Between 4 October and 9 November, Colombia will take over CinemaAttic again, an event that is becoming an annual custom to celebrate this country through film, food, music and other artistic expressions. This year will have a particular emphasis on photography and tropical-horror short films, offering a glimpse into a wide range of aesthetic proposals and points of view from a new generation of storytellers. Spectators who embark on this risky journey will experience the diversity of Colombian filmmaking with our programme of outstanding Colombian short films.
Accessibility: 
captioning + English subtitling
Ages: 15+
-Colombian Short Films: We Rent Washing Machines And Other Colombian Curiosities (Edinburgh)
A night of Food + Dance + Music & Short Films.
When: 7 October, doors open at 19:00, screening starts at 19:30
Where: St Peter’s Episcopal Church Hall (14 Lutton Place, Edinburgh EH8 9PE)
-We Rent Washing Machines And Other Colombian Short Films (Glasgow)
When: 11 October, doors open at 19:30, screening starts at 20:00
Where: CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts (350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD)
-Colombian Short Films (Craigmillar)
When: 4 October, 17:45
Where: Craigmillar Library (101 Niddrie Mains Rd, Edinburgh EH16 4DS)
🎟️Free entry
This programme of shorts, screened both in Glasgow and Edinburgh, presents a small sample of stories and realities from across varied regions of Colombia and expressed through different genres. From Balanta (Fernanda Pineda & Gregor Kuhlmann, 2021), a moving musical documentary from the Colombian Pacific Coast, to The Trial (Luckas Perro, 2020), a historical fiction about justice being taken into the hands of urban guerrillas in Medellín during the 1990s, from We Rent Washing Machines (Jeferson Romero, 2021), a splendid portrait of the inhabitants of peripheral neighborhoods of Bogotá through a man who rents washing machines, to the people of the mountains of Santander in the fiction short film Pensándote (Yosman Serrano, 2022), where a radio contest is just an excuse for showing solidarity, and finally from Flores de otro patio (Jorge Cadena, 2022 ) a story set in the Colombian Caribbean that follows a group of Queer activists who use unorthodox performative actions to fight together against the various social injustices that plague the Caribbean region of Colombia, to La Perra (Carla Melo Gampert, 2023), a Cannes award-winning animation about being a woman in a patriarchal society.
This programme shows the complexity of the Colombian physical and political landscape through its most recent audiovisual productions, depicting a territory full of tenderness and diversity, resisting injustice and eager to change its historical reality of systemic violence.
In Edinburgh this showcase will be accompanied by offerings from the local Colombian community, who will provide delicious food (cooked by Sabor al Toque Colombian Food) and Coffee Tepuy. There will be performances by the Edinburgh-based group Colombia Dance, El Encanto and a livestreamed music set directly from Bogotá by DJ Jhill, who will take the audience on a journey through the soundscapes of regional Colombia.
On 1 November at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, we have a Halloween-themed programme of shorts, Sal si puedes-Get Out If You Can, revealing how Colombian filmmakers transpose thriller and horror to the screen. The programme has been curated to reflect the many faces of this syncretic holiday, which in Colombia reshaped the Christian festivities of All Saints and All Souls, following the invasion of the Spanish in the 16th century. Today the country practices its own Trick or Treat festivities, where it is also known as Día de los Niños (Day of the Children). At the same time, it remains associated with the well-known themes of the season, like witchcraft, ghosts and monsters, deeply rooted in everyday life in Colombian society and expressed through popular beliefs, urban myths and traditional medicine.
But this is not all. We have also organised a special event for this Colombian Showcase focusing on the photographer Hernando Toro, one of the most important Colombian portraitists with an intriguing life story and a fascinating body of work. This special event will run for seven days and will see two screenings of the feature-length documentary Toro (Adriana Bernal-Mor & Ginna Ortega, 2023) alongside a photography exhibition with a selection of the artist’s work, all at the Whitespace Gallery in Edinburgh.
Toro shows in an intimate way how Hernando Toro began his career as a photographer while in prison for drug trafficking in Barcelona. This documentary, that began by researching the protagonist’s dodgy past, turns into a beautiful observation of this magnificent artist’s life.
MORE EVENTS + TICKETS
-Sal si puedes / Get Out if You Can: A Night of Spooky Colombian Short Films (Glasgow)
When: 1 November, doors open at 19:30, screening starts at 20:00
Where: CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts (350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD)
Photography Exhibition Hernando Toro (Edinburgh)
When: 3 to 9 November.
Where: Whitespace Gallery (76 East Crosscauseway, Edinburgh, EH8 9HQ)
🎟️Free entry
Feature Documentary:
Toro / Dir. Adriana Bernal, Ginna Ortega / Colombia / 2023 / 78 mins.
-First Screening:
3 November doors open at 19:00, screenings start at 19:30
Where: Whitespace Gallery (76 East Crosscauseway, Edinburgh, EH8 9HQ)
-Second Screening:
5 November doors open at 19:00, screenings start at 19:30
Where: Whitespace Gallery (76 East Crosscauseway, Edinburgh, EH8 9HQ)
We hope to see you across our many venues for dancing, eating, drinking, photography, watching films and generally sharing a good time!
