REAL UTOPIAS, THINK CITIES THROUGH MYTH
Within the framework of City of The People program, the MDC Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) projects a series of feature films that reflect on the condition of urban communities and the implications of living in cities. Under the title of Real Utopias, every month a film will be screened until December.
Last night, as the opening of the screenings, Brasilia: life after design (2017) documentary film by the Canadian director Bart Simpson was presented. The film records the disturbing atmosphere of Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa ―architect the former and urbanist the second -, the heads behind the most impressive urban megaproject of the Latin American 20th century. In the midst of the democratic renaissance of Brazil, these two characters, from their ego and the yearning to transcendence, but also from the citizens tried to find a meaningful connection in a city built to divide the country. In that context, Simpson highlights the mythical character of the current Brazilian capital, a concrete utopia built ex nihilo.
Another film to be screened is Nueva Venecia (New Venice, 2016), by the Uruguayan Emiliano Mazza De Luca. The eighty-minute feature film documents the lives of inhabitants of a small town in the swamp of Santa Marta in Colombia. These communities live on and off the water: their economic livelihood, for example, depends on fishing. On November 22, 2000, a paramilitary group murdered 37 people and expelled them. However, over time, the members of the town decided to return to their land and, despite the threats, their memorials and ceremonies in honor of the dead assumed great popularity and attention to justice and Colombian authorities. Mazza De Luca's documentary records the resurgence of the town and the impact that ceremonies and social gathering have had for it, as if it were another form of urban planning.
In addition, In the Park (1962), short film by Orlando Jiménez-Leal, New Town Utopia (2017), Christopher Ian Smith, Everyday Rebellion (2013), by Arash T. Riahi and Arman T. Riahi, and Future My Love will be shown (2013), by Maja Borg, among others. All programming and dates can be found on the MOAD website.
About City of the People
The program created by MOAD is based on the Museum Without Boundaries initiative to bring an extraordinary platform for dialogue and conversation to the public. Within this proposal, City of the People summons artists and professionals to make presentations, performances, commissions, literary readings, projections and debates that explore what it means to exist in, and how, an urban community. All events, including Real Utopias projections, are free and open to the general public.
