TIZ 8. Feminist Power

In conjunction with the restoration of Sambizanga (1973–1974), a key work among the political films made in Africa and framed by the awakening of the Angolan Independence movement, this double session is structured around the French film-maker of African origins Sarah Maldoror (Gers, 1929 – Paris, 2020). The programme includes the national premiere of this restored version and the first cinema screening of the short film Miró, peintre (Miró, Painter, 1980), in which Maldoror approaches the artist from a children’s theatre piece.       

The latest instalment of Intervals presents Eami (2022), a film by Paz Encina (Paraguay, 1971), which, through magic realism, explores the Indigenous concept of the world and the massacre of nature at the hands of financial exploitation. In the film, the young protagonist Eami wanders through the tropical jungle in Paraguay while her community is forcibly displaced through deforestation. The film was awarded the Tiger Award for Best Feature Film at the 51st International Film Festival Rotterdam.

This session is structured around the screening of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), a classic and widely acclaimed film by Chantal Akerman (Brussels, 1950 – Paris, 2015) which narrates the mechanical, obsessive day-to-day of a mother, housewife and widow — played masterfully by Delphine Seyrig — who turns to prostitution in Brussels to provide for her son. The film zooms in on the time her life collapses and how these moments reveal the chasms of existence. The screening also features a video presentation by Laura Mulvey, a feminist film theorist. 

This new edition of Intervals is devoted to Charlotte Wells (Scotland, 1987), 2022’s standout film-maker for her debut feature Aftersun (2022), a beautiful and melancholy reflection on family relationships, the real and imaginary dimension of memories and the passing of time. The session gets under way with the screening of Tuesday (2015), the first short film by the director which recounts how a sixteen-year-old girl starts to come to terms with the huge loss of her father and which, along with Aftersun, demonstrates Well’s skill at working with melodrama.  

Project 30. Sketches of Heights is a site-specific performance which reflects, through a collective footprint and oral storytelling, on the memory of women during Franco’s dictatorship. It stems from research — conducted in Madrid during July of 2022 — into the thirty women who explored the body at once as a wound and as a territory of resistance. During the performance, artists and spectators establish a dialogue on the repression of some of the pieces that are part of the Museo Reina Sofía Collection. Thus, memory abandons the private sphere to become a public and common experience.

This Wikipedia publishing workshop looks to expand the entries of women artists on the platform by using material that is available from the Museo’s holdings. The session gets under way with the presentation of a project developed by the Museo’s Library and Documentation Centre, in collaboration with the Sociology Department at the University of Salamanca, which looks to grant visibility to data on women creators. It continues with an encounter with the Cuarto Propio collective in Wikipedia, a group which aims to diminish the free encyclopaedia’s gender gap and male-centred approach.

En esta ocasión Intervalos presenta el largometraje El agua (2022) y el cortometraje Las vísceras (2016), de la cineasta Elena López Riera (España, 1982). Con una filmografía situada entre un realismo truculento y el pensamiento mágico, la cineasta se ha consagrado como una de las voces más originales del nuevo cine en España. El agua es una ópera prima a medio camino entre la representación verista de las clases populares del sur de España, con especial énfasis en las mujeres jóvenes, y la tendencia hacia el misterio y la tragedia existencial que determinan la vida. Las vísceras es un cortometraje sobre el ritual y la atracción de la muerte en la vida cotidiana del mundo rural. 

El cristal es mi piel (Glass Is My Skin) is an installation by Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz conceived specifically for the Palacio de Cristal in the Retiro Park. The project gives voice to the building, speaking of its colonial past through a song composed and performed by Aérea Negrot. Drawing inspiration from queer clubs, the artist duo have also created a series of stages made with mirrors, turning the building into a performer. These reflections see the Palacio enter the stage as smoke is used to question the transparency of its walls as a regime of visuality. This concept also draws associations with the density of the queer club, where individual bodies become one body as they dance.

This is the first European retrospective devoted to Margarita Azurdia, one of the twentieth century’s most emblematic Central American artists. The survey delves into her career, journeying through her vast output spanning painting, sculpture, non-objectual art, and artist’s books drafted with drawings, collages and poems. It also prompts an exploration of the artist’s creative metamorphosis and her explorations into art and spirit, and explores in greater depth ideas of care and healing linked to nature and the environment.

 In the 1970s and 1980s, different women adult comic book writers would revolutionise the medium, their vignettes reconsidering feminine representation. Far from the predominant idealism and opposite the disregard promoted by the social and political context of the time, these women comic book artists with different backgrounds, knowledges and art-making established a remarkably diverse stylistic and narrative landscape. Thus, Young Ladies the World Over, Unite! Women Adult Comic Book Writers (1967–1993) looks to contribute to disseminating the work of these cartoonists, placing the stress on the work they developed as scriptwriters or illustrators for some of the era’s major publications. Women who, through their work, paved the way for other women artists who today openly send out their messages and from a place of recognition.

This interview explores the work of Ângela Ferreira (Maputo, Mozambique, 1958) and the stress it places on the impact of colonialism and post-colonialism in contemporary society. The artist talks about how her investigations include references to film, such as the ethnographic works of film-maker Jean Rouch, and architecture, for instance the utopian projects of Soviet Constructivism or architects such as Jean Prouvé, whom she uses as a starting point to explore the forced amnesia of colonial memory and the rejection of reparation.