Held on 19, 20, 26, 28, 29, 30 abr, 03, 05, 06, 07, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28, 31 may, 03, 04, 10 jun 2017
* Please check times of second sessions.
This series presents the filmic actions, imaginaries and productions of the Tricontinental, a collaboration between Global South countries during the period of decolonisation and emancipation in the 1960s and 1970s. The First Tricontinental Conference was held in Havana in January 1966, whereby a new organisation called OSPAAAL (the Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America) was set up to build relations of solidarity between countries and revolutionary movements from the three Third World continents flying the flag of internationalism. It sought to bring together “the tw0 biggest contemporary movements from the World Revolution: the Socialist and National Liberation movements,” in the words of Mehdi Ben Barka, chairman of the Tricontinental preparatory commission.
Drawing inspiration from the ideas of Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961), Amílcar Cabral, Ho Chi Minh and Ernesto Che Guevara (with his famed “Message to the Tricontinental: create two, three… many Vietnams, that is the watchword”, published in 1967), the Tricontinental formed and set the revolutionary trends of a subaltern world searching for its own speech and identity. After the First Conference, the Tricontinental magazine was published on a regular basis in different languages under the artistic direction of Alfredo G. Rostgaard, while the Conference of the Latin American Solidarity Organisation was arranged in Havana in August 1967.
This frenetic, cosmopolitan and transversal activity, carried out in only a couple of years, interspersed and circulated hitherto national and fragmentary debates about Third Cinema and the New European cinemas — movements such as Cinema Novo in Brazil, Argentina’s New Wave, the Documentary Movement in Cuba and the Liberation Cinema in Africa splintered and mutated into an international, alter-global network of collaboration. The undercurrent of a new political imagination oriented the work of film-makers such as Glauber Rocha, Ruy Guerra, Leon Hirszman, Humberto Solás, Santiago Álvarez, Ousmane Sembène, José Massip, Ugo Ulive, Sarah Maldoror, Masao Adachi, Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard and Fernando Solanas, who all worked in alignment with the objectives and aspirations laid down by the pioneering International Tricontinental. This film series demonstrates the cinematic articulations and exchanges of this constellation to set forth a genealogy of responses to contemporary globalization, formulated as the prevalence of the neoliberal regime. Moreover, beyond its fervent but short-lived political moment, the Tricontinental constituted the search for an imaginary of equality in difference, and the fascination of this experience still endures today.
Programme
Session 1. Insurgent cities, cities on the move
Wednesday, April 19 - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Saturday, April 29th - 7:00 p.m.
Jorge Sanjinés. ReOVlución [ReOVlution]
Bolivia, 1963, OV, b/w, 9 '
Mario Handler. Me gustan los estudiantes [I like students]
Uruguay, 1968, OV, b/w, 6 '
Ugo Ulive. ¡Basta! [Enough!]
Venezuela, 1969, OV, b/w, 19 '
Mario Handler. Liber Arce, Liberarse [Liber Arce, Liberate]
Uruguay, 1968, OV, b/w, 11 '
Ugo Ulive. Caracas dos o tres cosas [Caracas two or three things]
Venezuela, 1969, OV, b/w, 15 '
João Trevisan. Contestação [Reply]
Brazil, 1969, OV, b/w, 14 '
Nicolás Guillén Landrián. Desde La Habana 1969 recordar Cuba [From Havana 1969 remember Cuba],
Cuba, 1969, OV, b/w, 17 '
With the presentation of Olivier Hadouchi, curator of the cycle.
Session 2. Tackling Torture
Thursday, April 20 - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Sunday, April 30th - 5:00 p.m.
Mohandi Ali-Yahia. Die Frage [The Question]
Germany, 1961-1962, OV with Spanish subtitles, b/w, 16 '
Ugo Ulive. TO3
Venezuela, 1972, OV, b/w, 24 '
Sarah Maldoror. Monagambée
Angola / Algeria, 1969, OV with Spanish subtitles, b/w, 19 '
Chris Marker. On OVus parle de la torture [We talk about torture]
France, 1969, OV with Spanish subtitles, b/w, 23 '
Cine Base Group. Las tres A son las tres armas: Carta abierta de Rodolfo Walsh a la junta militar [The three A's are the three arms: Rodolfo Walsh's open letter to the Argentine military junta]
Argentina, 1979, OV, b/w, 25 '
Session 3. Portrait of an artist in crisis
Wednesday, April 27 - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Saturday, May 6th - 7:00 p.m.
Glauber Rocha. Terra em transe [Earth in trance]
Brazil, 1967. OV , b/w, 100 '
Session 4. Breathing blows
Friday, April 28th - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Sunday, May 7th - 5:00 p.m.
Piero Nelli. Labanta negro! [Get up nigger!]
Italy-Guinea Bissau, 1966, OV with Spanish subtitles, b/w, 38 '
Jean Rouch and Jacques d'Arthuys. Makwayela
France, Mozambique, 1977, OV with Spanish subtitles, color, 18 '
Session 5. Towards a cinema of liberation
Wednesday, May 3 - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Saturday, May 13 - 7:00 p.m.
Leon Hirszman. Maioria absoluta [Absolute majority]
Brazil, 1964, OV with Spanish subtitles, b/w, 16 '
Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino. La hora de los hornos [The hour of the furnaces]
Argentina, 1968, OV, b/w, 90 '
Session 6. The Dawn of the Damned
Friday, May 5 - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Sunday, May 14 - 5:00 p.m.
Ahmed Rachedi. L'Aube des damnés [The dawn of the damned]
Algeria, 1965, OV with Spanish subtitles, b/w, 90 '
Session 7. Black Atlantic Screams
Wednesday, May 10 - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Saturday, May 20th - 7:00 p.m.
Ousmane Sembène. Borom Sarret [The man and the car]
Senegal, 1963, OV with Spanish subtitles, b/w, 18 '
Ousmane Sembène. The noire of ... [The She Black ...]
Senegal, 1966, OV with Spanish subtitles, b/w, 60 '
Djibril Diop Mambéty. Contras 'City
Senegal, 1970, OV with Spanish subtitles, color, 22'
Humberto Solás. Simparelé
Cuba, 1974, OV with Spanish subtitles, color, 31 '
Session 8. African culture will be reOVlutionary or not
Thursday, May 11 - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Sunday, May 21 - 5:00 p.m.
William Klein. Festival Panafricain d'Algiers
RFA, Algeria, France, 1970, OV with Spanish subtitles, color, 90 '
Session 9. Reinterpreting the Colonial Massacre
Wednesday, May 17 - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Saturday, May 27th - 7:00 p.m.
Ruy Guerra. Mueda, memória e massacre [Mueda, memory and massacre]
Mozambique, 1979, OV with Spanish subtitles, b/w, 100 '
Session 10. 4 times 25
Friday, May 19 - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Sunday, May 28th - 5:00 p.m.
Celso Martinez Corréa and Celso Lucca. 25
Brazil, Mozambique, 1975, OV with Spanish subtitles, b/w, 120 '
Session 11. Storms from the East
Wednesday, May 24th - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Saturday, June 3 - 7:00 p.m.
Masao Adachi and Koji Wakamatsu. Red Army / PLFP: Declaration of World War
Japan, 1971, OV with Spanish subtitles, color, 71 '
Session 12. Here and elsewhere
Thursday, May 25th - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Sunday, June 4 - 5:00 p.m.
Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville. Ici et ailleurs [Here and elsewhere]
France, 1974, OV with Spanish subtitles, color, 53 '
Session 13. Lost and forgotten battles in the Middle East
Wednesday, May 31 - 7:00 p.m.
Second pass: Saturday, June 10 - 7:00 p.m.
Heiny Srour. Saat El Fahrir Dakkat, Barra Ya Isti Mar [The time of liberation has arrived]
United Kingdom, France, Lebanon, 1974, OV with Spanish subtitles, color, 62 '
Jocelyne Saab. Beirut Madinati [Beirut, my city]
Lebanon, 1982, OV with Spanish subtitles, color, 36 '
Curatorship
Olivier Hadouchi
Inside the framework of
PHotoEspaña 2017
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
Más actividades
CLINIC 2628. A Community of Writing and Research in the Arts
February – October 2026
Clinic 2628 is a project which supports and brings together writings which stem from the intention to offer a space and sustainable time for research work in art and culture. Framed within an academic context which is increasingly less receptive to the forms in which thinking happens and is expressed, the aim is to rescue the academic from its neoliberal trappings and thus recover the alliance between precision and intuition, work and desire. A further goal is to return writing to a commons which makes this possible through the monitoring of processes and the collectivisation of ideas, stances, references and strategies.
The endeavour, rooted in a collaboration between the Museo Reina Sofía’s Studies Directorship and the Artea research group, via the i+D Experimenta project, is shaped by three annual editions conceived as spaces of experimentation, discussion and a demonstration of writings critical of what is put forward by today’s academia.
What forces, forms and processes are at play when writing about art and aesthetics? In academia, in museums and in other cultural institutions, the practice of writing is traversed by productivist logics which jeopardise rhythms of research and experimentation. The imposition of both scientism inherent in the structure of “the paper” and the quantifying of results which demand a criterion of quality and visibility sterilise and smoothen, from the outset, the coarseness that is particular to writing understood from the concrete part of language: phonic, graphic, syntactic and grammatical resistance connecting the language user to the community the language unites and activates. They also sterilise the roughness enmeshed in the same desire to write, the intuitive, clear and confusing pathways that once again connect the writer to those reading and writing, participating in a common good that is at once discovered and produced.
The progressive commercialisation of knowledge propelled by cognitive capitalism moves further away from the research and production of knowledge in artworks and artistic languages and practices. The work of curators and archive, criticism, performances and essays formerly saw a horizon of formal and emotional possibilities, of imagination that was much broader when not developed in circumstances of competition, indexing and impact. Today, would it be possible to regain, critically not nostalgically, these ways; namely, recovering by forms, and by written forms, the proximity between art thinking and its objects? How to write in another way, to another rhythm, with no more demands than those with which an artwork moves towards different ways of seeing, reading and being in the world?
The (legal) person and the legal form. Chapter II
8, 12, 15 January, 2026 – 16:00 to 19:00
As part of the Studies Constellation, the Study Directoship’s annual fellowship, art historian and theorist Sven Lütticken leads the seminar The (Legal) Person and the Legal Form: Theoretical, Artistic, and Activist Commitments to foster dialogue and deepen the hypotheses and questions driving his research project.
This project, titled Unacting Personhood, Deforming Legal Abstraction, explores the dominance of real abstractions—such as exchange value and legal form—over our processes of subjectivation, and asks how artistic practices can open up alternative ways of representing or performing the subject and their legal condition in the contemporary world.
The seminar consists of eight sessions, divided into three chapters throughout the academic year. While conceived as non-public spaces for discussion and collective work, these sessions complement, nourish, and amplify the public program of the Studies Constellation.
In this second chapter of the seminar, the inquiry into the aesthetics and politics of legal form continues with three sessions that pick up the discussions held in Chapter I but propose new lines of flight. The first session focuses on international law via the writings of the British author China Miéville, which allows us to reconsider the notion of the legal form –following Evgeny Pashukanis— and, through it, a variety of (people’s) tribunals. While the crucial concept of the legal person –as the right-holder central to the form of law— was debated in Chapter I, the second session focuses on attempts to extend personhood not (just) to corporations, but rather to nonhuman animals or ecosystems. Finally, the third session poses the question: how can groups and networks use officially recognized organizational forms (such as the foundation or the cooperative) and/or use a collective persona (without necessarily a legal “infrastructure” to match) to act and represent themselves?
Oliver Laxe. HU/هُوَ. Dance as if no one were watching you
Tuesday, 16 December 2025 – 7pm
As a preamble to the opening of the exhibition HU/هُوَ. Dance as if no one were watching you, film-maker Oliver Laxe (Paris, 1982) engages in conversation with the show’s curators, Julia Morandeira and Chema González, touching on the working processes and visual references that articulate this site-specific project for the Museo Reina Sofía. The installation unveils a new programme in Space 1, devoted from this point on to projects by artists and film-makers who conduct investigations into the moving image, sound and other mediums in their exhibition forms.
Oliver Laxe’s film-making is situated in a resilient, cross-border territory, where the material and the political live side by side. In HU/هُوَ. Dance as if no one were watching you, this drift is sculpted into a search for the transcendency that arises between dancing bodies, sacred architectures and landscapes subjected to elemental and cosmological forces. As a result, this conversation seeks to explore the relationship the piece bears to the imagery of ancient monotheisms, the resonance of Persian Sufi literature and the role of abstraction as a resistance to literal meaning, as well as looking to analyse the possibilities of the image and the role of music — made here in collaboration with musician David Letellier, who also works under the pseudonym Kangding Ray — in this project.
These inaugural conversations, part of the main working strands of the Museo’s Public Programmes Area, aim to explore in greater depth the exhibition narratives of the shows organised by the Museo from the perspective of artists, curators and specialists.
Manuel Correa. The Shape of Now
13 DIC 2025
The Shape of Now is a documentary that explores the challenges and paradoxes of memory, reparation and post-conflict justice, extending a defiant and questioning gaze towards the six-decade armed conflict in which the Colombian State, guerrillas and paramilitary groups clashed to leave millions of victims in the country. The screening is conducted by the Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics study group and includes a presentation by and discussion with the film’s director, Manuel Correa.
The film surveys the consequences of the peace agreements signed in 2016 between the Colombian State and the FARC guerrilla organisation through the optics of different victims. It was recorded shortly after this signing, a time in which doubts lingered over the country’s future, with many groups speculating in the narration. Correa harnesses the power of images, visual and bodily memory, fiction and re-staging as tools for understanding the conflict, memory and healing, as well as for the achievement of a just peace that acknowledges and remembers all victims.
The activity is framed inside the research propelled by Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics, a study group developed by the Museo’s Study Directorship and Study Centre. This annual group seeks to rethink, from a theoretical-critical and historical-artistic perspective, the complex framework of concepts and exercises which operate under the notion of pacifism. A term that calls on not only myriad practices ranging from anti-militarism and anti-war movements to activism for non-violence, but also opens topical debates around violence, justice, reparation and desertion.
Framed in this context, the screening seeks to reflect on propositions of transitional and anti-punitive justice, and on an overlapping with artistic and audiovisual practices, particularly in conflicts that have engendered serious human rights violations. In such conflicts, the role played by audiovisual productions encompasses numerous challenges and ethical, aesthetic and political debates, among them those related to the limits of representation, the issue of revictimisation and the risks involved in the artistic commitment to justice. These themes will be addressed in a discussion held after the session.
Francisco López and Barbara Ellison
Thursday, 11 December - 8pm
The third session in the series brings together two international reference points in sound art in one evening — two independent performances which converse through their proximity here. Barbara Ellison opens proceedings with a piece centred on the perceptively ambiguous and the ghostly, where voices, sounds and materials become spectral manifestations.
This is followed by Francisco López, an internationally renowned Spanish sound artist, who presents one of his radical immersions in deep listening, with his work an invitation to submerge oneself in sound matter as a transformative experience.
This double session sets forth an encounter between two artists who, from different perspectives, share the same search: to open ears to territories where sound becomes a poetic force and space of resistance.