NCLAFF: Blanco en Blanco (White on White)

Introduced by Miguel Rojas-Sotelo

Free and open to the public.

Dir. by Theo Court. Chile. 2019. 90 min. Spanish, English, Dutch, Mapudungun with English subtitles.

Traveling photographer Pedro is a drawn, taciturn type who prefers to let his camera do the talking. Whether he's shooting a coy bride or a gang of white huntsmen posing with their Indigenous human kill, his mien is impassive, his brow furrowed, seeking composed perfection in the most rattling of images. The film conjures ravishing beauty from hellish historical ugliness, though it's mindful throughout of the camera's conspiratorial capacity for violence. A film that demands viewers' patience and rewards it with startling aesthetic and political rigor. The film largely avoids grisly imagery of the Selk'nam genocide, but the atrocities we know about yet don't see burden the film's strange, queasy conscience, underlining how the brutal legacy of colonialism is so often sanitized and selectively presented.

Shown with short film "Cuando Muere una Lengua (Quema polihui se tlajtol camanali), directed by Gabriela Badillo, Mexico, 2013, 1 min. (Huasteca, Hidalgo) with English subtitles.