Cinema Colombiano Expo: CONTINUUM II

CONTINUUM II

(Daniela Maldonado, Paula Gempeler, Juan David Cortes, Tomás Espinosa in collaboration with the Red Comunitaria Trans and Ana Bravo Pérez, 2020)

A video-installation around the lives of six transgender women and sex workers in Colombia.

Continuum II is an invitation to immerse oneself in the lives of six transgender women and sex workers from Colombia. We hear stories and testimonies that have not been told. It is memories of oppression, persecution and violence that need to be told and shared, because this recognition is a guarantee to heal the present and open the way to the future.

The collective project, Continuum, won the IDFA Spotlight Award last month for the Continuum VR-environment. Tomas Espinosa, Daniela Maldonado and Yoko Ruiz are some of its creators and members of the Red Comunitaria Trans in Colombia, and will be presenting their work in Rotterdam. On Sunday at 15:00 there will be a talk about the project as well as the situation in the country.

Continuum II is part of the Cinema Colombiano-programme (more info can be found here) The installation takes place in WORM’s S/ash gallery. Entrance is free (Donations are very welcome though).

About the project:

This installation is the result of intense work and the courage and determination of Daniela, Valeria, Franchesca, Nini, Natalia and Bárbara. It is the result of an arduous process that had to be adapted day by day to new working conditions and that was carried out in extreme circumstances: while this experiment was taking shape, more than thirty-two trans people were systematically murdered in Colombia. In the middle of the COVID 19 pandemic, and a strict quarantine, an absurd measure such as the “peak and gender” was implemented. This measure excessively increased violence and discrimination against trans people and gender-based dissidents in Colombia by the population in general and by the police in particular. The latter has always had an aggressive way of relating to the trans population.

But nothing stopped us from continuing our particular vengeance, that of healing. That of turning our past into a song, a letter, a fantasy; that of using art as a resilience and as a tool make known the violence, to express it and to acknowledge it, to embrace our pain and then to let it go.

Teaser: https://vimeo.com/457290632