Part I.

La Torera [The Torera, 2006] 3’ Valeria Andrade and Pedro Cagigal (2006) Serie Prácticas Suicidas [Suicidal Practices Series, 2006]

A young woman dressed with the bullfighting costume in a crowded avenue risks her own life. It is an appropriation of a common urban practice in Ecuadorian towns. “Torear” cars (“Torear” meaning to dodge, as a bullfighter would do it) means to cross the streets as you can, bullfighting cars is a common experience In Quito, where the pedestrians dodge cars and buses till they manage to reach the sidewalk. The video deals with the game and with the constant danger of being knocked down in a society with limited regulations. But it also alludes to the bullfighting, to Quito festival and to Anita Borromeo, known as “La Torera,” iconic figure from Quito society in the sixties.
http://www.laselecta.org/?p=1187
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bF9i-D2FoU

Serie El puerto [The Port Series, 2004-2005] (5’) Nicolás Testoni

1. Chito Pereyra. Cortador [Chito Pereyra. The cutter]. 1’40 2. Pedro Quinter. 2’
2. 2. Buque tanque pasa cargando 500 toneladas de combustible [Tanker passes by loaded with 500 tons of fuel, 2004] 1’18”

The Port is a series of short films about the life of the neighbors of Ingeniero White. The town was founded by the end of the 19th Century by the railway English company “Ferrocarril del Sud” to export grain. In the last years, while the port of Bahía Blanca has undergone an accelerated series of changes, several transnational petrochemical and cereal companies have been installed in the coast. Everyone refers to this phenomenon in terms of figures: “millions and millions of dollars have been invested in the port,” people say. However, in the daily life of the port inhabitants, these flaunting figures relate to scarcity and loss of employment, to the fact that “músculos” (clams) are no longer edible, and to the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult, even impossible, to have the coast to enjoy and relax themselves. Organized in one or two minute episodes, The Port intends to set into motion different experiences that explore how they live this violent transformation day by day. Most of this videos deal with a specific place, a proper name, a daily action.
http://lasruinasdebahiablanca.blogspot.com/

Entrevista con el taxista [Interview with the taxi driver, 2006] 6’27” Colectivo Shampoo

Colectivo Shampoo, together with SHAMPOO Editions, promotes the works by different creators from Dominican Republic; Summetime, by Juan Dicent, a member of the creative team of Shampoo Comunicaciones, was their first volume and was launched in 2006. From this book come up the short film Entrevista con el taxista, a night ride in the city of Santo Domingo with this particular and endearing taxi driver.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSLMffCrWbo
http://www.cielonaranja.com/menashampoo.htm

Kung Fu (2005) 7:52 Hugo Ochoa

Kung Fu is the result of the reading or personal interpretation of all the spontaneous expressions the author has encountered while recording the alcoholics in the streets of San José, Heredia and Tegucigalpa. These heroes have been immersed into a symbolic universe, a space in which naturalism and idealism, the earthily and the divine, the secular and the sacred coexist. Kung Fu philosophy teaches us that when we face a stronger opponent, we must take advantage of the other’s strength, channeling the strength of his blows when the time comes to counterattack. I use the idea of counterattacking in this work. King Fu is a mental weapon that gives our resistance mechanisms a new meaning. Body calligraphy of street characters developing our sociopolitical reflections.
http://madc.ac.cr/galerias/videos/ochoa/kung_fu.html

Verdadero falso (2007) 5’42” Ernesto Salmerón

Mientras unos amigos almuerzan en una gasolinera, unos niños se acercan a pedir las sobras y entablan una conversación con ellos. Lo que aparentemente es una inocua charla entre un adulto y un niño, desencadena en el espectador una serie de posicionamientos y prejuicios sobre lo verdadero y lo falso, sobre las imágenes susceptibles de ser mostradas y las que no, evidenciando la complejidad de un mundo donde colisionan distintas percepciones éticas de la pobreza.
http://www.ernestosalmeron.com

Nawpa (0.1) (2004/2007) 13’ Xavi Hurtado

The indigenous movement in Ecuador has one of the longest and most intense resistance traditions in Latin America. César Pilataxi, a kichwa native living in Quito, explains what “Nawpa” is: a concept of development and progress different to the Western one, which contemplates the inseparable nature of the spiritual, political, economic and teaching aspects. César: “they want to say that underdeveloped countries are backward, primitive countries, living in the past..."
http://www.hamacaonline.net/autor.php?id=89
http://www.mediatecaonline.net/Obert/EP00066/cas/

Surfing Buena Vista (2008) 3’30” Kasia Badach y Alfredo Ramos

Surfing Buena Vista was initially conceived as a 3-minute loop. It was recorded in an avenue limiting with the Havana district of Buenavista. In spite of being an apparently rural suburb, its young inhabitants want to live a urban life at high speed. Most of them have black origins and do not have money nor prospects of earning any, but they have plenty of time and an extreme hobby: guaguasurfing or “taking the boxes”, as they call it. This is thrilling and it is for free. It is practiced after the rains and it implies surfing while holding on the buses that come and go through the flooded avenues of the neighborhood. Until they got wings, according to them.

Parte II. Comunidades

Oiapoque/Oyopock (1998) 12’ Lucas Bambozzi

Future and disillusion in the border between Brazil and the French Guyana. This is a predominantly narrative record of the incursion in the border area between Brazil and the French Guyana, which tells the meeting points between little stories and existences: the dissatisfaction with the present, the eternal wanderings and roaming, the attachment to a golden dream of happiness. Located in the region of Oiapoque, it obsessively projects what people could be beyond the border. This video was produced for the festival Fronteiras, Itaú Cultural, 1998.
http://www.comum.com/lucas/video/oiapoque/oiapoque_sv3.mov http://www.comum.com/lucas/video/oiapoque/info_oiapoque_eng_port.pdf

Entre nudos, calaches y otras cosas [Among knots, junk and other stuff, 2006] 18’ Alexia Miranda

Entre Nudos Calaches y Otras Cosas [Among knots, junk and other stuff] was born as a result of several actions carried out in the public space of San Salvador historic downtown by the end of 2006. These actions focused on the cultural need of giving the spaces a new meaning within a hybrid context of national identity. Their aim was to establish a dialogue with the daily life of the town inhabitants; to establish an exchange of use values and exchange values between the artist and the work and the metropolitan context, using as a source the biggest street market in San Salvador. The main intention of the project was based in the method of bartering, as the pre-Hispanic legacy implemented by indigenous societies to satisfy their needs and different interests. The value can be only determined by the personal need that exists in relation with the desire to own or the use of an object, food, animal, service, or anything else. It consisted in asking people from the stalls to exchange the new mass produced objects made in China (artifacts without historic memory that have never been important to anyone but have a high visual attractive) for objects and old stuff worn out by their use and their anecdotic charge. The result was an installation made by the objects exchanged by the sellers. A public stall was displayed on the old façade of the historic Cine Libertad.
http://alexiamiranda.blogspot.com/2007/09/entre-nudos-calaches-y-otras-cosas.html

À Plenos Pulmões (2006) 15’ - 35mm. Patrícia Morán

An avenue. A vein that crosses the city center of São Paulo. Minhocão’s concrete not only divides the city, it also divides the opinions about its validity. It divides rich and poor in a vertical level: the ones in the sidewalks, the others in the buildings. Minhocão avenue is the balcony where all the dreams, desires, projects and peoples from the whole Brazil, even Paulistanos, meet. Minhocão is the place for diversity, it is a portrait of the hope’s persistence maintained by the people from a country named Brazil.
http://www.filmespolvo.com.br/site/artigos/fora_de_quadro/93
http://www.kinoforum.org.br/curtas/2007/detalhe.php?c=12254&idioma=1

Parte III

Agarrando pueblo (Los vampiros de la miseria) [Catching people. (The vampires of poverty), 1978] 28’ 35” Luís Ospina and Carlos Mayolo (1945-2007)

The film takes the form of a mock documentary, as the facts are not real. It criticizes the filmmakers who exploit misery in order to acquire benefits and how the audience of the first world consumes marginal images. It is a sharp critique of the pornomiseria (misery-porn) represented by the opportunism of the dishonest documentary makers of the 70s who shot “socio-political documentaries” in the third world so they could sell them in Europe and win awards “When we understood that writing film criticism was not enough, we decided to put that criticism into practice, into the films themselves. It was like a spit into the soup of the third world cinema, and we were criticized and marginalized in the European and Latin festivals, because people were used to have canned misery to ease their bad conscience. But on the long term we were right, because after the controversy the situation became urgent and we started to win awards in the same festivals that excluded us before. Agarrando pueblo was a break in every sense. It was the last film that Carlos Mayolo and I directed together, after four co-directions.” Luís Ospina.

• DIRECTION, SCREENPLAY, PRODUCTION: Carlos Mayolo, Luís Ospina
• PHOTOGRAPHY: Black and white: Fernando Vélez, Enrique Forero, Oswaldo López. Color: Eduardo Carvajal and Jacques Marchal
• ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Elsa Vásquez
• SOUND AND EDITING: Luís Ospina
• CAST: Luís Alfonso Londoño, Carlos Mayolo, Ramiro Arbeláez, Eduardo Carvajal, Javier Villa, Fabián Ramírez, Astrid Orozco, Jaime Cevallos
• PRODUCED BY: SATUPLE (Sociedad de artistas unidos para la liberación eterna), Colombia, 1978
• FORMAT: 16mm Color / Black and white
• LOCATIONS: Cali and Bogotá, Colombia, 1977
• BEGINNING http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hydBqTZ0b0E
• END http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5VMVT5ZqeM&feature=related