March of Silence
'March of Silence' is a work that studies the recent history of Colombia through the eyes of the members of the collective "Post Punk Revolutionary Front" (FPPR). Combining the radio memory of the country in contrast to its ruined railway landscapes, this triptych video seeks to understand the relationship that each of the members of the FPPR has with a country that leaves an indelible mark on each of them: Sandra as a resident, Kostas as foreigner, and Santiago as a member of the Colombian diaspora.
The video is composed of three parts: 1) ‘Irradiation’ shows the importance of radio in Colombia, and how it was used as a tool for education, entertainment and information, reaching the most remote and mountainous areas of all regions, forming the cultural identity of the nation. 2) 'What could have been' studies how the history of Colombia would have been very different if political violence had not triggered generational conflicts for more than a century, and if resource redistribution policies could have been implemented without systematized conservative corruption. 3) 'The past in the past' recalls the events that happened after the assassination of the liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, on April 9, 1949, which triggered the "Bogotazo" (the almost complete destruction of Bogotá’s downtown), and the official beginning of the period of ‘La Violencia’ in the country. It also shows how - despite having missed the last train - the country, and we as FPPR, continue walking towards an open future.
With members living in three different countries, the video was made in different locations around Bogotá, and in the city of Tampa, Florida, in the USA, and was created to participate in the 46th Artists’ National Salon of Colombia in Ibagué, Tolima, under the initial curatorship of Federico Daza.
SHORT VERSION
‘March of Silence’ is an experimental video that explores the history of Colombia through radio and the nature of railroads in its mountainous landscape. What was once a promising country, got derailed after the murder of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1949, the Liberal presidential candidate. Colombia got immersed in a war that tore it to the core. Even though there were several efforts to rebuild, such as the agrarian reform of 1961, violence always prevailed. The images of decrepit railroads and train stations in Colombia, in stark contrast with the image of the main performer wandering the train tracks of the first world, combined with the radio memories, create a nostalgic portrait of a country that is still trying to come out of the crisis.
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Santiago EcheverryDirector
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Sandra Liliana RengifoDirector
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Kostas TsanakasDirector
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Santiago EcheverryWriter
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Sandra Liliana RengifoWriter
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Kostas TsanakasWriter
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Michael Scott Snyder Sr.Producer
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Juan Roberto PáramoProducer
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Valentina RuizProducer
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Claudia DíazProducer
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Juan David Mora LozanoProducer
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Santiago EcheverryKey Cast
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Jean Baptiste HansaliCinematography
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Denis VukosavljevikCinematography
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Sandra Liliana RengifoCinematography
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Kostas TsanakasCinematography
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Project Title (Original Language):Marcha del Silencio
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Project Type:Experimental
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Genres:Historical, Performance, Political, Experimental
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Runtime:16 minutes 3 seconds
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Completion Date:July 15, 2022
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Production Budget:1,500 USD
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Country of Origin:Colombia
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Country of Filming:United States
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Language:Spanish
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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46o Salón Nacional de Artistas de Colombia, Banco de la RepúblicaIbagué
Colombia
July 15, 2022
World Premiere -
Traverse, Union Hall GalleryDenver, CO
United States
July 26, 2023
North American Premiere -
Encuentro Inter Especies, Fundación PluralBogotá
Colombia
July 28, 2023
Bogotá Premiere
Distribution Information
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Santiago EcheverryDistributorCountry: WorldwideRights: All Rights
Santiago Echeverry
Bogotá, Colombia, 1970
@sechevere
Santiago Echeverry is a Colombian-American New Media Artist and Educator, with a background in Video Art, Performance Art, Interactive Media, and Artivism. Participating since 1989 in some of the most important film and media festivals in the world, Echeverry is considered a pioneer in Net Art and Queer Filmmaking in Latin America. In 1992, he graduated top of the inaugural class of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia’s Film and Television School. In 1995, he was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Grant to earn his Master’s degree in Interactive Telecommunications at NYU. He started teaching at the University of Tampa in 2005, got tenured in 2009, and promoted to full Professor in 2022 as a founding member of the Film, Animation and New Media Department. His research is focused on volumetric imaging, front-end development, UI/UX, and creative coding. All his projects are available online at www.santi.tv
Sandra Rengifo
Bogotá, Colombia, 1979
@oldnewflesh
Visual artist from the Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá and Master in Visual Arts from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She currently teaches at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Colombia and Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano, and she is an Art Director for dance, videos and feature films. Likewise, she has made museographic designs, video clips and curatorial projects for various national and international entities and artists. Her work as an audiovisual artist, photographer and painter has been exhibited in several spaces and events such as the Museo de Arte Moderno MAMBO, Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín MAMM, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bogotá, Museo La Tertulia in Cali, Cinemateca Distrital in Bogotá, MAMU in Bogotá, L’Alternativa Film Festival in Barcelona, Danish Film Institute, PanoramaColombia Berlin Film Festival, Anhydrite Media Arts Biennial in Germany, among others.
Kostas Tsanakas
Atenas, Grecia, 1972
@kostas_tsanakas
Kostas Tsanakas was born in Athens, Greece. He grew up in a small town, scourged by the north wind and a low-intensity ethnic conflict. One day on the beach with his camera in hand, his dad showed him what a diaphragm was and what a fragment of time was. At the age of 19, he bought his first DSLR camera, nicely priced and stolen by a junkie friend. It lasted him almost 10 years until it was, in turn, stolen. Few things remain from this time in dusty drawers, mostly forgotten negatives of the German deindustrialization seen at night, or the port of Lisbon, when there were still visiting circuses, porn cinemas and good Chinese food in the city center. In the meantime he studied Social Pedagogy in Siegen (Germany), Arabic Philology and Islamic Sciences in Cordoba (Spain), Political Science in Bath (UK), Prague (Czech Republic) and Madrid (Spain), and Conference Interpreting in Thessaloniki (Greece). He worked as a DJ / bartender, social worker, German teacher, translator, and simultaneous interpreter of German, Greek and English for the European Parliament. When he visited Colombia for the first time in 2017, he carried only a cheap cell phone to capture his memories. A little later he bought himself – this time legally – a digital camera. Since then his photos have been exhibited in Germany, Colombia, Spain and Greece, and published in Photographize magazine in New York, Estudios Artísticos in Bogotá, and La Ración in Medellín.
Thinking of ourselves as a collective body implies putting into dialogue the various expressions and reflections that have individually built our creative processes, in this sense, the proposal is built from the three perspectives, namely: Santiago Echeverry from the experience from the practices of the electronic arts, performance and queer activism, which in the particular case of this project will be understood from the same nature and landscape that manifests itself as queer, even sometimes non-binary. In the same way, part of the devices and actions that are proposed intertwine stories of their grandparents who inhabited and in past times assumed journeys through the Magdalena River as coffee farmers carrying means of transport and communication (radio) from distant places (Germany). Remote areas throughout the fluvial torrent of said river, entering through Barranquilla from the seaports and then from the river to Villahermosa (Tolima). Kostas Tsanakas from a reflection of the nomadic photographic act and walking, in convergence with the analysis of the specific social, political and economic logic of the regions, proposes a non-linear narrative from the photographic series, where the possible story is articulated by pointing and problematizing the events, the spaces, the experiences of the people of the places that he approaches with his support. These visual documents establish an important relationship between metaphors, contemplative states suspended in each photograph. His journey takes place from his journey from Greece and Germany to his arrival in Colombia entering the Caribbean, navigating with his eyes the port of Mompóx, Puerto Boyacá and later the walks along the abandoned lines of the Ferrocarril de la Sabana and the Ferrocarril of Girardot. The trains and their short history in Colombia, as well as the rivers, become the outline and pretext that connects the expeditionary stories of their proceeding. Sandra Rengifo, from the exploration of experimental video and the installation in a constant relationship with neo-romanticism, connects the relationships of landscapes and territories along these same routes from an erratic and poetic construction, those fragments that hide, collapse or vanish. Invisible borders that in some cases are eaten up by the power and force of nature, as the primary basis of what the flow of the Río Negro has taken to its mouth in the Río Magdalena. Living and inert bodies in containment that make us think about their weight, their load, the stone that the river and its blows have forged. Sound as materiality in specific spaces will be connected with the two-dimensional plastic explorations and live arts that arise from the procedures. The research is based on the review of bibliographic material on the train routes, the problems and historical events of both rivers, the social implications from the past to the present of the confluence of these sections, natural and iron. Natural and unnatural, imposed or random is the pretext to cross and navigate the points of view that arise from these perspectives of investigation and audiovisual and performative appropriation.
The FPPR (Post Punk Revolutionary Front) was incarnated for the first time within the framework of the 2019 political demonstrations in Bogotá. The incessant walks through the city and prolonged conversations about the situations that we faced as subjects (from here and there) were the pretext to put together a collective, on that occasion we were with Un Pasajero and Franklin, also founding members of the FPPR. One night these talks found an echo when we called ourselves a hypothetical open collective, –also referring to the fact that people can enter or leave the collective depending on the tasks/activities/interventions that we do–, united in part by our musical tastes and political thoughts, the walking and inhabiting the public space as an act of resistance. On this occasion for the 46th National Artists’ Salon we were invited as a collective and we made this audiovisual version, perhaps at other times or activities others will work, others will enter or leave as has been common in past movements or demonstrations.
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