Chile50: Politics and Aesthetics Screening One: City of Photographers (Sebastian Moreno, 2006)
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
Chile50: Politics and Aesthetics
These film screenings, specially curated and organised by the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies (CILAVS), in collaboration with Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) and Festival Internacional de Cine de Valdivia (FIC Valdivia), commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Chilean Military Coup of 1973. The selected films invite us to reflect upon the challenges of memory and memorialization and the relation between aesthetics and the political. With a focus on materiality (bodies, photo-cameras, various urban or rural landscapes) and a strong emphasis on subjectivity, each of these films also allows us to dwell on the various methodologies of visual representation and the subtleties of the affective worlds and symbolic horizons they explore in their particular genre. Questions about archival practices, fiction and testimony, intimacy and state violence will guide the conversation with the respective directors who
will be joining us remotely for each of these screening events.
Curated and organised by: Margarita Palacios (m.palacios@bbk.ac.uk) and Daniela Larraiìn (d.larrain@mail.bbk.ac.uk)
City of Photographers (Sebastian Moreno, 2006)
20th October
Documentary 80 minutes, Chile
During the period of the Pinochet dictatorship, photography became a material testimony of political violence. A group of Chileans photographed protests and Chilean society in its most varied facets. On the streets, in the rhythm of the protests, these photographers trained and created a political language. For them, photography was a practice of freedom, an attempt at survival, an alternative to be able to continue living. Their photographs served to support the testimony of the victims of the dictatorship and were fundamental in initiating processes of justice. Some of them were brutally repressed, others murdered... most of them are still alive. They represent Chile's inhospitable past and the metamorphosis of Chilean society. This film is about them.
Contact name:
Matthew Barrington