At the Avignon Festival, the recomposed past of Malicho Vaca Valenzuela – Libération

At the Avignon Festival, the recomposed past of Malicho Vaca Valenzuela – Libération
At the Avignon Festival, the recomposed past of Malicho Vaca Valenzuela – Libération

Chili

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In “Reminiscencia”, a show haunted by the territory, the Chilean director combines his personal history and the painful social heritage of his country.

When Covid knocked on the world’s door in early 2020, Chile was struggling with the Estallido Social, a major protest movement against social inequalities and the country’s many dysfunctions. The pandemic would soon be the end of the fun. Malicho Vaca Valenzuela then began a long confinement in the family home in Bellavista, in the center of Santiago. “I have long collected heterogeneous objects such as metal plates found in the streets of the city bearing the old names of the different arteries renamed many times,” says the director, author of Reminiscencewhich he will present at the Mistral high school gymnasium from July 17 to 21. “With seclusion, I have read dozens of blogs on this; I also reviewed all the material stored on my computer, a compilation of images, places and family ties and all this resulted in a personal map. By geolocating these objects or spaces to which I no longer had access, I wanted to see how far I could go.”

“Collective memory collage”

One evening, he posted images on Instagram showing the social tensions over the years in the capital. An Argentinian university professor, interested in his work, immediately sent him an eight-minute film on an antediluvian Santiago. Begins at

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