A filmmaker whose practice delves into the intersections of memory, power, and resistance.
Gills' works navigate histories both personal and collective, often drawing on
marginalized narratives to challenge dominant frameworks.
- Veronika Hanakova, Marienbad Film Festival (2025)
I am a filmmaker, writer, educator, and programmer, who creates critical, experimental, and archival films. My work focuses on videographic criticism, memory, and political resistance, often reappropriating historical and found materials to rethink collective histories. After teaching film at the Universidad de las Artes in Ecuador and the Università della Svizzera italiana (Switzerland), I now work as Lecturer in Film Studies at the Centre of World Cinemas and Digital Cultures, University of Leeds.
FILMMAKING: My recent film and videographic work has been shown in Prismatic Ground, Open City, Cámara Lúcida, Emami Art Experimental Film Festival and Mimesis Documentary Film festival. In 2025 the Marienbad Film Festival (CZ) featured a program dedicated to my videographic and archival work titled "Echoes and Revolutions" which included my most recent archival film 1922.
WRITING: I have written for Senses of Cinema, Short Film Studies, desistfilm, Kino Slang, La vida útil, La Furia Umana, as well as for catalogues and film festivals bonus materials including Berlinale, Jeonju, and Locarno. I recently co-edited a double issue of Academic Quarter dedicated to Academic Filmmaking (articles and video essays), co-authored an article on experimental filmmaking as research, and published articles and video essays in the academic journals Iluminace, Short Film Studies, [in]Transition and Tecmerin.
Prior to this, I published a book of interviews with film critics from Latin America (La crítica es una escuela, UArtes Ediciones, 2022) and another one on analogue and experimental film practices in Guayaquil, Ecuador (Guayaquil en ruinas, Guayaquil Analógico, 2023).
CURATING & KEYNOTE: My curatorial work began in Guayaquil, where I co-founded and co-directed a regular film program in 2022 titled Rialécticas. In 2025 I curated a program on archival films from Latin America for Emami Art Experimental Film Festival in India titled "¿Dónde están? Where are they?". In 2024 I gave a keynote lecture on film collectives and my work with Guayaquil Analógico at the Winterthur International Short Film Festival in Switzerland. I served as a guest programmer for Berlin Critics Week in 2023, Colombia's National Cinemateca in 2024, and part of the curatorial team of Fresh Festival Switzerland in 2025 and 2026.
Contact: [email protected]
FILMMAKING: My recent film and videographic work has been shown in Prismatic Ground, Open City, Cámara Lúcida, Emami Art Experimental Film Festival and Mimesis Documentary Film festival. In 2025 the Marienbad Film Festival (CZ) featured a program dedicated to my videographic and archival work titled "Echoes and Revolutions" which included my most recent archival film 1922.
WRITING: I have written for Senses of Cinema, Short Film Studies, desistfilm, Kino Slang, La vida útil, La Furia Umana, as well as for catalogues and film festivals bonus materials including Berlinale, Jeonju, and Locarno. I recently co-edited a double issue of Academic Quarter dedicated to Academic Filmmaking (articles and video essays), co-authored an article on experimental filmmaking as research, and published articles and video essays in the academic journals Iluminace, Short Film Studies, [in]Transition and Tecmerin.
Prior to this, I published a book of interviews with film critics from Latin America (La crítica es una escuela, UArtes Ediciones, 2022) and another one on analogue and experimental film practices in Guayaquil, Ecuador (Guayaquil en ruinas, Guayaquil Analógico, 2023).
CURATING & KEYNOTE: My curatorial work began in Guayaquil, where I co-founded and co-directed a regular film program in 2022 titled Rialécticas. In 2025 I curated a program on archival films from Latin America for Emami Art Experimental Film Festival in India titled "¿Dónde están? Where are they?". In 2024 I gave a keynote lecture on film collectives and my work with Guayaquil Analógico at the Winterthur International Short Film Festival in Switzerland. I served as a guest programmer for Berlin Critics Week in 2023, Colombia's National Cinemateca in 2024, and part of the curatorial team of Fresh Festival Switzerland in 2025 and 2026.
Contact: [email protected]
SHORT-CUT TO RECENT PUBLICATIONS
ON VIDEOGRAPHIC CRITICISM, VIDEO ESSAYS & ACADEMIC FILMMAKING:
Co-Editor with Catherine Grant and Alan O’Leary, Academic Quarter | Akademisk kvarter, “Academic Filmmaking in the New Humanities: Video Essays,” vol. 28, 2024. https://journals.aau.dk/index.php/ak/issue/view/523
Co-Editor with Catherine Grant and Alan O’Leary, Academic Quarter | Akademisk kvarter, “Academic Filmmaking in the New Humanities: Articles,” vol. 27, 2024. https://journals.aau.dk/index.php/ak/issue/view/522
"Aging Faces, Voice, and Barbara Steele's Revenge", [in]Transition 11(3), Special Issue: Women and Aging, ed. Barbara Zecchi, 2024.
Making Video Essays About Alice Diop, The Video Essay Podcast, May 1, 2024.
ON LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA & EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKING:
"Por un cine cachinero: Reappropriation as a Survival Strategy in Contemporary Experimental Cinema from Guayaquil", Iluminace: The Journal of Film Theory, History, and Aesthetics 37(3) 2025: 49-56.
"Apuntes para una historia del cine amateur en Guayaquil", Cines de pequeña escala: Nuevas estéticas, prácticas y plataformas en la región andina, Eds. Diana Coryat, Christian León and Noah Zweig, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Editorial El Conejo, Quito, 2025: 215-234.
How to Disappear Completely: Cinematic Explorations of Self-Obliteration in Yayoi Kusama's Experimental Film Works , desistfilm, November 29, 2025.
ON RECENT FILMS AND CONTEMPORARY FILMMAKERS:
Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026: Ritwik Ghatak & Sanghita Sen Were Here, 9 July 2026.
Locarno 2025: Like the Stars in the Sky: With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari, 2025), desistfilm, August 10th, 2025.
Cinema on the Border: The 20th Annual Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, Senses of Cinema, Festival Reports, Issue 114, July 2025.
A Cinema of Reparations: Alice Diop in Conversation with Kevin B. Lee and Libertad Gills, Locarno Film Festival, March 15th, 2024.
EXTERNAL LINKS
Guayaquil Analógico
Rialécticas - Jornadas Cinematográficas de Guayaquil
Fuera de Campo Film Journal
[in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies