An opportunity to come together - as filmmakers, film lovers and activists - to watch and discuss a recent film by Spanish artist Dora García.

The film looks at the Mexican feminist demonstrations that occupied the center of Mexico City, and the musician La Bruja de Texcoco composing a contemporary version of the song for the soundtrack of today’s struggles.

“If I Could Wish For Something” (1hr 7mins) will be followed by a workshop with Cintia Gill of Artistic Differences. + q&a with Dora García

Red Love is the title of a three-film project, spanning between 2020 and 2024, that found its seed in the legacy of the feminist marxist Alexandra Kollontai, and her call to introduce class into feminist thinking. Creating a journey of very precise gestures and procedures, between the past — through archives and memories — and the present — through contemporary struggles and paradoxes, the trilogy actualizes histories that resonate in our lives today, while linking individual and collective experience. Disenchantment seems to be the arrow that links past and present, opening vias for other forms of struggle and resistance today — the disenchantment of the feminist is where other existences will create the seeds for renewal, beyond a neoliberal feminism.

“If I Could Wish For Something” is the second piece of this trilogy. Inspired by the 1930’s song with the same title (“Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte”) by Friedrich Holländer, the film looks at the Mexican feminist demonstrations that occupied the center of Mexico City, and the musician La Bruja de Texcoco composing a contemporary version of the song for the soundtrack of today’s struggles. Feminism is a creation of collectivity and solidarity action, but also a living process of ‘constant transition’, fueled by historical pain, disenchantment, and collective love.

Dora García is a Spanish artist that draws on interactivity and performance in her work, using the exhibition space as a platform to investigate the relationship between artwork, audience, and place. She is a professor at the National Academy of Art in Oslo and HEAD in Geneva. She studied Fine Arts at the University of Salamanca (Spain), and the Rijkakademie in Amsterdam (Holland). Her works have been exhibited in Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), The Power Plant (Toronto), Tate Modern (London), MNAM – Centre Georges-Pompidou (Paris), MUDAM (Luxembourg), SMAK (Gent), Index Contemporary Art Foundation (Stokholm) among many others. She participated in the 54th, 55th, 56th Venice Biennale, Documenta 13 (Kassel), 2d Athens Biennale, Lyon Biennale, and Gwangju Biennial (Korea).

If I Could Wish For Something — Synopsis

(On August Orts website, https://augusteorts.be/catalogue/147/if-i-could-wish-for-something)

About this Film, Dora García writes:
“The inspiration and point of departure of this film is an old song, written in 1930 by German composer Friedrich Holländer: “Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte”. This song, translated into Spanish as “Si pudiera desear algo” (If I Could Wish for Something), has been in my memory for as long as I can remember. It expresses poetically a very complex concept: that the disappointment of women has been going on for so long, the promise made to them by the revolution has remained for so long unfulfilled, delayed, negated, that the sadness, the vulnerability derived from this feeling of abandonment has been turned into a shelter and a shield, perhaps even a sword. In sadness, we overcome the temptation to feel victimized and instead use pain as a conduit to recognize another’s suffering, opening the possibility for an encounter with other struggles. With this in mind, I wanted to create a contemporary equivalent of the old song, that could function as a soundtrack to the incredible feminist demonstrations that have been taking place – modifying and appropriating public space and public discourse – in the city of Mexico in the last 5 years. The film follows two paths: one, a collective recollection of images and sounds from these feminist marches in Mexico City; two, the composition, recording and final performance of the film theme song by trans artist La Bruja de Texcoco.”

Programmed by Artistic Differences 

ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES, is organized by UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art’s Christopher Allen, and Jenny Miller with Independent Programmer Cíntia Gil. It’s a monthly sequence of interlocking events— an online cineclub, along with physical screenings and public dialogues— that brings a diverse, international audience on a journey to many places and new contexts, welcoming many different films, voices, ideas and visions. Along the way, it makes room for brave questions and candid responses to challenging documentary art, and invites the voices of the audience to a more public stage after taking time to think together.

This drifting cinema club is an experiment in building an inclusive international community in partnership with some of the most exciting documentary events and spaces around the world. We screen singular films that open questions about the possibility of collective transformation, about forms and practices of togetherness, and speak to filmmakers and authors that bring those notions into the core of their own artistic interrogations.

Following the screening, the Cíntia Gil will propose a set of ideas for 40 minute discussion. In Artistic Differences, the audience and the films are in conversation–we will play a game, in which strangers exchange ideas and share their reactions and questions with one another–to explore the film together.

ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES, produced by UnionDocs and hosted by Cíntia Gil, is a monthly cineclub, an open brain trust of folks from all around the world, who gather regularly to thoughtfully consider challenging works of documentary art and generate brave questions and candid responses that fuel a community dialogue.

It is also a series of long form interviews with the most poetic and powerful filmmakers exploring documentary art today answering questions that are generated together in our regular community of club-goers.

Timings

13:00 - Doors open
13:30 - Screening starts (Runtime 67min)
14:45 - Workshop with Cíntia Gill