Cinemaattic invites you to explore, once again, one of Latin America’s most prolific short film producers through a programme that embraces the nation’s contradictions and poetics in tension through classical short films and new voices.
October 1 to November 1 – 2024 | Glasgow & Edinburgh
-Morningside Film Club
🗓️1st October, 2pm
📍Morningside Library (184 Morningside Road, Edinburgh, EH10 4PU)
-Craigmillar Film Club
🗓️2 Oct / 5.45pm
📍Craigmillar Library (101 Niddrie Mains Road, Edinburgh, EH16 4BG)
-Colombia, Presente: A Night of Short Films – Glasgow
🗓️ 24th October, 7.30pm (screening starts at 8pm)
📍 CCA, 350 Sauchiehall St, Glasgow G2 3JD
-Colombia, Presente: A Night of Short Films – Edinburgh
📅 26th October, 7.30pm (screening starts at 8pm)
📍 St Peter’s Church, Lutton Place, Newington, Edinburgh, EH8 9PE
-Frames of Colombia – Glasgow
📅31st October, 5.30pm
📍University of Glasgow, ARC (Suit 237B), 11 Chapel Lane, G11 6EW
-Frames of Colombia – Edinburgh
📅1st November, 5pm
📍University of Edinburgh, Screening Room (G.04), 50 George Square, EH8 9JU
This diverse selection will transport you to various locations, where you may find yourself experiencing new colors, landscapes, and sounds. From the enchanting beauty of the Amazon rainforest to the chaotic pulse of city life, and even to the heartfelt children’s songs echoing in a school for blind children in 1980s Medellín, each film invites you to engage your senses and immerse yourself in Colombia’s rich panorama of experiences and narratives.
84 by Daniel Cortés, a starting point in this selection, presents two contrasting archival materials that highlight the coexistence of very different realities in Colombia. On one hand, we see the urban middle class exploring filmmaking while making a fictional short film about gangsters. On the other, we witness the visual testimony of the funeral of Álvaro Ulcué, an Indigenous leader assassinated that same year (1984).
Frame: 84 | Daniel Cortés | 2020
Meanwhile, LA TRAMPA, directed by Ferney Iyokina Gittoma from the Okaina community, tells the story of an old fish trap built by Grandfather Noé. With the arrival of a mysterious jaguar, Noé’s descendants in the Indigenous Okaina community take this as a sign to rebuild what was lost.
Frame: Tarro Vacio | Vitilio Iyokina Gittoma | 2024 | 22’
THE LABYRINTH by Laura Huertas takes us on a journey through the labyrinthine memories of a Uitoto man who worked for drug lords in the Colombian Amazon in the 1980s. We follow his path between the dense forest and the ruins of a narco mansion, modeled after the Carrington mansion from the soap opera Dynasty. Simultaneously, Vitilio Iyokina Gittoma’s short film TARRO VACÍO exposes the deep divide between ancestral knowledge and the scientific world. Adding to the poetic nature of this selection, DESASIR is an exquisite dance-cinema film that follows a woman fleeing through a dark corridor, passing through portals of light that guide and protect her path to freedom.
Frame: Desasir | Daissy Pérez Ospina & Elizabeth Pérez Ospina | 2022
In contrast, BOGOTÁ STORY, an award-winning short that is making its way through many major festivals around the world, transports us to Colombia in the early 1990s. It captures a time when many Colombians were contemplating whether to stay in their homeland or pursue the American dream, leaving behind their families to escape the violence and lack of opportunities.
JUNIOR TU PAPÁ, a short film by young and talented director Daniel Díaz, who has lived in the diaspora for many years, beautifully uses archival footage to evoke nostalgia. The film explores the role of football in Barranquilla during one of the most violent periods of Colombian history.
Frame: Searching for Clover (Buscando tréboles) | Víctor Gaviria | 1980
BUSCANDO TRÉBOLES (directed by acclaimed poet and filmmaker Víctor Gaviria in 1980) offers a poetic glimpse into the daily lives of blind children at a school in Medellín, marking one of his earliest short films. Finally, ENTRE TÚ Y MILAGROS focuses on a teenage girl’s first encounter with death and her evolving relationship with her mother.
We are also featuring two special events titled FRAMES OF COLOMBIA: Political Memory and Archive Film, presented in both Edinburgh and Glasgow universities.
In collaboration with the Glasgow Latin American Research Network (GLARN) and Embrace Dialogue (ReD) we are presenting a special screening and panel conversation featuring two archive films, Jesús by director Felipe Colmenares and Avalancha by director Daniel Cortés. Both produced in the last two years, which offer powerful interpretations of the Colombian conflict. Using a rich blend of archival footage and testimonies, these films trace the conflict’s roots back to the assassination of political leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948. Join us to witness how Colombia’s history is reconstructed and reinterpreted through film archives, shedding new light on the nation’s decades-long struggle for truth and social justice.
Frame: Avalancha (Landslide) | Dir: Daniel Cortés | 2023 | 25 min.
Through these events and films, we are invited to reflect on peace, violence and dialogue amidst chaos and order, and on the country’s struggle to balance its natural richness with external (and internal) pressures of extraction and exploitation.
All shorts have English captions. The screening that will take place in St Peter’s Church Hall will be accompanied by SABOR al TOQUE, a family business offering the best of traditional Colombian food.
Don’t miss this rare opportunity and the other events of Colombia Presente! III in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
