Curated by Yaela Gottlieb

Mundo Novo (New World)
Agustina Wetzel, Argentina, Brasil, 2019, 16 min. Portuguese with English subtitles

Pirotecnia (Mute Fire)
Federico Atehortúa, Colombia, 2019, 83 min. Spanish with English subtitles

Mundo Novo is a documentary made with YouTube and WhatsApp videos that circulated in Brazil during 2018 to build Bolsonaro's election campaign. A substantial part of the material, information, and images disseminated during his campaign came from unknown or anonymous sources that generated "fake news". With Bolsonaro’s success linked to the convergence of "media, religion, and power", Mundo Novo exposes the cruelty inherent to these images and the centrality of hate as a political effect in today's democracies.

Certain images carry memories beyond what they represent, but what happens when that memory is intervened and altered to impose an official narrative? Pirotecnia traces the origin of these "false documents," from the attempted assassination of President Rafael Reyes in 1906 to contemporary times, with photographic records of civilian bodies that the State passes off as FARC members to claim their deaths in the media. Federico Atehortúa revisits this national history, understanding it as a montage. (YG)

Federico Atehortúa is a documentary filmmaker who teaches Audiovisual Narrative at the Universidad de los Andes, as well as Documentary Appreciation and Directing Workshop at Universidad Central, Colombia.

Agustina Wetzel is a filmmaker, programmer, and postdoctoral fellow in the field of Gender Studies and Latin American Contemporary Art.

Mundo Novo + Pirotecnia