Agitprop. Art as a weapon of combat in the cinema of Santiago Álvarez and Travis Wilkerson

A chance meeting in Habana with legendary Cuban filmmaker Santiago Álvarez changed the course of US producer’s Travis Wilkerson’s life. He realised that the artistic avant-garde, which evolves in the field of the symbolic, and the political avant-garde, which acts on concrete reality, could go hand in hand, as the director and founder of the Noticiero ICAIC Latinoamericano always advocated. The first work in this session, Now!, is a short but intense antiracist statement that combines music with a collage of archive images and photo-animation. It is considered a forerunner of the video clip. The second, Machine Gun or Typewriter?, tells a love story in times of the Occupy movement, narrated by a radio presenter broadcasting illegally on pirate radio. Two works that do not shy away from visual aggression, tragicomedy or ideological provocation, and whose titles speak directly to the spectator, with a cry, an exclamation or a question.

Now!, Santiago Álvarez, 1965, 5 min; Machine Gun or Typewriter?, Travis Wilkerson, 2015, 71 min. Video screening. Spanish subtitles.