller

Black Brigades

Black Brigades

Macarena Hernandez Abreu & Arian Sanchez

2018, Digital, 9:20

Fissures

Fissures of Violence

Fissures

Erik Mares & Andrea Rodea

2019, Digital, 10:29

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.

How to forget

How to Forget a Terror That Has Become Permanent

How to Forget a Terror That Has Become Permanent

Gerardo M. Porras Garza

2019, Digital, 15:31

Kill Two birds with one Stone smaller

Kill Two Birds with One Stone

Kill Two Birds with One Stone

Aurora Fragoso

2019, Digital, 10:01

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.

The Appeared smaller

The Appeared

The Appeared

By Ileana Pichardo Urrutia & Facundo Torrieri

2019, Digital, 12:26

I got home okay smaller

I Got Home Okay

I Got Home Okay

By Gisela Guzmán

2019, Digital, 5:40

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.

Ourobouros smaller

Ouroboros

Ouroboros

Antonio Arango

2019, Digital, 8:58