Sunday     11:30
The Chopin House
2020-24, 72 min., English

Director: Libertad Gills

This program presents a selection of films by Libertad Gills, a filmmaker whose practice delves into the intersections of memory, power, and resistance. Gills' works navigate histories both personal and collective, often drawing on marginalized narratives to challenge dominant frameworks. This series spans a range of experimental forms, from the haunting exploration of the connection between cattle, capitalism and colonization in Cattle Capitalism (2022) to poetic meditations in What does it mean to wait? (2023). New works deepen this exploration, reaching into the gaps of forgotten archives and the generative beauty of reuse. 1922 (2023) conjures an imagined visual record of Ecuador’s workers’ massacre, stitching together fragments of found footage to ask how cinema might stand in solidarity with class struggle. Por un cine cachinero (2024) turns to Guayaquil’s second-hand markets, reclaiming the aesthetics of reuse as a survival tactic and a radical gesture of resistance. Each piece offers a unique perspective, revealing the hidden threads that bind landscapes, bodies, and histories.

Cattle Capitalism (2022, 11 min.)
Picturing the Collective (2021, 6 min.)
Abolition Alphabet (2021, 6 min.)
Woody Strode: River Crossing (2020, 4 min.)
What does it mean to wait? (2023, 5 min.)
1922 (2023, 30 min.)
Por un cine cachinero (2024, 10 min.)

Following the screening, there will be a debate with Libertad Gills.

Libertad Gills is a filmmaker, researcher, writer, and Lecturer of Videographic Criticism (Film Studies) at the University of Leeds. Her films have screened at Prismatic Ground, Cámara Lúcida, and Transcinema, among others, and her videographic works as well as writing have appeared in Senses of Cinema, Short Film Studies, and desistfilm. She has published two books on Latin American film and experimental cinema and recently co-edited a double issue of Academic Quarter on academic filmmaking. Gills holds a Ph.D. from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, with a focus on experimental archival cinema.