FRAMES OF COLOMBIA
Political Memory and Archive Film
Screening and conversation

📅1st November, 5pm
📍University of Edinburgh – Screening Room G.04 (50 George Square, EH8 9JU)

Free entry (registration recommended)

CinemaAttic and Embrace Dialogue (ReD) present a special screening and panel conversation featuring two archive films, 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.

The panel will include University of Edinburgh’s lecturers Dr Gwen Burnyeat and Dr. Charlotte Gleghorn.

This screening and conversation will also take place in Glasgow on October 31st at the ARC, University of Glasgow, in collaboration with the Glasgow Latin American Research Network (GLARN). Click here for full details.

Films:

Jesús
Dir: Felipe Colmenares
Colombia | 2024 | 27 min.
Contains graphic depictions of violence

Jesus was forced to move dead human bodies in 1948, in the same way another civilian was forced to do it in 1997. This documentary, based on an audiovisual archives research inside 7 decades of Colombian history, focuses on the gestures forced on to human bodies by the violence caused by the massacres that occurred in the country. A short film that transforms Jesus’ singular voice into a collective scream.

Avalancha (Landslide)
Dir: Daniel Cortés
Colombia | 2023 | 25 min.
Contains graphic depictions of violence

In Colombia, the assassination of social leaders has been a centuries-old political practice that seeks to destroy all kinds of popular organization; however, far from destroying it, has strengthened the will of resistance of men and women who even today raise their dead and walk demanding truth and justice. Our moving images, scattered in time, preserve the trace of a human landslide that walks ceaselessly, writing the history of a people who mourn and resist.

Bogotá, April 9, 1948. Frame from Avalancha (Landslide), Dir. Daniel Cortés | Colombia | 2023 | 25 min.

Accessibility:

-Wheelchair accessible
-English captioning
-SDH captioning