“O my body, make of me always a man who questions!” ― Frantz Fanon

In the many years that I have been making films the stories I have focused on center voices that have either been marginalized or erased. Whether through my own experiences as an Argentine immigrant in Germany where I made a short experimental film about the denigrating experience of acquiring visa documents, or my feature documentary that explored Argentina’s genocidal amnesia, questioning what it means to be part of or ostracized from places and spaces, and how to decolonize knowledge production has driven my artistic practice. I think, therefore, that the best way for me to discuss my attitudes towards questions of diversity, equity, and inclusiveness is by explaining a bit more in-depth one of my first films, and briefly some aspects of my later work.

I began this text with an epigraph from Frantz Fanon, a philosopher and revolutionary who has been profoundly influential in shaping my critical political attitude. His postcolonial analysis and decolonial discourses were part of the germinating seeds that were planted in my brain about Argentina’s enduring problems reckoning with its (post)colonial history. In primary school, I went to school with mostly Mapuche children, yet their stories were never taught in school. We were rather taught how Argentina became a land of European immigrants, while as the myth goes, the Mapuche (the true first inhabitants of the land) heralded from neighboring (“rival”) Chile. This persistent narrative has fostered an attitude that allows European immigrants (still to this day) to seize Mapuche lands without fear of consequences or retribution as the Mapuche, not the European descendants, are stigmatized as extranjeros, or “foreigners.” By the time Fanon entered my life, I realized that the stories that were being told in school, and society writ large, mattered because they continued to enable the brutal and unjust treatment of people by erasing their stories and thus the importance of their existence. With this awareness, I came back from my exile in Europe after the dictatorship ended and made my first film, “Amor América.” This full-length bilingual (Mapudungun and Spanish) documentary is told from the perspective of Mapuche descendants and documents their reconstruction of their ancestral story in the Argentinian south. For this work I decided to trace the entire path of colonization, by foot, hitchhiking, and train, meeting different people who lived in the region where I grew up: Patagonia. There I met the singer Aymé Painé who was in the process of researching the active culture of her ancestors. We developed a deep friendship, but sadly she died unexpectedly throughout the process, and I continued working with her best friend Luisa Calcumil, one of the few Argentinian Mapuche actresses, with whom I have continued to work over the course of my career. These two powerful and engaged women became the protagonists of the film in their struggle to reconnect with their own repressed heritage, reconstructing a collective memory through their communication with survivors. 

From my first film, I took an attitude to engage teams that were of diverse gender, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds. It is impossible to engage in critical topics without having a team of varying backgrounds that can bring critical perspectives. As my work has focused on social critiques this has also been a way of making sure that the ethics of the work are consistent with the process of making the film.

The content of my films also reflects my attitude towards those with whom I have worked. Here are just a few examples. My first fiction-documentary feature tells the story of a Chorote youth (both in real life and in the film) who is obligated to move to the metropole, Buenos Aires, where he is stigmatized and forced into a criminal situation, circumstances that reflect an ongoing problem with the way Argentina’s indigenous population is treated. In “Francesco and the Pope,” the protagonist is a 12-year-old boy who sings in the Sistine Chapel Choir and lives with his divorced mother, who has a critical view of the values of the conservative Catholic church. I co-wrote, co-produced, and was a cinematographer for the short film “Schwarzfahrer” (“Blackrider”) about a racist aggression in a tramway in Berlin. My documentary “A Struggle for Love” portrays jazz musician master Abdullah Ibrahim and his epic story of exile from apartheid South Africa. For my second feature film “Sin Querer – Time of the Flamingos,” I worked with the anarcho-pacifist journalist Osvaldo Bayer and feminist screenwriter and sociologist Graciela Maglie, who became my inseparable writing partner for many other scripts. 

As a DP, I have mostly worked with independent directors like Anka Schmid, Tania Stöcklin, Petra Tschörtner, Gabrielle Baur, and Dominique de Rivaz to mention a few, and collaborated with important queer director Marcel Gissler in his film “The Blue Hour.” I have also engaged members in my team, for example, AC Febienne Octobre, Grip Sussan Schmitt, Second AC, and transman Mocho García, and many others in roles that have classically been filled by men.

I can continue naming the films that I have made or contributed to where the content and/or the team were driven by the need to disrupt unjust power dynamics. However, there is a 1980 interview between James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe that best sums up my attitudes towards social justice and making art. Achebe, in discussing the role of politics in art states: “Those who tell you ‘Do not put too much politics in your art’ are not being honest. If you look very carefully you will see that they are the same people who are quite happy with the situation as it is… What they are saying is don’t upset the system.” My work engagements and the people I have had the pleasure of working with have illuminated and expanded my understanding and sensitivity towards diversity, equity, and inclusivity while nourishing my political and artistic convictions.

Ciro Cappellari