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Oct 12, 2008 at 7:00 pm

La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo

With Jim Finn

trinchera1.jpg

La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo is a recreation of one day at the Canto Grande prison in Peru, following women guerrillas of the Maoist Shining Path movement from their morning marches to their bedtime chants. When members of the revolutionary-terrorist group were captured and imprisoned, the authorities isolated them in their own cellblocks. The guerrillas thought of this imprisonment as just another front in the People’s War, calling them “shining trenches of combat.” The prisoners organized propaganda, literature, and military classes as well as marches, criticism sessions, and dances.

The film is shot in Hi-8 analog as if it were an amateur video made by the prisoners themselves in the late 1980s. Though the film is heavily researched and uses sections of interviews and poems from guerrillas, it is fictional. The script is based on a core of interviews, readings and other research that was turned into a stylized version of a day in the cellblock. The extreme violence and ideological dogmatism of the Shining Path was seen at the time as an aberration among Latin American guerrilla groups, but now it seems that they were in line with 21st Century guerrilla tactics.

“Jim Finn’s films “boldly upturn notions of documentary and fiction, propaganda thought, reality and restaging, and even what an ‘experimental film’ actually is. To say that these films closed up new possibilities for satire, ideas and language isn’t an overstatement.”

Variety

About the Artist

Jim Finn is an artist whose films and videos use humor and historical fiction to examine communist ideology, capitalism, and revolutionary art practices. His work has screened all over the world at international festivals such as Rotterdam, Edinburgh, and New York Underground. His needlepoint pillow series, “Communist Heroes of South America,” appeared in KnitKnit magazine.

Details

Date
Oct 12, 2008
Time
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Program:

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