Description: Funded by The Canada Council for the Arts, this itinerant exhibition took our award-winning documentary Shadow Girl, to activists and academics working with excluded and/or dissident identities in Chile, Canada and Costa Rica, the three countries in which Shadow Girl was shot. A crucial aspect of this itinerancy was our Three Virtual Encounters: “Disability, Precarity, Covid and Resistance” (September 26, 2020), “Otherness, Debilitation and Resistance” (November 19, 2020) and “A City for All” (December 7, 2020). After screening two of Maria Teresa Larraín’s films, Besieged Land and Shadow Girl, participants were encouraged to discuss the connections between their diverse struggles (disability, First Nations People, migrants and the LGBTIQ+ community) and propose common actions. The Three Encounters also served as a stepping stone for our current project, The Colour of Blindness.

Each event lasted about two hours and the panelists answered two questions: What are the themes presented by the films? And, are these themes relevant today, particularly considering the global pandemic and the social explosions which are taking place in Chile and worldwide?

The encounters were facilitated by Dr. Magaly San Martin a Chilean-Canadian professor and activist at the Faculty of Applied Health and Community Studies at Sheridan College in Canada.

Participants to the first encounter were: Patricio Bustamante, Professor and University Senator at the Faculty of Medicine of Universidad de Chile and coordinator of the project “A city for All”; Agnieszka Bozanic, researcher and activist for older people rights; and Nicole Mesen, disability and human rights activist, former President of the National Assembly of Young people in Costa Rica.

Participants to the second encounter were: Professor José Aylwin, lawyer and director of the Globalization and Human Rights Program at the Citizens Rights Watch in Chile; Elias Paillan, Mapuche social communicator and journalist; and Professor Francisco Osorio, visual anthropologist currently developing a film on victims of eye injuries as a result of police repression during the October Revolt.

Participants to the third encounter were: Professor Martín Torres, architect and urban geographer who advocates for transgender people’s rights; Natalia Vindas, architect and disability rights activist in Costa Rica; and Mabel Cobos, Chilean-Ecuadorian activist, coordinator of the education and Human Rights Program of the Citizens Rights Watch in Chile and member of MAM (Migrant Action Movement).

Watch the recordings of the three encounters here (in Spanish): “Disability, Precarity, Covid and Resistance” (September 26, 2020), “Otherness, Debilitation and Resistance” (November 19, 2020) and “A City for All” (December 7, 2020).