By Censurados Film Festival
Wednesday 10 July, 7pm
Thursday 11 July, 7pm
Friday 12 July, 7pm
Proyecto AMIL
Lima
Within the framework of Botanical Readings: Erythroxylum coca, Ximena Garrido-Lecca’s exhibition, Proyecto AMIL is pleased to invite you to The Coca Leaf: Between the Sacred and the Forbidden, a film program specially conceived by the organizers of the Censurados Film Festival. For thousands of years the coca leaf has sacralized the activities of those who live in the Andean region. Through its ritual use, the plant guarantees the best results for social and economic development, as well as health and energy. In 2005, the Peruvian Ministry of Culture declared the traditional uses of the coca leaf as a national and intangible cultural heritage. With this measure, the state sought to legitimize the plant ancestral use, as well as to restore its cultural, social and spiritual value. However, the international community constantly presses in the opposite direction, calling upon Peru and other countries in the region to eradicate coca leaf cultivation because of its relationship with drug trafficking and crime.
Along the line of Garrido-Lecca’s exhibition, which questions the discourses built around this millenary and native plant, from Wednesday 10 to Friday 12 of July, the film program proposes a journey through documentary, fiction and experimental cinema from Colombia, Bolivia and Peru; three Andean countries in which the coca leaf is contested between its traditional use and its most censored connotations.
PROGRAM
Wednesday 10 July – Colombia
7pm – Presentation of the film program
By Censurados Film Festival and Proyecto AMIL.
7.20pm – Retratos
Dir. Juan Sebastián Forero / Colombia / 2011 / Experimental / 9’29’’
Experimental short film that reveals the manufacturing process of cocaine, from the point of view of its raw material: the coca leaf. The eye of the camera does not take a position, acting as an impartial witness of the process. The viewers will decide for themselves.
7.30pm – La Tía Rica
Dir. Germán Ramírez / Colombia / 2017 / Documentary / 52′
A few days before aunt Ricardina died, her nephew Herney promised to continue her legacy and work to defend the sacred role of the coca plant as food and medicine. In Lerma (Colombia), Herney worked for coca producers and went from being a teenager with a revolver in the waist, to become a dreamer trying to recover the tradition of his grandparents and fulfill his promise to Aunt Ricardina. Like this, he turns out to be a defender of the coca plant, using his voice to try to change the government’s position towards the coca farmers.
Thursday 11 July – Bolivia
7pm – Inal Mama
Dir. Eduardo López / Bolivia / 2010 / Documentary / 85′
The story of the coca leaf is traversed by what the Bolivian documentary Inal Mama portrays as the routes of the sacred and the profane: the prison of San Pedro and the Guarani community of Tentayapi. These two axes present nodal aspects of the coca leaf in different cultural spaces: as drug, medicine, religion and instrument of power.
Friday 12 July – Peru
7pm – Kkoka
Dir. Augusto Navarro / Peru / 2011 / Experimental / 11’
Video art of documentary nature that seeks to narrate in a contemporary way the ignored part of the coca leaf history, promoting knowledge about its historical and cultural value for the American people.
7.15pm – Coca Mama
Dir. Marianne Eyde / Peru / 2004 / Fiction / 75’
Paulina, a young merchant, arrives in Kintupata (Peru), where the coca leaf is cultivated and grown. There she becomes the lover of Gato, the local drug dealer, and friend of Antonio, a former drug addict and eternal aspiring writer. The conflict of Paulina, confused and trapped by her new relationships, is intermingled with the drama of the coca farmers.
8.30pm – Program closure by Censurados Film Festival
Censurados Film Festival is an itinerant film festival that seeks to create a space for reflection, dialogue and denunciation about the current situation of freedom of expression and human rights in the world through the screening of films and the organization of educational and artistic activities. Censurados presents audiovisual works that have been censored or that have found barriers to be distributed for political, social and economic reasons. In addition, it seeks to create a space to make visible the voice of filmmakers, artists and groups that every day fight for a more fair society. The festival is part of the Human Rights Film Network, an international network for human rights film festivals.
www.censuradosfilmfestival.org
Photo: Omar Lucas
