I am a filmmaker, researcher, video essayist and teacher, with a B.A. in Film Studies and Government from Wesleyan University and M.A. in Visual Anthropology from FLACSO-Ecuador. My recent work has been screened at Cámara Lúcida, Transcinema, UltraCinema, Frontera Sur, EDOC and FICWALLMAPU where I received an award. I teach film and criticism at the Universidad de las Artes (Ecuador) and belong to the film collective Guayaquil Analógico (Mariano Aguilera National Arts Prize 2022). Read about our research on home movie projection in Guayaquil here. Since 2022, I am co-founder and co-director of the year-long film program Rialécticas - Jornadas Cinematográficas de Guayaquil.
My research interests include reappropriation, archive cinema and found footage, experimental cinema, and film/videographic criticism. I am interested in exploring the intersection(s) between aesthetics and politics, as well as the materiality and agency of images and sounds. My current Ph.D. research revolves around the face-image as a site for potential radical relations.
My writing on film has been published in Senses of Cinema, Short Film Studies, desistfilm, Kino Slang, La Furia Umana and Fuera de Campo. I have written about Ecuadorian Cinema here, here, and here. I've curated film programs for MUTA International Festival for Audiovisual Appropriation in Peru, Festival de Cine Radical in Bolivia, and was invited to be a guest programmer for UltraCinema Mexico in 2020. That year I was also selected for Images Research Forum and in 2021 I participated in the UnionDocs CoLab "Carceral Screens and the Abolitionist Imagination", led by filmmaker Christopher Harris. Since 2021 I am Associate Editor at [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies and co-editor of Fuera de Campo Film Journal.
Cineasta, investigadora, crítica y profesora de cine, con estudios en cine en Wesleyan University (EE.UU.) y maestría en Antropología Visual de FLACSO-Ecuador. Actualmente desarrolla su tesis doctoral en torno al cine de archivo experimental.
Contact/Contacto: libertad.gills@gmail.com
