About this Event
Join us for the film screening of this one-of-a-kind experimental documentary film Welcome Interplanetary and Sidereal Space Conquerors (2024, written and directed by Andrés Jurado) that takes us on a journey through a little known episode of the Latin American Cold War via archival 16mm documentary film footage. The screening will be followed by a conversation (via zoom), with filmmaker Andrés Jurado, moderated by LAILAC Professor and CPCP Fellow Ángeles Donoso Macaya. Film in English and Spanish; with English subtitles.
Free and open to all. This event takes place in Room 9206 at the CUNY Graduate Center. Please register to attend.
More About the Film:
In the 1960s, as part of the moon trip training, US astronauts were abandoned in the Darien rain forests. In this survival exercise, they meet a native, exchanges some objects, suddenly a terror invades their bodies. Did they think they were going to be decapitated, or eaten by a wild cannibal? Welcome Interplanetary and Sidereal Space Conquerors intervene and deconstructs archive images and propaganda films of the Aerospace Race to tell, from the perspective of the so-called Third World, the story of man’s desire to conquer space revealing his obsession to make it a colony while imagining it as an exotic paradise, full of beasts, and inhuman ghosts.
Confront and explore the astronaut-indigenous duality that haunted the jungle during the Cold War, rediscover the update of the colonial myths of conquest that covered up the invasion of the New World in search of gold and resources, until showing the image of delirious madness that will make the empire no longer a paper tiger but a wounded tiger about to explode.
From La Vulcanizadora, the film’s producer: “In the theatre of the Cold War, astronauts lost in the Darien are besieged by their deepest fears when surprised by an Indigenous person, a deconstruction of film and propaganda archives from tropical survival training challenges the colonial narrative inscribed in the conquest of space.”
Festivals (selection):
- 2024 FIDMarseille – Marseille International Film Festival, First Film Competition. France
- 2024 Camden. Points North. First Film Competition. Maine. EEUU
- 2024 DOC NYC Nueva York. EEUU. Kaleidoscope Competition
- 2024 Lima Alterna. Lima. Perú
- 2024 AricaDoc. Arica. Chile
- 2024 PACCPA Panorama du Cinéma colombien. Paris. France
- 2024 Festival Internacional de Cine Contemporáneo Cámara Lúcida. Ecuador
- 2024 ZINEBI. Bilbao. Spain
- 2024 Columbia University Film Studies. EEUU
- 2025 Regards Satellites. Paris
- 2025 FICCI. Festival Internacional de Cine de Cartagena. Colombia
This event co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Ph.D. Program in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, United States
USD 0.00
