Who is looking and what is being observed? Two fundamental questions for cinema, but in the case of indigenous peoples and Afro-descendant communities, they are usually resolved in only one way: the gaze comes from outside and the portrait it produces
rarely draws them as they would like to see themselves.
The National identities in Latin America have been constructed with images where cultural diversity is reduced to exoticism or caricature. All representation implies a tension between that which is constructed
and the reality that it embodies; a tension that reveals power relations, where in the case of the region's multiculturalism, the camera has standardized the difference, reinforcing racist stereotypes and discriminatory
postures.
Within the framework of the institutional program Mexico 500, it is imperative to make the university film archive, the largest in the region, a space for the critical exercise and the enunciation of other
discourses. It is therefore proposed to work on self-representation, focusing on the decolonial gaze that the native peoples and Afro-descendant communities of Latin America can generate from experimental cinema,
based on the re-reading and re-signification of the archives of the UNAM Film Archive. A filmic memory in which, in most cases, otherness appears as a subject of study and not as an active agent of film production.
The short films resulting from this online experimental practice will be shown in the framework of the International Meeting of Chairs 2022 and in Arcadia International Exhibition of Rescued and Restored
Cinema, as well as in DocsMX; to be awarded as part of the closing ceremony of the 16th edition of the International Documentary Film Festival DocsMX.
Vote for your favorite short film and choose the winner of the Audience Award, you have until October 22nd!