Bicentenario

BICENTENARIO beginnt mit einem Gewaltausbruch: Aktivisten der Gruppe M-19 kapern den Justizpalast in Bogotá, der Versuch des Militärs, das Gebäude zurückzuerobern, endet in Chaos und totaler Zerstörung. Das historische Ereignis aus dem Jahr 1985 legt die Tonalität des Films fest, der die Feiern zum 200-jährigen Jubiläum des Unabhängigkeitskrieges von Simón Bolívar dokumentiert. Es ist eine Art Séance, die mit Handkamera, abrupten Zoom-Bewegungen und Rotfilter den Puls eines Landes misst, das auch heute noch von Terror und Blutvergießen erschüttert wird. Eine Kollision von Geschichte und Mythos als kinematografischer Exorzismus. (Thomas Mießgang)

Mit LETTER FROM YOUR FAR-OFF COUNTRY.

As the VHS news footage that opens the film reveals, when the Palace of Justice in Bogota went up in flames in 1985 as part of a violent siege, the fire also engulfed the judicial archive, countless documents that defined law and order in the country gone forever. BICENTENARIO seeks to fill this void by returning to the man who called the Colombian state into existence, retracing the path taken by Simón Bolívar and his army in the final stages of the liberation campaign in 1818.
The striking 16mm images of towns and landscapes two hundred years later pick out any number of traces of the political leader along the way, alighting on ancient bridleways, statues, advertisements, celebrations, and official events as different people talk of their relationship to Bolívar in voiceover. And these indirect attempts to summon forth his spirit are given a wonderfully ghostly undertone by the séance narrated by the unseen woman across the film, an orange backdrop to house any number of projections.
History is so many things at once: books turned to ash, markings in stone and earth, each flag that is a copy of an older one, the man feeding pigeons in the square, a flame that flickers as the spirit approaches. (James Lattimer)

WIth LETTER FROM YOUR FAR-OFF COUNTRY.

Pablo Alvarez Mesa: PRESIDIO MODELO (2008, K), JELENA’S SONG (2010, K), FRANK AND THE WONDERCAT (2015), NUESTRO MONTE LUNA (2015), LA PESCA (2017, K)