16.07 at 8PM in Lichtblick Kino
Curatorial Statement
by Gabriela Gioia
To say cuir [queer] is to dispute a word loaded with colonialism: it is to reappropriate the insult and make it our banner from the South, from migration, from our bodies, desires, and memories. And because letting others name us means letting others tell our stories. We are here to tell our own stories: seeing each other together in a movie theater continues to be a form of resistance.
This year’s selection traces a chronology. We come out of the closet to shout that we are here, and we search for family: are they with me or not? The family of origin sometimes sustains us and sometimes expels us; the cuir family, the one we choose, puts us back together when the other fails. Then comes the search for our role models, those who prove that this life has already been lived before, that there is genealogy and not loneliness. And the debt that ignites us: to fight for those who carried the memory of when everything was forbidden AND for those who are to come.
And at the end is what they most want to deny us: happiness. After coming out, searching, and fighting, what remains is understanding that we can also be happy, that we deserve it. As Celeste Carballo sings: “I am what I am, and I don’t have to make excuses for that. I harm no one, no one, no one. The sun shines just the same for me and for them.”
We are not going to apologize for our existence, nor are we going to pretend just to please anyone. They want to extinguish us, but how do you put out the light of a cuir person?
You can’t. We came to shine, whether they like it or not.
We are never going back to the closet!
SHORT FILMS
JABBERWOCKIES
Original title: Galimatazos
Chile, 16:51 min, director: Oscar Marín
Fiodor (20), a young gay man, agrees to hookup through a dating app with Simón (22). When they begin to get intimate, his discomfort overwhelms him, and he starts expelling letters from his body. Together with Simón, they’ll try to arrange them and make sense of them.
MY MOTHER’S ASHES
Original title: Las cenizas de mi madre
México, 14:56 min, director: Ximena Chiunti
After their mother’s death, two siblings return to the place where they grew up to take care of an abandoned house. Amid memories and tension, they confront their differences: one wants to sell and leave, the other to stay. By letting go of the past, they find a way to reconcile.
DON’T LIE
Original title: No mientas
Venezuela, 12:30 min, director: Anwar Hasmy, Leonardo Gutiérrez
An unexpected visit threatens to reveal a well-kept secret. While his partner is away, a not-out gay man hurriedly erases every trace of their shared life before a relative’s arrival. But a single misstep could shatter the fragile facade he has built.
SHAMELESS MEMORIES
Original title: Memorias Sinvergüenzas
Uruguay, 08:35 min, director: Rocío Llambi Scirgalea
A photograph titled “I am a lesbian from this country” and in the center of the image a person with their face covered. A first-person search through fragments of archives, geographies, eras, and stories unfolds to find the protagonist of that photograph.
WE WERE NO DESERT
Original title: Nunca fuimos un desierto
Argentina, 13:00 min, director: Agustina Comedi, Chiachio & Giannone
This short film was born from an installation by Argentine textile artists Chiachio & Giannone. In it, a group of dancers, wearing dresses crafted and sublimated by the artists, challenge the choreography of the “Pericón,” the national folk dance, to question the portrayal of a homeland projected as white, binary, and civilized.
LINGER
Original title: Ponto e Vírgula
Brazil, 17:33 min, director: Thiago Kistenmacker
João and Vitor used to be paramours but haven’t spoken to each other for 30 years. At 70, they reunite and reconcile past, present, and a possible future after the passing of Vitor’s wife, at a moment when so much of their lives seem to have reached an end.
