Libertad Gills

How to make a film about an event for which there are no moving images? In my search to make a project about Ecuador's largest worker's strike, which ended in the massacre of hundreds or thousands of workers in 1922 (and of which there are no moving images), I turn to other work from that same year. Inspired by Hito Steyerl's essay "In Defense of the Poor Image", this found-footage essay-film reclaims the "poor image" in the context of past and present class struggles in Ecuador.

From a point of view-listening that is both animal and elemental, between the air, the ocean and the sand, relationships emerge between humans, birds and marine life.

Can a commune survive in the 21st Century? Engabao, a fishing commune in Ecuador, has historically been a site of land struggle between inhabitants and wealthy businessmen that threaten to convert collective lands into private property. Three founding members of the commune share their life stories, from which we discover that the struggle to survive, both individually and collectively, is one and the same.

How to make a film about an event for which there are no moving images? In my search to make a project about Ecuador's largest worker's strike, which ended in the massacre of hundreds or thousands of workers in 1922 (and of which there are no moving images), I turn to other work from that same year. Inspired by Hito Steyerl's essay "In Defense of the Poor Image", this found-footage essay-film reclaims the "poor image" in the context of past and present class struggles in Ecuador.

From a point of view-listening that is both animal and elemental, between the air, the ocean and the sand, relationships emerge between humans, birds and marine life.

Can a commune survive in the 21st Century? Engabao, a fishing commune in Ecuador, has historically been a site of land struggle between inhabitants and wealthy businessmen that threaten to convert collective lands into private property. Three founding members of the commune share their life stories, from which we discover that the struggle to survive, both individually and collectively, is one and the same.

Can a commune survive in the 21st Century? Engabao, a fishing commune in Ecuador, has historically been a site of land struggle between inhabitants and wealthy businessmen that threaten to convert collective lands into private property. Three founding members of the commune share their life stories, from which we discover that the struggle to survive, both individually and collectively, is one and the same.