<![CDATA[WORLD SCREEN CULTURE - Blog]]>Sun, 11 Jun 2017 02:04:40 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Kayche Festival in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico]]>Wed, 07 Oct 2015 03:58:54 GMThttp://www.worldscreenculture.tv/blog/kayche-festival-in-the-yucatan-peninsula-of-mexico
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​The Festival is run by the Kayche Collective, who are a group of professional film makers, communications specialists, anthropologists, designers, video artists and independent cultural promoters driven by an interest in creating spaces for audiovisual dialogue.  The formation of the Collective has its origins in the organization of events for broadcast film and video, in 2010.   The Film and Video Festival "Kayche' Tejidos Visuales" or Visual Fabrics, is a window that evokes dialogue in order to promote self-representation and demand catalysts for change in an unequal world.

​Special guests for the 2015 Kayche Festival were Edgar Perez and Ireri Vargas who are organisers of the Festival de Cine Y Video Indigena that is based in Morelia, along with visiting judges Carolina Paredes, a filmmaker who has a PhD in Visual Anthropology and Zapotec broadcaster Juan José García Ortiz from the Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de Pueblos Indígenas in Oaxaca, and myself, touring works from the SOLID Screen Festival, representing International Indigenous Women. 

Aside from the hands-on work that the Kayche Collective does, they also engage local artists such as Ricardo López Méndez, who sculpted the official festival award, and screen makers such as Judzil Palma who produced the promotional animation for this years festival. 

The Kayche Festival logo depicts an eye, which, for the award and their short animated promo this year, is based on a traditional Mayan story of a bird that was chosen as a custodian of the maize kernel. The Ts'iu bird went into the fire, and came out jet black, with red eyes. Check out the animation which is played to kick off all of the festival screenings:                                                                              https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyi97DznYSysP4u5SY9la_w 
At festival time, the Kayche Festival also usually hosts a gathering for film makers to get together from around Yucatan and across the country.  This year it wasn't as well attended as previously, due to not being able to secure funding for travel, but after the formalities, the small gathering of Yucatan Film makers and visitors served well as a talking circle held at CIESAS Peninsular, a local university.   
Where: 

The Kayche Festival is based in Merida, a coastal metropolis in the Mexican state of Yucatan. The Yucatán Peninsula is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the east and by the Gulf of Mexico to the north and west. Subject to a harsh colonisation process, and previous to being renamed, Merida itself was a large Mayan city called T'HO. Situated on what is now the main plaza, it was conquered by the Spaniards, who dismantled all the Mayan pyramids and used the huge stones as the foundation for buildings such as the Catedral de San Ildefonso (1561-1599), the oldest cathedral on the American continent.  It is still there, on the east side of of the Grand Plaza, as a constant reminder of this era, as is the Palacio de Gobierno (1892), on the north side which houses 27 murals illustrating the violent, bloody history of Yucatan.  Often called the White City because its streets and sidewalks are cleaned twice everyday, and because of the large amount of limestone used to construct its buildings, this colonial city is a paradox of two cultures that have influenced its development over the last 500 years.
Although the region is a tourist destination renowned for its significance to Mayan civilisation, the Kayche Festival organisers have to work hard, as Merida is outside of the major cities, and the Kayche Collective are making things happen off the usual screen culture map. Merida locals seem to be proud of the intercultural nature of their city, and recognise that there are already many avenues of expression in many different forms, from the traditional Mayan to the historical European, and the other artforms brought by modern influences.  Since their first festival, which was exclusively in Merida, the Kayche Festival now also expands out to the regions in Oxkutzcab, Valladolid, Panaba, Tahmek, Tixpehual, all in Yucatan, and Bacalar and Jose Maria in Morelos. 
PictureKayche Festival Venue : UNO Mayan University
How:

The name Kayché is a Mayan word that refers to sewing, specifically, the netting needle used to weave the traditional Mayan hammock, and similarly it is symbolic for the way the Kayche Festival weaves together the works and approach their programming. It promises to weave screenings together with consequent discussion, finding the common ground that allows an understanding, and propose a more equitable society.


Although the festival provides an international context, with films in Spanish from different corners of the world, the Kayche Collective work really hard to provide engagement locally, in regional and remote communities. These touring screenings and discussions are presented in partnership with small town cultural centres, mainstream and and Mayan universities, schools and technical colleges, with predominantly Mayan and Mestiza appreciative audiences in good numbers.
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The screenings in Merida are also presented in a range of different venues such as the local independent Cine Cafe, government cultural institutions, small theatres and universities. Some of the events in Merida compete with other events and are therefore not that well attended, but the small size of the venues allow for the good feeling and enthusiasm for screen culture in the room, to make up for the numbers void. This is a similar scenario for some of the Indigenous Film Festivals and other similar events in Australia, but it is surprising for me to find Mexico the same, on many levels.

Jenny Fraser
]]><![CDATA[DIY Blakfella Screen Culture ]]>Wed, 05 Aug 2015 20:57:40 GMThttp://www.worldscreenculture.tv/blog/diy-blakfella-screen-culturePicture
cyberTribe online gallery is marking the 15th anniversary of exhibitions and events this year. cyberTribe is an unfunded online gallery focused on nurturing digital and experimental art, and has been at the forefront of exhibiting cutting edge and politically important artworks and first hand statements from Indigenous Artists internationally, both online and in other gallery spaces across the world. Over the years, cyberTribe has brought together Indigenous and other artists from places across Australasia, the Pacific, the Americas and elsewhere to participate in exhibitions of international standing.

English computer artist and academic Paul Brown invited me to work on Fineartforum.org, which was an online magazine adopted from a university in America by QUT. Importantly, it was an international publication running out of Brisbane, not only because being online, it could be accessed internationally, but also because a lot of the students and academics working in different roles, were from all over the world, like the United Kingdom, Ukraine and many Asian countries. It was enjoyable and fulfilling, there was a distinct feeling of working on something that was innovative, had a big picture approach and reach, and a continuous publishing program. I had already been curating online exhibitions, including a large group exhibition for the 1999 INSEA world congress in Brisbane, which was run by the International Society for Educators of Art. Armed with a bit of experience, and the invitation to curate for Fineartforum.org, it was then up to me to to think about how to present an Indigenous art online for our country.

cyberTribe has filled a space, as unfortunately there are few Aboriginal Curators in Australia and even fewer that have an interest in showing screen-based, experimental or conceptual artworks. Even though there has never been annual or triennial funding provided, cyberTribe has presented over 50 exhibitions and events, both with a focus as an online gallery, and also making use of opportunities in other spaces and places for Indigenous practitioners locally and Internationally. As an Indigenous presence in the world of Indigenous Arts I aim to provide new perspectives for audiences and perhaps encourage more inclusion of Indigenous Art (and practitioners) in other mainstream exhibitions and events – in areas where this is often overlooked.

The practice of curating is historically important and as there is no national Aboriginal Keeping Place in Australia, it is therefore mostly left up to us as custodians, to document works, so the cyberTribe space is part-archive, part-gallery, part-museum, part-publisher. Even though it could be essentially viewed as “just a website”, cyberTribe continues to be taken seriously and has achieved such milestones as: touring internationally, inclusion in the Biennale of Sydney online venue, and winning the 2009 Indigenous Keeping Place Award in the Radio National Regional Museums Awards.

As a new digital strategy this year, a new online TV channel has been created for 24/7 broadcasting and access internationally, with Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander screen culture at the centre. Titled worldscreenculture.tv it is a new home grown initiative to strategically branch out in a new direction. With a particular focus on the promotion and development of screen culture, this will be a place to access documentation and archives from screenings and events, such as video and photos from the recent Fringe Dwellers commemorative screening and BLAK RELEASE held in Cairns (Far North Queensland), which is usually a place left off the screen culture map.

This year cyberTribe has worked in partnership to present the CIAF presents satellite event titled BLAK RELEASE, a new screen festival put together by new Cairns Indigenous Art Fair Director Janina Harding, to showcase and celebrate the Indigenous screen culture of Queenslands First People. Held in Cairns on August 2nd, BLAK RELEASE engaged and showcased screen makers from Far North Queensland alongside other Indigenous interdisciplinary practitioners from around the state and beyond, representing art forms such as animation, performance art, documentary, short film, music videos and digital storytelling.

The inaugural BLAK RELEASE screening event had a spotlight on Indigenous Producing and Torres Strait Islander film maker John Harvey was in attendance for a conversation to kick off the screening, which included five of Harveys works, with three of those being recent premieres at the 2015 Sydney Film Festival, and Melbourne International Film Festival. John studied Producing and Screening Writing at the Australian Film Television & Radio School and was the recipient of the AV Myer Award for Exceptional Indigenous Talent at the School.

Music videos were another area of focus for the BLAK RELEASE screening program which included works by standout Far North Queensland talents. Three works from the BLAK RELEASE program were also selected as finalists in the 2015 National Indigenous Music Awards in The Northern Territory. The overall winner of the Community Award was The Cairns Murri Crew, announced at the 2015 NIMA awards ceremony held in Darwin. Acknowledging the significant and critical role that music plays in spreading positive messages throughout Indigenous communities, the NIMAs Community Clip of the Year Award acknowledges the work happening across remote communities. The Cairns Murri Crew is made up of Murri students from Cairns High School. Their song Built To Last is a celebration of cultural survival, of building respectful, inclusive and vibrant futures for young people whilst acknowledging the struggle and fight for basic human rights that continues today.

Far North Queensland has a great depth of Indigenous arts practice, with a growing visual arts industry, and for BLAK RELEASE and also cyberTribes SOLID SCREEN Festival in 2014 and 16 September 2015, our intention has been to compliment this strength and provide opportunities and experiences for local and visiting CIAF audiences and Indigenous practitioners to engage with other mediums for expression, and also explore and document screen culture history in Film making and the other screen arts. In the Far North there are a number of number of Indigenous screen-makers already with long histories of working in a variety of screen mediums, who need more acknowledgement and showcasing events, which is long overdue.

Jenny Fraser
https://about.me/jennyfraser 


links:

cyberTribe on facebook https://www.facebook.com/cyberTribegallery

www.cyberTribe.culture2.org

www.worldscreenculture.tv

http://blackout.net.au

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