Bolivian filmmaker Miguel Hilari and Mexican Colectivo Los Ingrávidos have been announced as two of the nine recipients of the inaugural edition of the Cousin Collective’s cycle of commissioned films with the support of film foundation Cinereach.
The Cousin Collective provided support for Indigenous artists expanding the form of film. The nine recipients will receive an undisclosed grant amount to help support the development, production and/or completion of their films. These artists make up a diverse international group of emerging and established artists poised to take the next important step in their practice.
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos (Mixtec) is a Mexican film collective founded in 2012 to dismantle the commercial and corporate audiovisual grammar and its embedded ideology. Inspired by the historical avant-gardes and their commitment to using both form and content against alienating realities, their methods combine digital and analog mediums, interventions on archival materials, mythology, social protests, and documentary poetry.
Their work has been showcased at numerous film festivals including International Film Festival Rotterdam, RIDM Montreal International Documentary Festival, Images Festival; Punto de Vista, The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival, CROSSROADS, BFI London Film Festival, Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, Experimental film festival Process, Ambulante Cine Documental, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Festival Internacional de Cine FILMADRID. Their work was also part of the 2019 Whitney Biennial.
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos will work on Tlaltícpac, which is described as a weightless mise-en-scene of Aztec cosmology. In Aztec mythology Tlaltícpac means The Earth, the horizontal region in the Aztec Cosmology. This project include pre-Hispanic musicians and dance groups in dialogue with Náhuatl poetry (one of indigenous languages of Mexico). From a double cinematic perspective that involve the articulation of a monochromatic long take in relation with intermittences and discontinuities colorful takes.
With Tlaltícpac the collective is interesting in building a testimony of the ancestral trance of the Earth, the same way as the Aztec poet Nezahualtcóyotl wrote: “timohi tonmiquizque, in tlalticpac. Zan yuhqui xochitl in zan toncuetlahui ya in tlaltipac” (not forever on Earth: just a little here).
Miguel Hilari (Aymara/German) is based in La Paz, Bolivia. His films deal with memory, migration, colonial history and work. They have been screened at Cinéma du Réel, CPH:DOX, Oberhausen, Images, Film at Lincoln Center and Valdivia, among other venues, and received awards at Visions du Réel, FIDOCS, Márgenes and Transcinema. He collaborates regularly as a producer and editor on films by his colleagues and co-organized Festival de Cine Radical, a showcase for new cinema, for several years. He leads a project of image and sound workshops in rural public schools.
Hilari will work on the film project About A River. A mountain range, in snow and fog. Human absence, ancient sacred places. As the water flows down, we discover signs and traces: Fences, dirt roads, mines and fields. The brick constructions, the electric light. A person appears, a human face: The city opens up.
Additionally it was announced that previous works by the commissioned artists will be featured in the special streaming program CYCLE 0 that COUSIN will be hosting between Friday, May 8 and Sunday, May 10, with Q&A sessions with the filmmakers.
