Join us in Like Magic for the first in a series of screenings of short videos by artists and filmmakers addressing technologies of magic — including devices, charms, rituals, and spells. This time, we will feature films by Adrian Garcia Gomez, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, and Bi Gan, beginning with an introduction by Meghan Clare Considine, this session’s curator, at 2pm.

FILMS FEATURED

Adrian Garcia Gomez | Ascensor | 2019 | 8 min.

Ascensor is an exploration of grief, longing, and mysticism through a queer lens. It documents a syncretic ritual that culls from the magical reverberations in Mexican culture to process the unexpected loss of a dear friend. The repetition of the ritual eventually leads to the transcendence of physical space, transforming unrelenting ache into shining resilience.

Philip Horvitz
1960-2005

Bi Gan | A Short Story | 2022 | 15 min.

Once upon a time, there was a strange black cat in a long trenchcoat with no friends, no home, and no purpose in life. However, one day, an encounter with a scarecrow sets the black cat off on a mysterious quest to answer a single question: What is the most precious thing in the world?

Colectivo Los Ingrávidos | The Sun Quartet | 2017 | 61 min.

The Sun Quartet is a solar composition in four movements, a political composition in four natural elements, an audiovisual composition in four bodily mutations: a sun stone where youth blooms in protest, a river overflowing the streets, the burning plain rising in the city. And, finally, the clamor of the people that shook Mexico after the night of September 26, 2014 – when the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa opened a breach in the Mexican political body.

Still from Ascensor (2019) by Adrian Garcia Gomez, courtesy of the artist