01x01 — Lembro pasar as clases de historia do cinema na escola completamente aburrido, unicamente polos filmes mudos que reproducía en silencio sen que me pillaran. Non é que non me interesara a teoría do cinema, pero ningún deses historiadores dicía algo mínimamente coherente e interesante sobre o medio, soamente lugares comúns e a obsesión mitomaníaca de quen adora máis do que fala do que o pensa criticamente — moito pitopodre para alguén tan novo coma min—. Nunha clase de historia do documental, o profesor, que por respecto a non deixalo en evidencia non citarei, marcaba un xiro esencial coa chegada do son directo no cinema documental. Comentaba como no documental clásico identificábase pola “voz de Deus”, unha voz de off omnisciente que comentaba o material como principal voz narradora dos acontecementos. Coa chegada do neorrealismo italiano e o cinéma vérité, a facilidade para sacar o equipo de son á rúa era maior e, polo tanto, comezaba a interesarse o formato de entrevistas ou de apelación directa á persoa gravada, é dicir, deixar que fale por ela mesma. Este profesor comentaba que este é un dos grandes procesos de democratización do cinema, xa que o obreiro pasa de ser un suxeito representado onde unha voz imaxinaria narra seus pensamentos a poder expresalos por si mesmos diante da cámara. Xa non se asume o que pensa, senón que se lle pregunta. O problema para min non deixaba de ser evidente e as violencias non desaparecían, pese a que el o presentara como algún tipo de estado ideal. Que máis daba que o obreiro puidese responder, o importante é que fóra o obreiro á persoa que realiza a pregunta e quen a contesta, que fóra o dono no filme e non o suxeito representado, senón a forma pensante da propia obra. Non unha entrevista, senón unha corrente de pensamento dialéctica onde o obreiro puidese utilizar o cinema como forma de pensamento das violencias ás que se ve sometido. Esta realización pasaba pola creación da figura do “obreiro-artista”. Non tiña ningún interese en que o cinema seguise sendo obreiros sendo gravados, senón obreiros gravando. A única voz que dará pé a revolución non é a que responde, senón a que é capaz de apropiarse da linguaxe cinematográfica para volverse formas de pensamento sobre as propias opresións que sufre.
01x02 — O artista-obreiro non pode entenderse, nese sentido, como unha mera redución laboral, é dicir, que a súa loita é puramente no espazo de traballo. O artista-obreiro recolle e asume todos os problemas que a clase obreira padece, incluíndo os problemas de racialidade, xénero, migración, disidencia sexual e un longo et cétera. O artista-obreiro pensa dende a totalidade, en tanto que é a totalidade á que está exercendo unha violencia sobre eles.
01x03 — A figura do “obreiro-artista” tampouco pode ser, polo tanto, o simple traballo artística de alguén cuxa clase sexa a de obreiro, senón unha reconfiguración da linguaxe dada. Seguindo as lóxicas do meu profesor, non unha resposta dada, senón o proceso continúo de pregunta e resposta que non conclúe, que non se remata nunha conclusión pois a violencia sistémica tampouco acaba. A obra forma parte dun proceso revolucionario, non do fin dunha revolución, polo que a conclusión teórica dos problemas sería puramente idealista.
02x01 — O baloncesto no estado español é un deporte de brancos, principalmente dirixido á clase media que quere diferenciarse do deporte evidentemente popular, o fútbol. Xoguei ao baloncesto gran parte da miña infancia. Non foi ata os últimos anos, cando falabamos da nosa entrada no instituto que o meu equipo decatouse que eu era o único que ía a un colexio público, mentres o resto ían a colexios privados. O que máis lles impactaba de que acudise a un colexio público non era polo nivel educativo, senón pola pregunta que me fixeron asustados: “E tes que ir a clase con xitanos?”. Adoitaba ver a NBA co meu pai, incluso ás veces trasnoitando para poder ver algún partido especial. O resto só xogaban ao baloncesto, pero eu tamén era un seguidor da liga americana. Sabía que o baloncesto nos Estados Unidos era un deporte asociado ás persoas afroamericanas, pero aquí atopábame adestrando con vinte rapaces brancos cun declarado racismo. En cambio, os xitanos e as persoas migrantes ou racializadas que ían a escola pública comigo xogaban todas ao fútbol, non ao baloncesto. De neno xa era un tema que me sorprendía, pero que pola miña tempérana idade evidentemente custábame verbalizar. A branquitude coloniza todo o que toca, non hai nada que escape a ela. Todo espazo que os brancos ocupamos acabámolo volvendo noso, mesmo se non hai un esforzo consciente por facelo.
02x02 — A arte non escapa destes procesos de colonización. Podemos afirmar dúas sentencias contraditorias, pero que poden entenderse como complementarias da realidade do cinema: 1) a linguaxe cinematográfica é inconcreta-abstracta, en tanto que ten independencia propia e consegue articular máis alá do creador as súas propias afirmacións; 2) a linguaxe cinematográfica é concreta-persoal, creada por persoas con vivencias persoas e socioculturais concretas que definen o que entendemos como linguaxe cinematográfica. Pódese colonizar o inconcreto abstracto? Tristemente si. Parte da revolución será liberar os múltiples inconcretos-abstractos que existen do mundo dos concretos-persoais que os limitan a súa ideoloxía burguesa, branca, occidental e cisheteropatriarcal. Esa é parte da labor do artista-obreiro, como debería selo tamén a do filósofo-obreiro.
02x03 — Cando se fala da creación dun “artista-obreiro” esta actuación debe relacionarse con todas as violencias que a clase obreira soporta. Unha importante poboación da clase obreiras dos países, pola súa condición de desposuído, tende a ser migrante. Por como funcionan os festivais de cinema e as propias páxinas de arquivo de internet existe case unha obra a definir nacionalmente a túa obra. Esta definición ven dada polo estado no que a meirande parte da obra foi creada, máis concretamente, baixo as lóxicas de que estado se moveu a meirande parte de capital para a creación desa peza. Esta non deixa de ser unha forma de asimilación branca que elimina a realidade dunha boa parte da poboación migrante, así como das nacións ou etnias minorizadas que se ven asimiladas baixo esa idea de estado-nación única. Nestas necesidades de categorización estatal soe optarse pola binacionalidade, por exemplo, se un cineasta nacese e fose criado no estado español, pero sendo a súa familia de Marrocos tende a usarse a expresión de que ese cineasta pasa a ser “español-marroquí”. Esta situación acaba creando un espazo polo que a meirande parte de obras que temos de países de baixa produción acaban sendo da poboación na diáspora. Resulta máis que habitual atoparse en ciclos ou festivais especializados en cinema africano que a meirande parte de obras están feitas por xente que, sen negarlle a súa realidade de ser unha persoa africana emigrada, viven e crean nos países europeos con maior capital económico, moitas veces sendo criados a meirande parte da súa vida aí. Para Europa resulta máis fácil: nin sequera teñen que moverse das súas fronteiras para sentir que están axudando e interesándose aos países que colonizaron no pasado.
02x04 — Moito obreirismo infantil europeo, baixo a escusa do internacionalismo, pretende resolver este conflito mediante a erosión da identidade cultural: non importa a nación na que a obra foi creada, non importa a identidade coa que se asocie a persoa que fixo a obra, porque a arte obreira será sempre arte internacional. Este falso internacionalismo non é máis que outra forma de colonialismo branco, porque ignorando as categorías polas que as persoas sofren violencia só é unha forma de evitar o conflito, non de resolvelo. A problematización destes problemas é un proceso, non unha clausura. Non é tanto que se deba atopar unha solución, senón que se debe pensar e asumir as contradicións esixentes baixo esas lóxicas e levar o pensamento a súa máxima capacidade. Aí a arte e a filosofía son ferramentas fundamentais, non porque clausuran problemas, senón por levar os problemas aos seus límites posibles de pensamento. A expropiación da linguaxe cinematográfica para a clase obreira non pasa pola aplicación dunha séntese final ao problema, senón por unha radicalización da tese-antítese que non remata, en tanto que mentres a revolución non chegue tampouco cesará a violencia.
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03x01 — “I felt so rich of world when I had no budget” (Síntome tan rico do mundo cando non teño orzamento), o pesonaxe de Mark Bacolcol en Gangsterism (2025).
03x02 — En 2022 fixen unha curta para celebrar o Nadal que subín directamente a Vimeo. A repercusión foi mínima, sendo das miñas curtas con menos reproducións e das menos votadas en Letterboxd. Non lle din importancia, continuando coas obras nas que estaba traballando. Un festival de Barcelona, L’Alternativa, escribiume un e-mail preguntando se podían estreala na sección nacional e subila a unha plataforma de vídeo baixo demanda. Pareceume unha boa oportunidade, polo que a ocultei uns meses da miña conta de Vimeo para que puidese estar neste festival e na propia plataforma. Gañei o premio nacional, o cal evidentemente axudou a súa difusión, pero topeime cun feito alucinante: moita xente que xa me seguía de antes non viu a curta cando a subín gratis a Vimeo, pero si cando estaba dispoñible nunha plataforma de pago no contexto dun festival. Esta obra acabouse convertendo na miña curta máis vista e querida, pero non podía deixar de virme a mente o pensamento de que, de terse mantido só de forma gratuíta no Vimeo, nunca tería chegado a ser así. Fálase moito de como Internet presenta un espazo de democratización cultural, en tanto que te permite adquirir de forma “gratuíta” — tendo que exercer certos gastos como o internet ou un dispositivo que te permita ese acceso—, pero ao final do día toda esta información e obras de arte dispoñibles de forma gratuíta poden estar libres de gasto económico, pero non o están doutra serie de valores socioeconómicos como a fetichización dos obxectos de arte ou o capital cultural que rodean a toda obra. Non hai interese no gratuíto, porque as lóxicas do capital seguen ofrecendo estas perspectivas na que maior valor de consumo equivalen a maior valor doutras categorías—neste caso, cultural ou, máis concretamente, artístico—.
03x03 — A idea de que a gratuidade da arte é unha forma de acabar cos límites culturais e intelectuais que impón o capital é unha visión profundamente socialdemócrata. Mentres a arte non poida escapar da súa forma de mercancía cultural xamais será plenamente popular. O artista obreiro acaba tendo que enfrontarse, polo tanto, a unha contradición difícil: se quere saír do nicho de que só o vexan un par de persoas moi interesadas no tema, terá que moverse minimamente por ámbitos industriais. O artista ten que, ironicamente, crear algo de fetiche na súa mercancía para que esta non se converta nalgo exclusivo.
03x04 — Parte da fascinación dos gánsteres ven asociadas coa ambición, sobre todo de poder territorial —control das zonas que gobernan, sobre os seus empregados, sobre os civís—, como cunha ambición monetaria —ascenso social, gran poder económico—. Aparecía en Scarface con The World is Yours, case como unha irónica sentencia do personaxe principal, pero se repite en Nas como unha afirmación de poder. O artista-obreiro debe ter esa ambición de gánster, pero non mediante unha afirmación individual, senón colectiva. O uso do inglés do Yours que serve tanto para a segunda persoa do singular como do plural da pé a esta posible confusión. O artista-obreiro loita por expropiar o mundo do capital e facelo noso. Toda acción anticapitalista debe ser, pola súa propia condición, ambiciosa. A proliferación nestes últimos anos de medidas de control pequenas, de activos localistas e demais micro-accións non son lóxicas capitalistas, senón formas de actuar permitidas baixo o capital en tanto que non lle afecta directamente. Esa ambición, pola contra, pode facer que o artista-obreiro perda, xustamente, a súa condición de obreiro. Vémolo cada día no rap: artistas que construíron a súa fama sobre a súa condición racial e socioeconómica de exclusión que acaban sendo ricos e formando as súas propias empresas. Mentres un marxismo infantil podería considerar isto como hipocrisía, penso que a cuestión é máis complexa e debe atenderse dende seus matices posibles: son as contradicións inherentes aos procesos artísticos baixo o capital as que levan a estas situacións.
04x01 — Tanto o cineasta como o gánster comparten a tensión entre a súa individualidade e toda a organización que está preto súa para lograr seus obxectivos. Non é unha figura solitaria, como a do vaqueiro ou o samurái, senón a dun suxeito que se rodea do mellor equipo para que poida levar a cabo seus plans. En cambio, esa camaradería, ese traballo en equipo, non elimina a súa condición individual. Moitas veces úsase o argumento de que a figura do artista no cinema non ten sentido, en tanto que un equipo enteiro participa para lograr esa labor —algo que sucede cunha meirande parte dos artistas dende a antigüidade, só que menos sabido de forma popular—. Nese sentido, o gángster tende ser unha figura chave para o individualismo norteamericano, pero nunca é unha persoa que traballa a soas. De aí que sexa tan habitual, como no caso de Gangsterism, que a idea de traizón funcione tan ben nestas narrativas.
04x02 — “In the past, I’ve only had colonial relations, even with other people of color” (No pasado, só tiña relacións coloniais, incluso con outra xente racializada) // “I never knew love didn’t have to be colonial” (Non sabía que o amor non tiña por que ser colonial), o pesonaxe de Mark Bacolcol en Gangsterism (2025).
04x03 — Existe dende hai anos unha obsesión por parte do arte da esquerda de borrar a figura do artista, sobre todo creando colectivos, en tanto que esa figura do artista individual pode participar activamente nas propias dinámicas de narcisismo e individualismo do capital. Se podo concordar na problematización da figura do artista, penso que unha vez o problema volve ser tentar atopar solucións concluíntes que poidan resolver as superestructuras do capital. Non existen formas de individualismo por parte destes colectivos? É unha empresa con moitos CEOs menos capitalista que unha empresa cun único director? Pensar que os colectivos de artistas ou as co-autorías eliminan o problema do individualismo do artista-creador, cando o importante non é eliminar problemas, senón pensalos e levalos aos seus límites posibles. Gangsterism existe nesta contradición constante, entre a camaradería e a traizón. Os problemas, en calquera caso, non se resolven en soidade, senón que as respostas e o pensar sempre existen en relación a un outro. Non existen monólogos internos, tanto como existen diálogos constantes onde os problemas non deixan de repetirse e profundarse en compañía.
04x04 — O artista-obreiro ten a sorte de non ten que estar a soas, como o protagonista de The Fountainhead de King Vidor, porque non se está apropiando do mundo nun quimérico esforzo pola súa individualidade, senón nun esforzo por liberación da súa clase enteira. Unha revolución, que non é outra cousa que un proxecto de futuro en común. Expropiar a linguaxe cinematográfica non para crear novos propietarios, senón para que funcione como ferramenta do mundo enteiro.
05x01 — “Un cacho do monte foi durante séculos hábitat e lugar de paseo de distintas especies, humanas e inhumanas, vexetais e animais. Un home chega e fai desa parcela a súa propiedade: limita quen pasa, que crece e quen pode vivir nese territorio. Un día os cimientos desa casa caerán, deixando que ese terreo volva ser de todo o existente. Un coello mira os restos deses muros pensando que algún día iso foi propiedade dun home, pero que hoxe come herba nese lugar en plena tranquilidade. Mira a un bidueiro que lle da sombra e ambos pensan sobre o outro: o mundo enteiro volve ser noso”, conto popular contado por campesiños da parroquia de Santo André do Mar, recollida en Fábulas populares das Revoltas Irmandiñas (1499) do Padre Bieito Costa.
Notes on GANGSTERISM (2025) – Isiah Medina
01x01 —I remember sitting through film history classes at school completely bored. The only way I could entertain myself was to watch silent movies at the back of the classroom without getting caught. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in film theory, but none of those film historians said anything remotely coherent or interesting about the medium, only platitudes and the mythomaniacal obsession of someone who worships more than they think critically. In a documentary history class, the professor, whom I will not name out of respect for not embarrassing him, marked an essential shift with the arrival of improvements in direct sound recording. He commented on how classic documentaries were identified by the “voice of Deus,” an omniscient voiceover that commented on the material as the main narrative voice of the events. During the era of the Italian neorealism and cinéma vérité, it became easier to take sound equipment out onto the streets, and therefore the format of interviews or direct appeals to the person being recorded began to gain interest, that is, letting them speak for themselves. This professor commented that this is one of the great processes of democratization in cinema, as the worker goes from being a subject represented by an imaginary voice narrating their thoughts to being able to express them for themselves in front of the camera. It is no longer assumed what they are thinking, but rather they are asked about their thoughts. The problem was still obvious to me, and the violence did not disappear, even though he had presented it as some kind of ideal state. It didn’t matter that the worker could respond; what was important was that it was the worker who asked the question and answered them. The worker should be the owner of the film and not the subject represented. The worker should be the thinking form of the work itself. Not an interview, but a dialectical stream of thought where the worker could use cinema as a way of thinking about the violence to which he is subjected. This realization makes it necessary the creation of the figure of the “worker-artist.” I had no interest in cinema continuing to be workers being filmed, but rather workers filming. The only voice that will give rise to revolution is not the one that responds, but the one that is capable of appropriating the language of cinema to become forms of thought about the very oppressions it suffers.
01x02 — The artist-worker cannot be understood, in this sense, as a mere reduction to their labor, because it would limit the struggle to their workplace. The artist-worker takes on and assumes all the problems suffered by the working class, including issues of race, gender, migration, sexual dissidence, and a long list of others. The artist-worker thinks from a totality perspective, as it is the whole that is exerting violence upon them.
01x03 — The figure of the “worker-artist” cannot, therefore, be the simple artistic work of someone whose class is that of a worker, but rather a reconfiguration of the given language. Following my professor’s logic, it is not a given answer, but a continuous process of question and answer that does not conclude, that does not end in an assumption, because systemic violence does not end either. The artwork is part of a revolutionary process, not the end of a revolution, so the theoretical conclusion of the problems would be purely idealistic.
02x01 — Basketball in Spain is a sport for white people, mainly aimed at the middle class who want to differentiate themselves from the obviously popular sport, which is soccer. I played basketball for most of my childhood. When we were talking about starting high school, my team found out I was the only one going to a public school, while the rest were going to private institutions. Frightened, they asked me: “And do you have to go to class with gypsies?”. The answer was obvious to me, as I had never been in a class without a Romani person, so at that moment I couldn’t understand what scared them about the issue. I used to watch the NBA with my father, sometimes even staying up late to watch a special game. The rest of them just played basketball, but I was also a fan of the American league. I knew that basketball in the United States was a sport associated with African-Americans, but here I was training with twenty white boys who were openly racist. On the other hand, the Romani people, migrants or racialized people who went to public school with me all played soccer, not basketball. As a child, this was already something that surprised me, but because of my age, I obviously found it difficult to verbalize. Whiteness colonizes everything it touches; nothing escapes it. Every space that white people occupy, we end up making our own, even if there is no conscious effort to do so.
02x02 — Art is not immune to these processes of colonization. We can affirm two contradictory statements, but they can be understood as complementary to the reality of cinema: 1) cinematic language is vague-abstract, in that it has its own independence and manages to articulate its own statements beyond the creator; 2) cinematic language is concrete-personal, created by people with specific personal and sociocultural experiences that define what we understand as cinematic language. Can the vague-abstract be colonized? Sadly, yes. Part of the revolution will be to liberate the multiple vague-abstracts that exist from the world of the concrete-personal that limits them with its bourgeois, white, Western, and cisheteropatriarchal ideology. That is part of the work of the artist-worker, as it should also be that of the philosopher-worker.
02x03 — When talking about the creation of an “artist-worker,” this action must be related to all the violence that the working class endures. A significant portion of the working class in these countries, due to their dispossessed status, tends to be migrants. Because of how film festivals and internet archives work, there is almost a need to define your work nationally. This definition is given by the state in which most of the work was created, more specifically, under the logic of which state moved most of the capital for the creation of that piece. This is still a form of white assimilation that eliminates the reality of a large part of the migrant population, as well as of the minority nations or ethnic groups that are assimilated under this idea of a single nation-state. In these state categorization requirements, binationality is often chosen. For example, if a filmmaker was born and raised in Spain, but their family is from Morocco, the expression “Spanish Moroccan” tends to be used to describe that filmmaker. This situation ends up creating a space in which most of the artworks we have from low-production countries end up being from the diaspora population. It is more than common to find that at film festivals or cycles specializing in African cinema, most of the works are made by people who, without denying their reality as African emigrants, live and create in European countries with greater economic capital, often having been raised there for most of their lives. For Europe, it is easier: they do not even have to leave their borders to feel that they are helping and taking an interest in the countries they colonized in the past.
02x04 — Much European infantile left-wing communism, under the guise of internationalism, seeks to resolve this conflict by eroding cultural identity: it does not matter in which nation the work was created, nor does it matter with which identity the person who created the work is associated, because worker art will always be international art. This false internationalism is nothing more than another form of white colonialism, because ignoring the categories by which people suffer violence is only a way of avoiding conflict, not resolving it. The problematization of these issues is a process, not a closure. It is not so much that a solution must be found, but
rather that the demanding contradictions under these logics must be thought through and must be taken to its maximum capacity. Here, art and philosophy are fundamental tools, not because they close off problems, but because they push problems to their possible limits of thought. The expropriation of cinematic language for the working class does not come through the application of a final solution to the problem, but through a radicalization of the dialectical process that does not end, insofar as violence will not cease until the revolution arrives.
03x01 — “I felt so rich of world when I had no budget”, Mark Bacolcol’s character in Gangsterism (2025).
03x02 — In 2022, I made a short film to celebrate Christmas, which I uploaded directly to Vimeo. The impact was minimal, as it was one of my shorts with the fewest views and one of the least voted on Letterboxd. I didn’t really care, so I continued working on other projects quite calm. A festival in Barcelona, L’Alternativa, sent me an email asking if they could premiere it in the national section and upload it to a video-on-demand platform. I thought it was a good opportunity, so I hid it from my Vimeo account for a few months so that it could be shown at this festival and on the platform itself. I won the national award, which obviously helped its promotion, but I came across an amazing fact: many people who already followed me did not see the short film when I uploaded it for free to Vimeo, but they did when it was available on a paid platform in the context of a festival. This work ended up becoming my most viewed and beloved short film, but I couldn’t help thinking that if it had remained free on Vimeo, it would never be seen so much. There is much talk about how the Internet provides a space for cultural democratization, in that it allows you to acquire content “for free” — although you do have to pay for certain expenses such as Internet access or a device that allows you to access it — but at the end of the day, all this information and artwork available for free may be free of economic cost, but it is not free of other socio-economic values such as the fetishization of art objects or the cultural capital that surrounds every work. There is no interest in something free, because the logic of capital continues to offer these perspectives in which greater consumer value equates to greater value in other categories— in this case, cultural or, more specifically, artistic.
03x03 — The idea that free art is a way to break down the cultural and intellectual barriers imposed by capital is a deeply social democratic view. As long as art cannot escape its form as a cultural commodity, it will never be fully popular. The artist-worker therefore ends up facing a difficult contradiction: if they want to break out of the niche where only a couple of people who are very interested in the subject see them, they will have to move minimally into industrial spheres or use advertising tools that will fetishize your work. Ironically, the artist has to create something of a fetish in their commodity so that it does not become something exclusive.
03x04 — Part of the fascination with gangsters is associated with ambition, especially territorial power — control over the areas they govern, over their employees, over civilians — as well as monetary ambition — social advancement, great economic power. It appeared in Scarface with “The World is Yours”, almost as an ironic statement by the main character, but it is repeated in Nas as an affirmation of power. The artist-worker must have that gangster ambition, but not through an individual affirmation, but a collective one. The use of the English word Yours, which serves both as the second person singular and plural, avoids this possible confusion. The artist worker struggles to expropriate the world of capital and make it our own. All anti-capitalist action must, by its very nature, be ambitious. The proliferation in recent years of small control measures, localist assets, and other micro-actions are not anti-capitalist logic, but forms of action permitted under capital as long as they do not directly affect it. A great ambition, on the contrary, can cause the artist-worker to lose precisely his status as a worker. We see this every day in rap: artists who built their fame on their racial and socioeconomic exclusion end up becoming rich and forming their own companies. While an infantile Marxism might consider this hypocritical, I think the issue is more complex and must be addressed in all its possible nuances: it is the contradictions inherent in artistic processes under capitalism that lead to these situations.
04x01 — Both the filmmaker and the gangster share the tension between their individuality and the entire organization that surrounds them in order to achieve their goals. They are not solitary figures, like cowboys or samurai, but rather individuals who surround themselves with the best team so that they can carry out their plans. However, that camaraderie, that teamwork, does not eliminate their individual status. It is often argued that the figure of the artist in cinema is meaningless, as an entire team is involved in achieving that work. This is a view without historical context, given that since ancient times most artists have worked alongside laborers to create their works. The idea of the individual, solitary artist is a modern construct. In that sense, the gangster tends to be a key figure in American individualism, but he is never a person who works alone. Hence, it is so common, as in the case of Gangsterism, that the idea of betrayal works so well in these narratives.
04x02 — “In the past, I’ve only had colonial relations, even with other people of color” // “I never knew love didn’t have to be colonial”, Mark Bacolcol’s character in Gangsterism (2025).
04x03 — For years, there has been an obsession on the part of left-wing art to erase the figure of the artist, especially by creating collectives, as the figure of the individual artist can actively participate in the dynamics of narcissism and individualism of capital. I agree with the problematization of the figure of the artist, but I think that once the problem returns, it is impossible to find conclusive solutions that can resolve the superstructures of capital. Are there no forms of capitalist individualism on the part of these collectives? Is a company with many CEOs less capitalist than a company with a single director? To think that artist collectives or co authorship eliminate the problem of the narcissism of the artist-creator, when the important thing is not to eliminate problems, but to think about them and take them to their possible limits. Gangsterism exists in this constant contradiction between camaraderie and betrayal. Problems, in any case, are not solved in solitude, but rather the answers and thinking always exist in relation to another. There are no internal monologues, but rather constant dialogues where problems are constantly repeated and deepened in company.
04x04 — The artist-worker is fortunate not to have to be alone, like the protagonist of King Vidor’s The Fountainhead, because he is not appropriating the world in a chimerical effort for his individuality, but in an effort to liberate his entire class, race, gender… A revolution is nothing more than a project for a shared future. Expropriating cinematic language not to create new owners, but to make it function as a tool for the entire world.
05x01 — “For centuries, a piece of land was the habitat and playground for different species, both plants and animals. A man arrives and makes that parcel his property: he limits who passes through, what grows, and who can live in that territory. One day, the foundations of that house will collapse, allowing the land to once again belong to all that exists. A rabbit looks at the remains of the walls, thinking that one day this was a man’s property, but today it eats grass in that place in complete tranquility. It looks at a birch tree that gives it shade, and both think about the other: ‘the whole world is ours again’”, a popular tale told by peasants from the parish of Santo André do Mar, collected in Fábulas populares das Revoltas Irmandiñas (Fables of the Irmandiño Revolts, 1499) by Father Bieito Costa.