Chircales

The Castañeda family makes bricks from mud for a pittance outside of Bogotá, but then is laid off. Observing in documentary fashion and featuring an off-camera commentary, the film analyses the relationship between workers deprived of rights and poverty. A 16mm print of CHIRCALES came to the Arsenal Archive by way of Leipzig, where the film premiered at the International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week in 1972 and won a Golden Dove. Thanks to a grant from the Capital Cultural Fund for the 50th anniversary of Arsenal, the film was digitised in 2013. Two duplicate negatives were provided by the Fundación Cine Documental for this purpose. CHIRCALES is the first film in a trilogy on the oppression and resistance of indigenous people in Colombia, the second part of which, "Planas, testimonio de un etnocidio" (Colombia 1971), was shown at the 2nd International Forum of New Cinema in 1972 and also remained in the Arsenal Archive. It is currently being restored in Mexico by the Fundación Cine Documental. The third part, "Campesinos", won a prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in 1975, and a print has been in the archive there ever since. As part of "Archive außer sich", the Oberhausen project "re-selected – Film History as Print History" had a new 16mm copy made and subsequently digitised it in 2019. "Nuestra voz de tierra, memoria y futuro" (1982), also by Marta Rodríguez and Jorge Silva, has been in the Arsenal Archive since its world premiere at the International Forum of New Cinema (Berlinale Forum). It was digitally restored in 2018 as part of "Archive außer sich" and re-screened in 2019.