Three Bullets by Génesis Valenzuela
The project development lab Arché will take place between October 12-20, in part during Nebulae, the industry programme of Doclisboa. This year, 12 projects were selected from 122 submissions from 19 Ibero American countries, plus Italy. The dozen projects in selection that are at different stages of production, and hail from 10 countries.
A pitching session exclusive to film professionals with Nebulae accreditation will take place on October 13. During the subsequent days, the participants will work with tutors and will attend a programme of meetings with film professionals to foster new business opportunities.
RAW – Residencies Arché→Work will once again present a programme of training and artistic residencies in which 3 of the selected projects and 3 research projects will be participating. This year, RAW programme also welcomes the participation in the 60th FICX – Gijón International Film Festival.
The Arché awards jury is comprised of Hajnal Molnár-Szakács, head of financing strategies at the Sundance Film Institute (US); Pedro Filipe Marques, director and editor from Portugal; and Sarita Matijević Žilnik, manager and producer at Playground (Serbia).
The selected film projects are:
- Savanna and the Mountain by Paulo Carneiro (Portugal / Uruguay). Production: Paulo Carneiro (BAM BAM Cinema – Portugal). Co-production: Alex Piperno (La Pobladora Cine – Uruguay). Estimated length: 90 min. The threat of a mining operation by a multinational causes an uproar in the population. They look for strategies to face the enemy. From the top of the mountain, the ranger watches the first trucks arriving. In the valley, an army is getting organized.
- Does Anyone Remember? by Natalia Solórzano Vásquez (Costa Rica). Production: Natalia Solórzano Vásquez (Costa Rica). Estimated length: 70 min. Virginia had a stable family in the 1950s in Costa Rica. One day, a post-partum depression and a psychiatric hospitalization left her with nothing. In desperation, she wrapped herself in gowns and sequins and became the country’s most famous fortune teller.
- Welcome Interplanetary and Sidereal Space Conquerors by Andrés Jurado (Colombia / Portugal). Production: María Rojas (La Vulcanizadora – Colombia)
- Co-production: Kintop – Portugal. Estimated length: 90 min. As part of the Moon trip training, astronaut Neil Armstrong is abandoned in the Darien rainforest where he meets a native. They exchange glances and some trinkets. Then the native disappears. Armstrong wonders if he’ll be eaten by a wild cannibal.
- Continuum by Mariana Bomba (Argentina). Production: Vanessa Ragone (Haddock Films – Argentina). Estimated length: 70 min. The love story of two women who, at the beginning of the 90s, link their lives with an invisible thread that soon becomes an overflowing feat of experimentation, joy and bonds of one of the fiercest generations of female filmmakers in Argentina.
- Calls from Moscow by Luis Alejandro Yero (Cuba / Germany). Production: Daniel Sánchez López, Luis Alejandro Yero (Cuba). Co-production: Cosmic Productions (Germany)Estimated length: 70 min. Days before the Ukrainian invasion is announced, four young Cubans visit a Moscow apartment for a 24-hour stay. In their phone calls, the present and future coexist: their stories as undocumented immigrants, and the distress after the outbreak of the war.
- For you, Portugal, I swear! by Diogo Cardoso, Sofia da Palma Rodrigues (Portugal). Production: Sofia da Palma Rodrigues (Divergente – Portugal); Bagabaga Studios – Portugal Estimated length: 104 min. During the Colonial War, thousands of Africans fought in the Portuguese army and risked their lives for a homeland they thought theirs. African commandos from Guinea tell their story and demand that the promises from 50 years ago be fulfilled.
- The Language of Water by Jeissy Trompiz (Dominican Republic / Venezuela / France). Production: Jeissy Trompiz (Alamar Films – Venezuela); Gregorio Rodríguez (Casa Latina Films – Dominican Republic). Co-production: Pauline Tra Van Lieu (Hutong Productions – France). Estimated length: 70 min. Jofris is the last speaker of his indigenous language. After fleeing his community many years ago, his grandmother manifests herself in dreams to warn him that he must return. Jofris must obey his grandmother’s wish even though it goes against his will.
- A While at the Border by Ile Dell’Unti (Argentina) Production: Lara Decuzzi (Argentina). Estimated length: 90 min. An epistolary documentary that follows the exile memories in Sweden and Argentina of two architect sisters during the last Argentinian military dictatorship through the correspondence they regularly kept between the 1979 and 1989.
- Yõg Ãtak: My father, Kaiowá by Sueli Maxakali, Roberto Romero, Luisa Lanna (Brazil / USA). Production: Layla Braz (Associação Filmes de Quintal – Brazil). Co-production: Firelight Media, Wenner-Gren Foundation (USA). Estimated length: 90′. The film follows the journey of indigenous filmmaker Sueli Maxakali and her sister, Maisa Maxakali, to Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil) in search of their father, the shaman Luis Kaiowá, from whom they were separated as children during the Brazilian military dictatorship.
Film Projects Participating in the RAW Programme
- House Made of Mist by Alberto Dexeus (Spain). Production: Montse Pujol Solà (Boogaloo Films – Spain). Estimated length: 80 min. Alberto writes a letter to his grandmother Marta, who died in January 2021, in which he comes out to her, albeit at the wrong time, and in which he asks her a series of questions related to the death of her sister, Maria Rosa, in the fascist bombing that destroyed the Liceu Escolar in Lleida on 2 November 1937. “House made of mist” asks how to make memory when there is no living testimony and how to film the fog in its absence.
- Three Bullets by Génesis Valenzuela (Dominican Rep / Spain). Production: Génesis Valenzuela (Dominican Republic, Spain). Estimated length 90 min. Experimental documentary that relates the murder of Dominican migrant Lucrecia Perez, the first case criminalized as racist and xenophobic by the Spanish justice system in 1992, and the racial colonial system imposed in America 500 years earlier.
- La Oroya by Diego Bedoya Abad (Peru). Production: Fabiola Aliaga, Diego Bedoya (Viento Invierno – Peru). Co-production: Alejandro Small (Gallinazos Cine – Peru). Estimated length: 75 min. A mining town refuses to disappear. Miners explore the ground in search of a promised prize. The metallurgical plant has been paralyzed for more than a decade. The union is holding vigils while the fear of a major conspiracy grows. At night, music resounds in the pubs.
Research Projects Participating in the RAW Programme
- Visions of Anáhuac. Mexican journeys in Avant-garde Film by Salvador Amores (Mexico). From the attractions of Eisenstein to the surrealism of Breton and Buñuel, the land and life of Mexico awakened affinities among many avant-garde artists. Cinema was not an exception and there it found an exotic environment and a space for formal investigations.
- Distrust of Images: Memory and Archive in Contemporary Documentary Cinema of Latin America by Karina Solórzano (Mexico). Distrusting images is an idea taken from Harun Farocki that refers to how their use produces meanings, which eventually make up a certain ideology. My research will study how certain contemporary Latin American films reflect different dimensions of memory.
- Aporias e Fractais – Identidades Raciais na América e Cultura Visual by Mariana Souza (Brazil). Based on current artistic productions, I investigate to what extent the images produced by historical subjects marked by the processes of diaspora and non-white raciality are opening the ballasts of colonial fiction created by Western thought.
For more information: www.archespace.org
