Tótem

Synopsis

While the numbers of missing persons in Mexico continue to rise, Tótem explores the particularities and deeper roots of this type of violence and envisions new forms of resistance and community within the movements that have emerged to combat it. The story of two archaeologists fruitlessly searching for an ancient Olmec head in a murky river appears at recurring intervals, questioning the very act of documenting the absent and the invisible.

A collective essay film that works with archival footage that doesn’t seek to represent anything but rather approaches and distances itself from the discourse led by two alternating voices: one analysing the disappearances in Mexico, the other presenting the search for the Olmec head.

Biography and Films

Unidad de Montaje Dialéctico (UMD) is a faceless art collective formed in 2020. Their refusal to show their faces or use proper names is means of defending their collective and clandestine nature as tactics to question the logic of the entertainment and celebrity-industrial complex. Their film essays create constellations of dialectical images that bring multiple realities and temporalities into tension and have been presented at art centres and festivals such as Punto de Vista, MIDBO, FICUNAM, FICValdivia, London Short Film Festival and Istanbul International Independent Film Festival, among others. Tótem is their first feature film.

Tie-in Activity

There will be a special post-screening debate following the screening of Totem.