Children of the Moon: The Mercury Sign

Children of the Moon is a programme of selected works by Queer/Trans BIPOC artists from Latin America, the Caribbean, First Nations and their descendants. As a form of redefining by undefining, Children of the Moon explores the organic nature of gender, identity and spirituality within the collective queer voice as a unified community – an experience rendered vulnerable to a heteronormative universe that often sacrifices QTBIPOC bodies as a consequence of their manifestation. The Mercury Sign is a new version of this programme that focuses on the collective voice of a community that moves beyond the cis heteronormative universe. The astrological sign of Mercury has been reappropriated by the trans and queer community to represent gender-fluidity and non-heterosexuality, but it has also been used to symbolize the power of self-determination. The short films selected showcase a variety of forms including experimental, video essays, poetic and narrative approaches challenging the traditions of genres in cinema and the binary views of our society.

Curators: Anto Astudillo, Lupe Campos

Screened:
SAT 29/10, 13:00 FYRIS

Two Spirit Self Determination

Three two-spirit, epupillan in their language, Mapuche people share their experiences through experimental audiovisual languages composing a collective video-essay. Each part of the video-essay is built as intimate letter exchanges between them, rendering a common experience of “epupillan” or two-spirit self-determination.
The video-essay consists of four chapters: the first is a letter that Antonio writes inviting Constanza and Manuel to feel and think about their life experiences as two-spirit beings, answering in an audiovisual and collective format experimenting with different languages to communicate creative ways to be two-spirit. The other chapters show us Constanza and Manuel sharing their political vision on the two-spirit love, to finally present a two-spirit performative healing action in response to the historical colonial damage alive today that we feel in our bodies, in the land and in all of the relations we have with the itrofilmongen (biodiversity).

Chile 2019 / 29:11/ Director: Comunidad Catrileo+Carrión

Untitled (letter to Aida)

Following the fallout of protest, a highly alienating election, and emotional relapse, the film centres on an attempt to reason and make sense of the consequences of an uncontrollably cruel year. The piece introduces my practice to the viewer with an amalgamation of all the mediums I work in and between. Burning cop cars, archival imagery, spray paint in alley ways, and small knotless box braids. untitled (letter to Aida) reaches out to the inner parts of myself in hopes of finding faith to navigate the world by writing a love letter to my late Grandma.

USA 2021 / 02:33/ Director: Hunter Blu

What Has No Space Is Everywhere

“What Has No Space Is Everywhere” is a film-essay about the experience of constant air travel resulting from working with artistic institutions, the persistence of racialized work, diasporic life movements, baselessness, and ultra-velocity. The film crosses multiple locations and displacement situations, from informal recordings, vertical images, and moments of opacity.

Brazil, Germany, France 2020 / 10:43/ Director: Jota Mombaça

El Mañana es un Palacio de Agua

A lucid dream, an inner space sci-fi about Sybille, the last person alive on a planet with no water left. She roams through arid lands, traveling through strange visions. Entities with more memory than humans communicate with her. How to persuade the spirit of the waters to come back to earth?

Colombia, Mexico, Belgium, Italy 2022 / 15:20 / Director: Juanita Onzaga

Inundada

Inundada is a retelling and reclamation of the Latinx folk tale of La Llorona. It explores different versions of her story that were passed on to the maker through the tradition of oral story telling. It approaches the subjects of intergenerational pain, guilt, and shame as products of a colonial-patriarchal environment on the human body.

USA 2018 / 14:09 / Director: Michelle Trujillo

Pandrog

Pandrog is an exploration of the subversiveness of the gender binary within the confines of Blackness. It is about Black people escaping the terms and identities created by western imperialism.

USA 2021 / 01:21 / Director: Jard Lerebours

Los Cimarrones

The night surprises Orestes in a thick tropical forest holding a machete and furiously looking for Damián, his younger brother. In the shadows, Orestes discovers the young man having sex with another man. Orestes, in shock, wields his machete. Damián faces him with pride. Suddenly, when a greater danger surprises them, it’s Damián who protects Orestes with a gesture that will change their lives forever.

Cuba 2021 / 10:12 / Director: Damián Sainz-Edwards

EPILOGUE

After reinventing herself in artifice, isolation, and the performance of a lifetime, a young trans woman grapples with the question: “How have things changed?”
A short film about womanhood and coming of age, blending documentary, dance, poetry, and drama to allow the viewer to experience Yasha’s emotions around her changing body, relationships, and self-worth.

USA 2022 / 07:50 / Director: Yasha Lelonek, Dahyo Coleman