Ism, Ism, Ism / Ismo, Ismo, Ismo is the first comprehensive, United States–based film program and catalogue to treat the full breadth of Latin America’s vibrant experimental film production. Accompanying the film series, the catalogue was co-published in association with the Los Angeles Filmforum, and as part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.

Currently on view in Mexico City’s Museo Tamayo, the exhibition features key historical and contemporary films from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the United States, taking both the aficionado and the open-minded viewer on a journey into a wealth of materials culled from the forgotten corners of Latin American film archives.

Exhibition wall text at Museo Tamayo
Film screening at Museo Tamayo

For its presentation at the Museo Tamayo, four curated programs will be screened in loop, changing every week through October, 27, 2019. Those programs are:

  • Urban Harmonies / Dissonant Cities – In the early twentieth century there was an international trend to make urban symphonies , cinematographic portraits of the modern city. In Latin America, some of the first experimental films joined this genre, documenting the transformation and growth of cities due to industrialization and migration processes. This program offers views on architecture, transport, everyday life, waste and the use of public spaces in various cities.
  • Views from Outside – The traveling , basic resource of cinematographic language, is a shot in which the camera slides horizontally and fluidly through space. This program takes the idea of traveling as a starting point to point out issues related to the sensation of movement, displacement, exile, confusion and disharmony, dislocation and contact with the foreign.
  • Networks: Experimental Women Filmmakers from Latin America – This program seeks to investigate the possible overflows of the terms “Latin American woman” and “Latina artist” to account for conceptual empathy, emotional networks and related strategies that questioned certain gender canons. The genealogy proposed in this program is sinuous and fragmentary, but it allows us to point out important meeting points among the cinematographic creations made by women from Latin America.
  • Altered Surfaces – Abstraction and geometry in the Americas have been a recurring strategy in various cultural events prior to the European conquest. During the twentieth century, various artistic movements focused on geometry and abstraction emerged in Latin America. These filmmakers, like the visual artists associated with these movements, focused their works on color, light and form.

For full programming details, see the Museo Tamayo’s exhibition page. And be sure to visit the show should you be in CDMX during its run.