Conversations at the Edge (CATE) Resource Guides

This page contains links to articles, interviews, and videos that can be incorporated into your syllabus in preparation for an event or afterward for post-event discussion and research. Go to saic.edu/cate for detailed event information.

COLECTIVO LOS INGRÁVIDOS: THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 6:00 p.m. CT
Gene Siskel Film Center

Presented in partnership with the Video Data Bank and Northwestern University’s Block Museum. The program is free for SAIC and Northwestern University students.

“The films and videos of Los Ingrávidos are signed in solidarity under a collective banner… fashioned together in love and outrage.” – Stephen Broomer, CinemaScope

“In its mode of organization, intersectional approach, and formal characteristics, [Los Ingrávidos] is one of the most singular contemporary Latin American film collectives.” – Raquel Schefer, Jump Cut

Since 2012, the Mexican Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, which translates into English as “the weightless,” has been producing dazzling, often trance-like films with an activist sensibility. In their first ever appearance in Chicago, the collective presents a selection of recent shorts, including two parts of their searing THE SUN QUARTET (2017) and the mesmerizing TIERRA EN TRANCE (2022). Stitched together from contemporary, historical, and mythic images of Mesoamerica, the films reflect on interconnected social, political, and environmental issues in Mexico, the Americas, and beyond.

2017–22, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Mexico, ca 75 minutes plus discussion Format: 16mm and 16mm on digital In Spanish with English subtitles

Colectivo Los Ingrávidos was founded in Tehuacán Mexico in 2012 to dismantle the commercial and corporate audiovisual grammar and its embedded ideology. The collective is inspired by the historical avant-gardes and their commitment to using both form and content against alienating realities. Their methods combine digital and analogue mediums, interventions on archival materials, agitprop, mythology, social protests, and documentary poetry. Their radical experimentations in documentary and cinematography produce visual and auditory impressions that are political possibilities in their own right. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including at the 2019 Whitney Biennial, the Bienal de la Imagen Movimiento in Buenos Aires, International Film Festival Rotterdam, RIDM Montreal International Documentary Festival, Images Festival; Media City Film Festival, Ambulante Cine Documental, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and Festival Internacional de Cine FILMADRID.

Revelations by Sunlight: Colectivo los ingrávidos' The Sun Quartet*
Stephen Broomer | Cinema scope (Toronto), vol.24 (91)| p.23-26 | 2022
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login

Perspectives dialectically intersected: the Mexican audiovisual collective Los Ingrávidos and its film Coyolxauhqui (2017)*
Raquel Schefer | Jump Cut, n.61 | Fall 2022

Colectivo Los Ingrávidos “Coyolxauhqui”
Almudena Escobar López | Vdrome | October 2018

Critical analysis of aestheticized violence. Case of Los Ingrávidos collective in Mexico (in Spanish)
María Martínez Morales | Art and Identity Policies vol. 26 | 2022

Ancestralidad y Trance
Films and Texts by Colectivo los Ingrávidos and others curated by Los Ingrávidos and Almudena Escobar López

Thesis on the Audiovisual
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos | Non-Fiction, n.3 | 2021

What Was Always Yours And Never Lost [Curated Compilation]
The compilation What Was Always Yours And Never Lost, provides an essential introduction to recent works of video art and experimental documentary by indigenous film and video makers from throughout North America. It includes works by Colectivo Los Ingrávidos.

Shamanic Cinema: Trance as Resistance
Screening Event at Block Museum on February 15, 2023.

Conversations at the Edge Lecture Recordings
Conversation at the Edge video recordings (2016–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.