ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES is back with a new slate of partners for 2023! Co-curator Cíntia Gil and UnionDocs are delighted to join hands with Taiwan International Documentary Festival while they are ON TOUR to present a stellar and urgent program: MEANS OF ORDINARY DISRUPTION. Featuring the astonishing DRY GROUND BURNING (MATO SECO EM CHAMAS), from Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós with HSU Hui-jus contemplative Temporary, we’ll stage a screening and in-depth online Study Group that will explore a host of questions with our growing international community in a dynamic format.

Join us in asking how territories can carry the history of the management and segregation of bodies, knowledge, resources, words, imaginations, and fundamentally reveal modes of societal organization by watching these two films together that disrupt such histories, and reveal radical, or alternative forms of territoriality.

In HSU Hui-ju’s TEMPORARY, an abandoned factory is populated by the gestures and presence of precarious laborers and their particular form of making sense of place and time. While in Joana Pimenta’s and Adirley Queirós’ DRY GROUND BURNING, sisters Léa and Chitara build rule and meaning anew in their area of Ceilândia, in the outskirts of the Brazilian capital.

What can we learn from this gang of women who own the night and drill oil from their backyard to build a grassroots political movement?

These films conjure an ethics of inevitability, an inevitable power of mass disruption.

Sign up today to join us, discuss and think through these themes together.

FILM PROGRAM

“I was remembering the time… That I got wrapped up in some crazy shit with my sister Chitara. My sister made history in Sol Nascente. That was in 2019. I’d just got out of prison for drug charges. My sister asked me to be a part of this crazy scheme she was caught up in. She got a hold of a map of underground oil pipes. She got it and then… she bought a lot in Sol Nascente. The oil pipes ran right under her land. She started making a lot of money with that. Her, Andreia, China…They made a lot of money. So I started working with them. She took me to the lot, where she built a huge structure. Really huge, it was crazy, dope as hell. She taught me how it all worked…how to get the oil from underground, and turn it into gasoline, and all that shit…And she set up a deal with the motoboys, they would buy gasoline from her… she refined the gasoline there, and they bought it off her… Besides the motoboys, Chitara also had a spot at the P.Norte market a stand where she sold her gasoline. And a bunch of other shit. Chitara also got mixed up in politics. She made history… We had Sol Nascente on lock, we fucked things up. We really fucked things up.”

Léa tells the story of the Gasolineiras de Kebradas, as it echoes through the walls of Colmeia,the women’s prison of Brasilia, Federal District, Brazil.

HSU took a non-traditional approach to make this documentary. She hired three real-life temporary workers to play themselves in an abandoned factory, which is both their stage and where they build a temporary home. They live on the edge in between the real and virtual world, between city and wilderness, and between family life and homelessness.

STUDY GROUP — ONLINE – JAN 7

We’re thrilled to come together for a Study Group Session structured around these incredible films! Like a kind of grassroots book club, but for documentary art, it’s all about sparking discussion and deeper investigation, through reading, listening and responding in small, self-organized groups that together form a larger collective experience.

You will get access to the film program through our Membership Hub a few days in advance. Sign up now and stay tuned in your inbox for further instructions!

PUBLIC DIALOGUE – AT THE FESTIVAL – JAN 15

If you’re interested in hearing from the filmmakers & artists themselves as well as the ideas generated in collaboration with our Study Group be sure to catch our regular public dialogues for each film program on the UNDO Member’s Hub. These conversations sample from the festival dialogues, the study group and an in-depth interview hosted by Artistic Differences with the featured artists.  Sign Up to receive a note when it’s released.

BIOS

Joana Pimenta is a filmmaker from Portugal. Her short films The Figures Carved and An Aviation Field screened in Locarno, TIFF, NYFF, Rotterdam, Mar del Plata, among others, and received awards at Zinebi, Indielisboa, and Ann Arbor. She was also awarded the Best Cinematography Award at the 50th Festival of Brasília for Once it was Brasília. Her feature Dry Ground Burning, co-directed with Adirley Queirós, premiered at the 72nd Berlinale Forum and received the Grand Prix at Cinéma du Réel and the national and international competition awards at Indielisboa. Joana is a Lecturer in the department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University, Director of Graduate Studies for Critical Media Practice and Interim Director of the Film Study Center at Harvard. She is an affiliated member of the Sensory Ethnography Lab.

Adirley Queirós is a filmmaker from Ceilândia, a periphery of Brasília. After ten years as a professional soccer player, he started working in cinema and has since directed four features and a series of shorts. His previous film Once it was Brasilia (2017) premiered at the 70th Locarno Film Festival where it received the Special Mention Signs of Life. White Out Black In from 2014 was widely screened and won more than 20 awards in Brazil and abroad. His work has been shown at the Lincoln Center, Museum of the Moving image, the ICA London, Pacific Film Archive, and featured in publications such as Artforum, Cinemascope, and Cahiers du Cinéma. Adirley’s films have had theatrical releases in Brazil, the U.S., the UK, Argentina, and Portugal, among other countries, and are currently screening in the Criterion Collection channel. His latest feature, Dry Ground Burning, co-directed with Joana Pimenta, premiered at the 72nd Berlinale Forum in 2022 and received the Grand Prix at Cinéma du Réel and the national and international competition awards at Indiel