Poetics of the politic

Guests:  Jessica Beshir talk with Enrica Colusso (International Coordinator- Thinking The Real y Bíbata Uribe (Associate Programmer 23 MIDBO).

​​Mexican-Ethiopian filmmaker Jessica Beshir invites us to discuss her poetic and political approach to documentary writing. From her point of view we will approach the notion of evocation and filmmaking of the invisible. This will be the occasion to delve into the creation of an iconographic repertoire and, in particular, into the plastic proposal that Jessica Beshir has been developing since her beginnings, which is characterized by the use of black and white. Through fragments of her feature film Faya Dayi and her short Hairat, we will examine the links between oral tradition and liturgical evocation and we will learn about her exploration of the word and particularly her sonorous speech. Deeply anchored to her time, Jessica Beshir's work contains the issues of a territory that is both her own and collective. This seminar will be an opportunity for Jessica Beshir to share her style of talking, constructing and revealing, in cinematographic terms, a certain state of the world.

Shortcuts to Chris Marker.  Approach to the freest of all documentary makers

Guest:  María Lucía Castrillón (MA Class, first part)

Through a selection of excerpts from Joli mai (1962), If I Had Four Dromedaries (1965), The Marching Train, (1971) So Long, I Hope (1968), The Twist (1968), The Bottom of the Air is Red (1978) and Cats Perched (2004) María Lucía Castrillón, a Paris-based filmmaker and an expert on the work and production context of the French filmmaker, explores the identity of Chris Marker - one of the many pseudonyms of Christian, Hippolyte, François, Georges Bouche-Villeneuve (1921-2012) - She explores his cinematographic, political and aesthetic affiliation, his way of looking at and naming the world, of mobilizing collectives without risking his independence, of playing freely with the forms of the moving image to express his gaze on the movement of history, of combining art, thought and politics, of revealing the face of a cinema-essay that remains novel. His talk proposes a rich discussion around a figure as incomprehensible as he is elusive, as well as the various risks and challenges of production linked to his work.

Collective Session: Chris Marker: Real and Imaginary Correspondences

This session opens a second look at Chris Marker in which we ask ourselves about the influences of Latin America on Chris Marker and of Chris Marker on the production of Colombian filmmakers and artists. We will follow a text by Carolina Amaral de Aguiar, author of the book 'O cinema latinoamericano de Chris Marker'. The researcher will point out important aspects of his work and together with  the Colombian filmmakerJuan Soto and Nueve Voltios, the artists invited to the Expanded documentary, we will discuss Marker's influences in a current creative environment.

Sandra Rodríguez (Canada) in dialogue with  Sandra Gaudenzi (UK).

Chair: Sandra Tabares Duque (Coordinadora Expandido).

​​Storytelling through immersive and interactive formats opens us to the world of technologies as well as to the world of human imagination. If documentaries can offer alternative points of view In which ways have we used interactivity so far to expand the documentary form? What have we missed out on, and what are the opportunities ahead?

Making documentaries with Big Data. Online identity and privacy

Guest: Brett Gaylor (Canada) in dialogue with Juan David Cárdenas, Professor- Arts Faculty- Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.

This talk is an exploration of documentary approaches to artificial intelligence in the work of Brett Gaylor. He will present part of his work built from large databases of photos, words and voices. From a general perspective, he will inquire into the ways in which we, as citizens, contribute to maintaining systems of control and surveillance.

Guest: Marc Isaacs in dialogue with Enrica Colusso (Invited Seminar Coordinator)

In this session, the filmmaker Marc Isaacs will discuss his unique approach to the documentary form with a particular emphasis on the notion of "staging the real". Using examples from his early films and more recent work, Marc will analyze how intervention and embracing invention can safeguard the non-fiction film from the clutches of the formulaic and predictable. He will discuss how constraints, whether formal or budgetary, can liberate the filmmaking process and generate original ways of thinking about form. Marc's protagonists are 'ordinary' people and his focus is firmly on the 'everyday' aspects of our existence. In the seminar Marc will share how he tries to transform the everyday into something poetic, evocative and resonan