Streaming—Bilingual Aesthetics: Negotiations Between Languages
Program Available for Three Days Only, November 10–12
BAMPFA from Home
Watch this program on your TV, computer, or mobile device through our streaming partner, Eventive, beginning November 10.
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Livestream Conversation
Jesse Lerner, Ximena Cuevas, Alex Halkin, Poli Marichal, and Bruno Varela
Thursday, November 12, 7 PM PST
Join us for a live conversation with Jesse Lerner, a documentary filmmaker, curator, and writer and the coeditor of Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America, and filmmakers Ximena Cuevas, Alex Halkin, Poli Marichal, and Bruno Varela. Access to this program is included with rental of the streaming film program; you will receive an access link via email prior to the event.
Hundreds of languages are spoken in Latin America, beyond the Spanish and Portuguese imposed by the European conquest. Unleashing the multiplication of heritage and affiliation in our contemporary landscape, these films reveal language as a will to power. They range from explicit negotiations about land ownership in The Land Belongs to Those Who Work It to a more abstract exploration of an Inca religious celebration in Pawqartampu. The chief of the Guarani Mimbiá tribe narrates the extinction of the Tupinambá tribe in Sérgio Péo’s Ñanderu Panorâmica Tupinambá, while Bruno Varela’s Estela tells the story of a missing woman. Vincent Carelli and the Centro de Trabalho Indigenista have for many years used video as a tool for activism and intercultural communication in remote Amazonian regions, as Meeting Ancestors vividly illustrates. Ximena Cuevas takes a humorous approach with a poolside language lesson for a North American tourist. In Dilemma I: Burundanga Boricua, Poli Marichal combines the official representations of Puerto Rico as a shining star with a shining scar, mixing animation, documentary footage, and hand-painted film.
—Los Angeles Filmforum
Films in this Screening
Meeting Ancestors
(A arca dos Zo’é)
Vincent Carelli, Dominique Gallois, Video in the Villages (Vídeo nas Aldeias), Brazil, 1993
FILM DETAILS
Language
- Waiãpi
- with English subtitles
Print Info
- Color
- Digital
- 22 mins
Ñanderu Panorâmica Tupinambá
Sérgio Péo, Brazil, 1991
FILM DETAILS
Language
- Portuguese
- Guaraní
- with English subtitles
Print Info
- Color
- 16mm transferred to digital
- 8 mins
The Land Belongs to Those Who Work It
Chiapas Media Project, Mexico, 2005
FILM DETAILS
Language
- Spanish
- Tzeltal
- with English subtitles
Print Info
- Color
- Digital
- 15 mins
Pawqartampu
Felipe Esparza, Peru, 2015
FILM DETAILS
Print Info
- B&W
- Digital
- 8 mins
Estela
Bruno Varela, Mexico, 2012
FILM DETAILS
Language
- Mixteco
- with English subtitles
Print Info
- B&W/Color
- Super 8 transfered to digital
- 8 mins
Dilemma I: Burundanga Boricua
Poli Marichal, Puerto Rico, 1990
FILM DETAILS
Language
- Spanish and English text on screen
Print Info
- Color
- Super 8 transfered to digital
- 18 mins
Estamos para servile
(We’re Here to Serve You)
Ximena Cuevas, Mexico, 1999
FILM DETAILS
Language
- Spanish
- with English subtitles
Print Info
- Color
- Digital
- 3 mins