Pictured: Alphabet / A (2013) Colectivo Los Ingrávidos
THOUSANDSUNS CINEMA: INDIGENOUS EDITION
programs online January 9–30, 2023 at www.mediacityfilmfestival.com
Media City Film Festival presents ThousandSuns Cinema, featuring 60+ films and digital artworks by Indigenous artists from Turtle Island and around the world, co-selected and presented with COUSIN Collective. Watch short and feature films, including new restorations and recent work by Alanis Obomsawin, Raven Chacon, Anastasia Lapsui, Sky Hopinka, Cecilia Vicuña, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Caroline Monnet, Fox Maxy, New Red Order, Svetlana Romanova, Shelley Niro and many more.
San Francisco Cinematheque is proud to partner with Media City Film Festival’s ThousandSuns Cinema by serving as co-presenter of the following online programs…
Raven Chacon & Cristóbal Martínez: A Song Often Played on the Radio
online screening co-presented with Media City Film Festival and Three Fold Press
online screening dates: January 9–30, 2023
view online (coming soon)
SCREENING: A Song Often Played on the Radio (2019) by Raven Chacon & Cristóbal Martínez
The mysterious El Cantor is sent by the King of Spain to find the mythological Cities of Cibola amongst the sands of the Rio Grande Valley. Meanwhile, La Cantante is another scoundrel in search of valuable metals in the desert. Spurred by the justification of moralistic “dichos,” the rival explorers come to learn what truly brought them to this land, understanding their true identities, and finding that they were only stealing from themselves. Featuring Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Nacha Mendez. (Raven Chacon & Cristóbal Martínez)
Full screening details, artist bios and more here.
Pictured: Tonalli (2021) Colectivo Los Ingrávidos
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos
online screening co-presented with Media City Film Festival and movimcat
online screening dates: January 9–30, 2023
view online (coming soon)
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos (Mixtecos) was formed in order to provide a radical, avant-garde alternative to the commercial and corporate mode of filmmaking in Mexico and internationally. They have created 300+ films since 2012. Their film and digital artworks have been exhibited at museums, festivals and art galleries around the world, including Arnolfini Gallery, International Film Festival Oberhausen, Flaherty Film Seminar, VDrome, CROSSROADS, Filmadrid, Ambulante Cine Documental, Tate Modern, Media City Film Festival and the 2019 Whitney Biennial, among many others. They were awarded the Images Festival’s Marian McMahon Award and MCFF’s Third Prize (2018). They are MCFF Chrysalis Fellows (2019–2023). Their collection of poetry SOLARES was published by Evidence at the Centre for Expanded Poetics (Montréal).
SCREENING: Tonalli (2021); 16 minutes. Alphabet/A (2013); 7.5 minutes. Eroded Pyramid (2019); 9 minutes. Shrines (2019) 3.5 minutes. Have You Seen? (2018); 7 minutes. Parallax (2018); 5 minutes. Tear Gas (2019); 1.5 minutes. Impressions for a Light and Time Machine (2014); 7 minutes. The Sun Quartet, Part 1: Sunstone (2017); 8.5 minutes. The Sun Quartet, Part 2: San Juan River (2017); 13 minutes. Soldadera/Percusión Visual (2013); 5.5 minutes.
Against the exaltation of the image over sound, and the gradual isolation of violence, Ingrávidos proposes a relational image with political determination. Images disintegrate, separate from the sound, multiply and stutter, connecting with each other and cracking up visual grammar like an egg. The interaction between the images dissociates their communal narrative practices, opening up the possibility of new critical approaches. Following Harun Farocki’s dialectical analysis of form and content, Ingrávidos subverts the hierarchical relationship between the visual form and the auditory, reclaiming the autonomy between them. The sound becomes the center of the attention; political discourses, machine guns, bubbling acid that dissolves bodies and the audio recordings of police prosecutions create an overwhelming sound landscape that speaks directly to the political situation in Mexico, generating a complex and paradoxical relationship that disrupts the sense of discourse, and stimulates the perceptive domain of the viewer. (Almudena Escobar López)
Full screening details, artist bios and more here.