- The collection includes films from Martinique, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname, and French Guiana. It is introduced in collaboration with the Third Horizon Film Festival, a festival specializing in Caribbean cinema. Its artistic director, Jonathan Ali, will act as the official presenter of the selection.
The 32nd Valdivia International Film Festival has just announced that they will add five pieces on the bill in 2025, as part of the Map of Latin American and Caribbean Cinema. This initiative has been operating with over 235 experts from across the continent since 2023 in order to identify both iconic works and hidden gems from each region. This project was launched on the occasion of FICValdivia’s 30th anniversary.
FICValdivia’s director Raúl Camargo commented on the details of the selection: “For us, highlighting the history of our cinemas is essential, which is why we developed this new section that seeks to provide an artistic and political view of Latin America and the Caribbean through movies that are often unknown yet portray key events. This year, we decided to inaugurate this new lineup by integrating into our program pieces from regions that have been largely unexplored in the history of cinema, such as the Antilles and the Guianas. To this end, we believed pairing up with a top-tier festival in that line of work, such as the Third Horizon Film Festival, was crucial. It allowed us to program the selection hand in hand with its artistic director, Jonathan Ali, who will travel especially to Valdivia to present each and every one of the films.”
As for the artistic director of the Third Horizon Film Festival, Jonathan Ali, he states: “We are honored to display these restored documentaries, screened together for the first time at this year’s Third Horizon Film Festival, as part of the retrospective You Don’t Get Freedom: You Take Freedom: Caribbean Activist Cinema 1978–1985, in association with FICValdivia. As a film festival committed to the liberation of the Caribbean people, especially through cinema with a radical approach to it, Third Horizon shares a bond with FICValdivia, which for more than 30 years has had a similar artistic and political stance concerning Latin American cinema.”
CINEMATOGRAPHIC RESISTANCE
This year’s selection includes five perspectives that allow us to address colonialism and exploitation in the Caribbean in Haiti, French Guiana, Martinique, Suriname, and Jamaica:
- Aimé Césaire, Un homme une terre. Sarah Maldoror, Martinique, 1977, 57 min
- Leon G. Damas. Sarah Maldoror, French Guiana, 1994, 25 min
- Oema foe Sranan. At van Praag—Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms & LOSON, Suriname, 1978, 56 min
- Bitter Cane. Ben Dupuy and Kim Ives, Haiti, 1983, 77 min
- Sweet Sugar Rage. Honor Ford-Smith & Harclyde Walcott—Sistren Collective, Jamaica, 1985, 56 min
Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Jonathan Ali asserts that “we are proud of how this initiative contributes to bringing our two regions closer together, both parts of what José Martí called ‘Our America.’ The three documentaries—Bitter Cane, Sweet Sugar Rage and Oema foe Sranan, from Haiti, Jamaica and Suriname, respectively—are seamlessly linked together. Although made in quite different socio-political, linguistic, and production contexts, the three films share a concern for workers’ rights and struggles within exploitative, neocolonial, and hegemonic-capitalist frameworks. They also share a recognizable ethic of collaboration, as well as a similar memorable poetics, and can be considered part of a broader tradition of activist cinema and even 16 mm guerrilla filmmaking. We hope that the FICValdivia audience will enjoy these extraordinary movies.”
FICValdivia’s director Raúl Camargo also mentions the works of Sarah Maldoror, which are included in the selection: “We thought adding two of Sarah Maldoror’s pieces to the movies programed in the Third Horizon 2025 edition was primordial, as they provide context and complement the activist-collaborative cinema already featured in the exhibition. Both showcase key figures of negritude, the movement of opposition and resistance to colonialism: Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon-Gontran Damas. Through them, not only do we learn about the chronicle of the movement from a primary source, but we also delve into the history of Martinique and French Guiana itself.”
FILM CARTOGRAPHY
The Map of Latin American and Caribbean Cinema is a movie cartography organized annually by FICValdivia since 2023. This pioneer call for entries brings together the criteria of 235 researchers, academics, festival programmers, critics, and filmmakers, who have so far selected a universe of more than 1,800 pieces, ranging from emblematic works to secret films. Far from the logic of rankings or lists of the best pictures, this project aims to highlight each of these films in order to spread knowledge about the history of Latin American and Caribbean cinema.
The initiative first came about to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Valdivia International Film Festival in 2023, in partnership with film magazines La Rabia Cine (Mexico), Oropel (Chile), Desistfilm (Peru), La Vida Útil (Argentina), and Simulacro Mag (Dominican Republic). The extensive list of invited experts and academics currently includes names such as Rachel Moseley-Wood (Jamaica), María Lourdes Cortés (Costa Rica), Mary Leonard (Puerto Rico), Paulo Antonio Paranaguá (Brazil), Isaac León Frías (Peru); critics such as Roger Koza (Argentina), Iván Pinto (Chile), Libertad Gills (Ecuador), Alonso Díaz de la Vega (Mexico), Pedro Adrián Zuluaga (Colombia); filmmakers such as Elena Duque (Venezuela), Kiro Russo (Bolivia), Paula Gaitán (Brazil), Ignacio Agüero (Chile), Victoria Linares Villegas (Dominican Republic); and programmers such as Edward de Ybarra (Peru), Cecilia Barrionuevo (Argentina), Alberto Ramos (Cuba), Alejandra Trelles (Uruguay), Jonathan Ali (Trinidad and Tobago). Will also attend Marcelo Morales, director of the Chilean National Film Archive and Luis Horta, director of the University of Chile Film Archive; among others.
ABOUT FICVALDIVIA
Funded by the Austral University of Chile, produced by the Valdivia Cultural Center for Film Promotion, and organized by the Great City of Valdivia, the Los Ríos Regional Government, and the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage, FICValdivia provides audiovisual filmmakers a distribution and competition space. Along with that, it also promotes national and international audiovisual production of high artistic quality. This year, it will take place between October 13 and 19, 2025.
