Documentary – Audiovisual Essay
40 minutes
Language: English
2018
In 1885, the story of mine, a relatively young country was written. In an epic XIX century style eleven stanzas of a poem retell the battles and the heroic actions that led towards the recognition of this country as independent. The birth of a sovereign state was there glorified, immortalized and cherished. Praised there, were the heroes whose blood was shed, and cursed, the enemies by then defeated.
In 1887 this poem was musicalized and the song that sprung as outcome was instituted as a definitive trait of identity for all of us citizens of this particular country. The story, which unravels throughout the years after the anthem’s instauration, is nevertheless, anything but glorifiable. The independent shout we learn through it, proud, patriotic still breaks-through our chests, which have failed to recognize the fragility of the consolidated state, over and over.
This is the story of my country, but in a way, it embodies the story of most -if not all. It is the story of the notion that defines countries and that keeps them abysmally separated the story of the patriarchal system that keeps these distances irreconcilable, sharp and bitter.
THE PROJECT
Gloria is a 40 minute long film that can be classified somewhere between a subjective documentary and an audiovisual essay, based on a two-year long research upon the relationship between language, nationalism and identity. The backbone of the project is the national anthem of Colombia, it’s 11 strophes serve as guide to unfold an analytical reflection of the language and symbolism typical of the patriarchal systems of XVIII and XIX centuries and its further inherence in todays nationalism around the world.
Gloria integrates an archive of pictures taken from the public collection of the Royal Museum of Armed Forces and Military History of Brussels and a collection of found footage, fragments of movies, paintings and music that relates or presents what the text is reflecting upon.
The text is an essay based on the opinion article “La horrible noche” written by Colombian Writer and novelist William Ospina for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador along with my own personal reflections upon the subject.
