FORD FOUNDATION GRANT

FORD FOUNDATION GRANT

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Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli with filmmakers (starting from the left): Alejandro Fernández Mouján, Ernesto Ardito, Virna Molina, Nicolás Prividera. Photo credit: Kristi Wilso

24th Visible Evidence Documentary Film Conference Revisited

Aliso Viejo, CA – Owing in large part to a Ford Foundation Grant  awarded by the Foundation’s Just Films Office to support the 24th Visible Evidence documentary film festival, Kristi M. Wilson and Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli reported back on the success of the multi-faceted event. Background details on the event which took place on August 2 – 6, 2017 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, can be found in a prior Academic Highlights article.  

The nearly 450 presenters participated in film screenings, panels, discussions and workshops, providing some 2,000 conference attendees with an immersion in the documentary film genre. Reflecting on the multitude of offerings, Dr. Wilson acknowledged being hard-pressed to choose standouts among the many notable events. Many screenings ran out of seats, she said, with attendees opting to sit on the floor rather than miss the event. Acclaimed New Zealander Annie Goldson premiered her latest documentary “Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web,” at the Allianza Francesa to a packed crowd. Film screenings by Luis Ospina, Susana Barriga, and Thomas Elsaesser were sold out. In the case of Elsaesser’s film, “The Sun Island,” two additional screenings were added to accommodate the interest.

“One of the most well received presentations at the conference was the Quipu project presentation” Dr. Wilson said.

Thanks to sponsorship by a Ford Foundation travel grant, directors Maria Court and Rosemarie Lerner were able to present their activist film and web archive project that records and preserves the testimonies of female victims (mostly indigenous people, both men and women) of forced sterilization in Peru in the 1990s. Additional information is available at https://interactive.quipu-project.com/#/en/quipu/intro.

Co-organizers Wilson and Crowder-Taraborrelli participated in a workshop on documentary and pedagogy in which they discussed their recent publication about Community Cinema at SUA in Activist Film Festivals: Towards a Political Subject (Tascón and Wils, Eds., University of Chicago/Intellect).  Dr. Crowder-Taraborelli also chaired a roundtable of four of the most acclaimed Argentine documentary film makers: Nicolás Prividera, Virna Molina, Ernesto Ardito and Alejandro Fernández Mouján.