The Soldier’s Lagoon (La Laguna del Soldado)
Pablo Álvarez Mesa
Past event
- Price
- $12*
- Genre
- Film/Video
- Season
- Fall 2024
- DATE
- OCT 28
- IN-PERSON
- MON, 8 PM
- STREAM
- MON, 8 PM (PT) (72 hours)
- RUNTIME
- Approx. 75 minutes
- COUNTRY
- Canada, Colombia
- Program
- Download Program Notes (PDF)
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About
Two hundred years after Simón Bolívar’s liberation campaign across Colombia, The Soldier’s Lagoon (La Laguna del Soldado) retraces his journey across the high-altitude marshlands, while also searching for glimpses of his ghost still present in this historically contested territory. Reflecting on the construction of historical narratives and their environmental repercussions, The Soldier’s Lagoon traverses the “páramo,” navigating through the dense fog suspended between Simón Bolívar’s past and Colombia’s present.
The program includes a post-screening conversation with Pablo Álvarez-Mesa and film programmer Jheanelle Brown.
Presented in Spanish with English subtitles.
Please note: The Soldier’s Lagoon (La Laguna del Soldado) contains strobe lights.
The film explores the layers of the land further with double exposure that evokes the ghosts of the past and the way that history informs the present. Álvarez-Mesa plays with color and clarity with the 16mm images flickering in negative while the edges fade, evoking the (im)permanence of a landscape.
—
Pat Mullen, POV Magazine
about the artists
Pablo Álvarez-Mesa
Pablo Álvarez-Mesa is a filmmaker, cinematographer, and editor working mainly in nonfiction. His films have played and earned awards at international film festivals, including Berlinale, Rotterdam, Viennale, Museum of Modern Aart, Visions du Réel, and Montreal International Documentary Festival. His work in cinema lies in the relationship between fact and fiction; between what is recalled and what is inevitably constructed. Álvarez-Mesa is a Sundance Documentary Fund grantee; an affiliate member of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University; and a Berlinale Talents, Banff Centre for the Arts, and Canadian Film Centre alumnus.
