CANTADORAS: MUSICAL MEMORIES OF LIFE AND DEATH IN COLOMBIA
Cantadoras. Memorias de vida y muerte en Colombia / Colombia/Mexico, 2017
Director: María Fernanda Carrillo Sánchez

Spanish with English subtitles | 70 min
Movimientos

Preceded by SHANGO: THE WILL TO OVERCOME
Friday, August 30 | 7:30 PM | Cinematheque

Five Afro-Colombian women sing about the life and death of their peoples through traditional music and funeral songs of the Pacific and the Caribbean. Tracing a musical journey of ancestral resistance to violence, the singers show how they respond to violence through everyday life and creativity. This music-filled ethnographic documentary highlights the role of women in the cultural resistance of Afro-descendant peoples and in the daily construction of a non-patriarchal memory.

Cinco mujeres afrocolombianas cantan sobre la vida y la muerte de sus pueblos por medio de músicas tradicionales y cantos fúnebres del Pacífico y del Caribe. Trazando un viaje musical, las cantadoras nos muestran cómo responder a la violencia con vida y creación. Este documental musical de corte etnográfico resalta el papel de las mujeres tanto en la resistencia cultural de los pueblos afro descendientes como en la construcción cotidiana de una memoria no patriarcal.


The director uses tools offered by sociology in order to identify the musical and political richness in this practice, defining in this way the different analytical axes to compare the relation between the music and the complex political situation found in the regions where the film was shot. The women share and denounce their experiences through their lyrics and singing, making the result an expression of cultural resistance in radicalized contexts and territories. – Visions du Réel Festival