Conjuring ghosts banal and intimate in speculative reconstructions of disappeared historical narratives, these films interrogate both ephemerality and endurance. Juxtaposing personal and sociopolitical layers, the Poor Image (no matter how quotidian or forsaken) illuminates neglected pasts, embodied presents, and potential futures.
How to make a film about an event for which there are no moving images? In my search to make a project about Ecuador's largest worker's strike, which ended in the massacre of hundreds or thousands of workers in 1922 (and of which there are no moving images), I turn to other work from that same year. Inspired by Hito Steyerl's essay "In Defense of the Poor Image", this found-footage essay-film reclaims the "poor image" in the context of past and present class struggles in Ecuador.
- Year2023
- Runtime30 minutes
- CountryEcuador
- DirectorLibertad Gills
Conjuring ghosts banal and intimate in speculative reconstructions of disappeared historical narratives, these films interrogate both ephemerality and endurance. Juxtaposing personal and sociopolitical layers, the Poor Image (no matter how quotidian or forsaken) illuminates neglected pasts, embodied presents, and potential futures.
How to make a film about an event for which there are no moving images? In my search to make a project about Ecuador's largest worker's strike, which ended in the massacre of hundreds or thousands of workers in 1922 (and of which there are no moving images), I turn to other work from that same year. Inspired by Hito Steyerl's essay "In Defense of the Poor Image", this found-footage essay-film reclaims the "poor image" in the context of past and present class struggles in Ecuador.
- Year2023
- Runtime30 minutes
- CountryEcuador
- DirectorLibertad Gills