SESSION 102, ILLEGAL_CINEMA

Screening of Pienso mucho en la foto que no tomé (I think a lot about the photo I didn’t take) (2022) and Pacaman (2021) proposed by Gabriel Quiñones.

Santo Domingo is a city that is difficult to express. Full of nuances, contradictory. Sometimes suffocating, it’s a city that is lit up by the red of the flamboyant tree and blinded by the Caribbean sun. Ever greyer, it’s growing vertically in a chaotic and disproportionate way. A city that is consumed, that refuses to face up to its own memory, that rarely looks at itself. In spite of all that, it’s a space that harbours countless stories, laughter, memories and dreams.

This screening consists of two short films that offer a sensitive look at the city of Santo Domingo and are a window onto contemporary audio-visual creation in the Dominican Republic.

Pienso mucho en la foto que no tomé (I think a lot about the photo I didn’t take) (Samuel Caraballo, 2022, 17:44)
Because of the lack of memories of Samuel’s childhood, the obsession arose to generate a film archive of brief scenes, portraits of his loved ones and poetry in the city of Santo Domingo. It’s a celebration of life, a gesture of love for his milieu and the people who move in it.

Pacaman (Dalissa Montes de Oca, 2021, 22:54)
“‘La Duarte’ has become an autonomous organism, separated from the city, with its own biosphere. This bubble of chaos will get bigger and bigger in view of the growth of false urban planning. To be able to coexist in the urban jungle it’ll be necessary to provoke the animal. Survival becomes primitive, instinctive and intense. The most important thing is to resist and survive. One can feel the fervour, one can feel the danger and something that is hiding in this jungle.” [the filmmaker’s website]

Gabriel Quiñones, filmmaker and photographer from the Dominican Republic. Degree in Cinema and Audio-visual Communicaiton from the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo, currently studying for the Master’s Degree in Contemporary Technological and Performative Art at the University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU.