Film Lul

Recording of Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester from 1995.

The film intertwines historical events and intimate memories. I observe how architecture represents the transformations of society and those who give form to this architecture. We follow the journey of Munio, my father, born in 1909 in Silesia, Poland, the son of a tenant farmer of a Prussian junker. At the age of 18, Munio goes to Berlin and Dessau to meet Walter Gropius, Kandinsky and Paul Klee at the Bauhaus. In 1933, the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis, who accused Munio of treason against the German people. Munio was imprisoned, then deported to Basel. He left for Palestine. Upon his arrival in Haifa, he began a career as an architect and adapted European modernist principles to the Middle East.

After his resurrection, Christ stayed on the Earth with Peter and now he is old. In the streets of Cagliari he finds a young whistler who lost intonation. He would like to help him but he does not remember how to make miracles anymore, so, he seeks the help of a costly charlatan. The last miracle will happen in front of the sea: the whistle will come back in tune but nothing will ever be the same.

This video-poem projects my own thoughts and feelings musing in voice of my mother to tell parts of her story previously untold. I imaged her writing in a journal while being institutionalized at Chicago-Read Mental Health Center when she was a teenager. Through a collection of episodic journal entries and poetic investigations, the voice of the young artist Amanda Cervantes reenacts the queer, Latina youth of Lourdes Benavides or Lulu, my mother. Rather than embody her they reflect a psychic space and interiority; the private place of reflection and consciousness muted by the institution and the insidious powers of homophobic and patriarchal Western culture.

When Élodie goes to visit Lucien, her grandfather, now living in an old people's home, she asks him one specific question: why had he abused her, thirty-one years ago? Quand Élodie rend visite à Lucien, son grand-père, pensionnaire d'une maison de retraite, elle lui pose une question très précise : pourquoi l'a-t-il abusée, il y a trente et un ans ?

This documentary recounts the saga of Lourdes Benavides and her family’s many attempts to cure her of her lesbian desires as a teenager. Queering the archive through found footage, first person accounts and extensive research into Chicago-Read Mental Health Center, this intimate and experimental documentary uncovers the deeply personal story of Lulu’s struggles with her identity after migrating from Mexico City to Chicago’s westside during the 1970s. From intersecting histories of institutional racism, homophobia and sexism comes the voice of a tenacious Latina and her queer son’s journey to retrace his mother’s steps and treatment across a city.

Disney's Greatest Lullabies is a 2-volume collection of lullabies and songs from Disney films that are suitable for bedtime. They were released in January 7, 1986.

Rebecca is born to a poor family, a young woman whose life is defined by poverty and deprivation. But of the many things she has to endure, it is the insults that other people hurl that hurt the most. Yet despite of everything, Rebecca remains ambitious and unabashed. She pledges to herself that she will one day raise herself and her family from poverty and when that time comes, she will get back at those who had oppressed them.

Shickman, the film’s central subject, has been living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for 8 years along with his baby’s mama, Saran. He is the soul provider of the pair and earns his meager living by reading tarot cards street side. Saran is Cambodian, drinks often, was once married to a man of which she had several kids with (all but one are in foster care). Aside from having to contend with each other, the two must also be weary of the human vultures that eye their daughters with hopes of turning a profit on the black market. Surely, the future for these people are a bleak one.

At a noisy inn, a young servant woman tries to sing a baby to sleep. The innkeeper and his wife berate and abuse the servant. Later that night, in hunger, misery, and desperation, she leaves and wanders through a Chagal-like landscape. The baby's cries wake up the innkeeper and his wife. Where has the woman gone? For whom is the lullaby?

A migrant working-class couple, after losing their daughter to an ill-fated destiny, seeks friends in each other.

Hula dancing. Animation; mixed media.

In a city where the boundaries have changed greatly, where to go in Slovenia identification, where the barriers (real or metaphorical that they need not even show) have crumbled over the years, where the famous wall of mental hospital was demolished in the seventies thanks to Basaglia revolution, there is a wall that still stands. The wall that separates at the beach "At Lantern" women and men, but commonly called by all Trieste "Pedocin", unique in Europe, the noisy quiet corner, a stone's throw from the city center.

One evening, a young man falls into a depressive state. Non-narrative art story that demonstrates the beauty of gloomy moods to the viewer. Doomsday poetry.