28-30 November 2013, Birkbeck Cinema, 41 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

The Colombian Film Panorama is a selection of documentaries made by young emerging women filmmakers as well as experienced directors and their perspective on women.

The programme focusing on women will showcase:

•      Documentaries with a strong female view

•      Films where women are at the centre of the stories

The films made between 2011 and 2013 reveal issues as diverse as personal stories, exploration of family roots in different geographical and social contexts, exaltation of the motherhood role and the critical view of a prominent artist.

Come along to these London premieres and join the conversations with filmmakers at the Birkbeck Cinema.

The programme, co-curated by the collective El Perro que Ladra (Paris-France) and Zoom In Organisation (Colombia), is making Colombian films more accessible in London and the UK. This event is supported by CILAVS and Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI).

Thursday 28 November 6.00-7.30pm

Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square: Talk and film

Reception will follow in the Birkbeck Cinema Foyer

LOOKING FOR Andrea Said (Documentary 2012 54 minutes)

The filmmaker -born in London but raised in Colombia- initiates the search of her Pakistani father Shahid Said whom she never met. At 24 years old, she travels to London wishing to give her father a face. She crosses the ocean to find clues of where he could possibly be and discovers that making the film is a way to have him.

To attend this event please RSVP using the Eventbrite link: https://bbk-looking-for.eventbrite.com/

Friday 29 November

Young women filmmakers 2.30-5.00pm

MU DRUA Mileidy Orozco (Documentary 2011 22 minutes)

Mileidy, an Embera – Katío indigenous woman revises her past and roots while she documents a visit to her grandmother and their time together. The film is a personal and intimate reflection on her family, origins and events that had shape her life.

EL CHARCO AZUL  (THE BLUE POND) Irene Lema (Documentary 2012 52 minutes) Q&A with Director

A group of children on the Pacific coast of Colombia, fleeing from domestic abuse have made the disused train tracks their home. They get around on small carts and tell each other ghost and murder stories. The director discovered this place when making a short film for her degree, now she returns to observe more closely when the children are a bit older. Her relationship with them proves essential to the making of this documentary in which the camera rejects all theatricality or exhibitionism in favor of giving an accurate account of this community. Observed from a respectful distance, the children play happily in their carefree world. This is their home, their own self-made paradise.

Saturday 30 November

Women documented by men

11.00am

NACER, DIARIO DE MATERNIDAD  (BIRTH, MATERNITY JOURNAL)Jorge Caballero (Documentary 2011 83 minutes)

In BIRTH, Caballero’s documents the maternity wards of Bogotá’s state hospitals. Patiently, systematically, a seemingly commonplace event is imbued with mystery while the film penetrates the very origin of life itself. The director enters the delivery room, where mothers-to-be express their fears and show their mettle; the men remain on the sidelines of this intimate experience. Perhaps this is the reason why the mothers agreed to the presence of the camera at this life-changing moment. A signature film worth watching.

2.00-4.00pm

BEATRIZ GONZÁLEZ, WHY ARE YOU CRYING? (2011) Diego García-Moreno 2011 (90 minutes)

What happened to the painter Beatriz González, whose ironic artworks so often made us laugh? García-Moreno spent 3 years following her as she worked on her “Auras Anonymous” project, a monumental work involving 9,000 mausoleum plaques in Bogotá’s abandoned Central Cemetery, in hopes of answering that question.  The resulting documentary reveals the trajectory of a body of work that developed alongside a nation steadily sinking into tragedy. The work of painter Beatriz Gonzalez follows the history of Colombia, step by step, during half a century.  Initially full of humor and irony, her work has in time adopted the tragic tone that currently characterizes her country.  This documentary in the form of a monologue weaves together the life of a great thinker, a witty and critical body of work, and the somber future of a nation grown accustomed to violence and death.