Francisco Huichaqueo Pérez: Kalül Trawün. An action out of tenderness to heal
Study room project
From November 15, 2022 to January 27, 2023, tranzit.sk study room screens the film Kalül Trawün – Reunion of the Body (2012, 24’) by the Mapuche-Chilean artist Francisco Huichaqueo Pérez. Alongside with the film we present the interview with the author taken by Natalia Cristofoletti Barrenha.
venue: tranzit.sk, Beskydská 12, 81105 Bratislava
open: Tuesday – Friday: 2:30 -6.30 p.m.
Kalül Trawün was conceived and filmed during an exhibition in a room of the National Museum of Fine Arts located in a shopping mall, in Santiago de Chile. In this beautiful piece, Huichaqueo highlights the forms of violence and dispossession that the Mapuche people continue to endure, as well as their resistance. Working alongside a Mapuche family and the spontaneous audience, the filmmaker recorded improvised performances that responded to the conflicts in place in several Mapuche lands in southern Chile. Several symbolic elements are part of the setting, such as the eucalyptus leaves (referring to logging companies), the barbed wire (referring to territorial reductions), and the names of political prisoners from those days.
On the 8th of September 2022, Huichaqueo (in Santiago, Chile) talked with Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha (in Bratislava, Slovakia) about his work and world, dedicating special attention to Kalül Trawün. In this conversation, Huichaqueo revisits the process of filming Kalül Trawün while exploring topics such as his conception of the camera as a tool for healing, the importance of dreaming for the Mapuche culture, and how his artistic practice is a form of struggle in which the spiritual, the political and the poetic come together. The interview (held in Spanish, with English and Slovak subtitles) is available on tranzit.sk’s YouTube channel as well as in tranzit sk’s study room.
Francisco Huichaqueo Pérez is a filmmaker, visual artist, curator and lecturer at the University of Concepción, in Chile. His work focuses on themes related to his Mapuche heritage and addresses his people’s social landscape, history, culture and cosmovision. His oeuvre has been screened at several film festivals and institutions such as ImagineNATIVE (Canada), the Archaeological Museum of Santiago (Chile), the National Museum of the American Indian (United States), the Toulouse Latin American Film Festival (France), among many others around the world. From 2013 to 2019, he programmed the First Nations special strand at the Valdivia International Film Festival.
Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha is a film researcher and programmer specialising in Latin American cinema. She is a visiting scholar at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, in Slovakia. She is the author of the books Espaços em conflito. Ensaios sobre a cidade no cinema argentino contemporâneo (2019) and A experiência do cinema de Lucrecia Martel: Resíduos do tempo e sons à beira da piscina (2014. Spanish translation: 2020), and co-editor of ReFocus: The Films of Lucrecia Martel (2022). She has also curated and produced several film cycles, such as Variações Bemberg (Brazil, 2022) and Reframing the Archive (UK, 2022), among others.
This event is part of How to Live Together?, a series curated by Judit Angel, Alessandra Pomarico, Borbála Soós and Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu within the Art Connected 2022 – 2023 subprogramme of tranzit.sk.
ERSTE Foundation is main partner of tranzit.
Media partners:
Artalk.sk, Flash Art CZ & SK, GoOut.net
videostill, Kalül Trawün – Reunion of the Body (2012, 24’), Francisco Huichaqueo Pérez
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