Paz Encina: Exercises in Memory

February 1–9, 2017

Four evenings with Paraguayan artist, filmmaker, and humanist Paz Encina, who is the UC Regents’ Lecturer of 2017.

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Memory Exercises
Paraguayan Hammock
A Wind from the South

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Films
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Selected
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Past
Films
Past
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Past Events

Sunday, February 5, 4:30 PM
Paz Encina: Artist Talk

In this illustrated lecture, Paz Encina discusses her installation work and the importance of site specificity for both her artwork and her films.

Past Films

Memory Exercises
Paz Encina
Paraguay, 2016
Wednesday, February 1 7 PM
Natalia Brizuela and Paz Encina in conversation
In this experimental documentary, Encina investigates the Paraguayan dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954–89) through the memories of the children of his “disappeared” opponent, the dissident Agustín Goiburú.

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Sorrows of the Struggle
Paz Encina
Paraguay, 2014-16
Thursday, February 2 7 PM
Natalia Brizuela and Paz Encina in conversation
This omnibus combines two nonfiction pieces based on documents found in the Paraguayan secret police’s “Archives of Terror” with a narrative work based on a story by Rafael Barrett. Includes short A Wind from the South.

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Paraguayan Hammock
Paz Encina
Paraguay, 2006
Thursday, February 9 7 PM
Paz Encina and Adriana Johnson in conversation
An older couple in 1935 Paraguay wait, and wait, as past and present merge in Paz Encina’s moving work on “the poetics of history.” Winner, FIPRESCI Prize, Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard.
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Paz Encina: Exercises in Memory

February 1–9, 2017

We are delighted to welcome Paz Encina on her first visit to the US. A Paraguayan artist, filmmaker, humanist, and committed intellectual, Encina is the UC Regents’ Lecturer of 2017. The extreme isolation of Paraguay for the last 150 years and the radical suppression of information about the country’s modern history are central to all of Encina’s film and installation work. “Memory as a theme is something inherent to my life. I was born during a dictatorship, and I lived my childhood and teenage years in a dictatorship.” In her work, Paraguay’s tragic isolation is seen as a consequence of a population devastated by numerous wars, decades of military rule and antidemocratic regimes, and a political economy that only recently has entered into neoliberal global forms of circulation.

Encina’s audiovisual work deals with historical events and draws on archival materials, most notably the Archives of Terror, the unique documentation...

Encina’s audiovisual work deals with historical events and draws on archival materials, most notably the Archives of Terror, the unique documentation that the regime kept of its own human rights abuses. Yet Paz Encina’s work is poetic in form and in its approach to history, on the edge of narrative and nonnarrative, never realist. Sound is at the heart of her explorations: her scripts resemble scores; sounds evoke images, not the other way round. Encina’s films recall both Bresson and Tarkovsky in their search for the audiovisual balance between surface and depth. She herself claims the video work of Bill Viola to be at the core of her approach to cinema.

Natalia Brizuela, Guest Curator
Associate Professorof Spanish and Portuguese at UC Berkeley

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We are grateful for the support and assistance of the Regents’ Lectureship Program and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, both at UC Berkeley; Ivett López Malagamba; and Paz Encina.

Paz Encina: Exercises in Memory

February 1–9, 2017

Past Events

Paz Encina: Artist Talk

Past Films

Memory Exercises

Sorrows of the Struggle

Paraguayan Hammock