The Devil's Work · Carlos Motta
Portugal · 2018 · 24’

The multilayered video, The Devil’s Work (2018), relates the true story of José Francisco Pereira, an 18th century man who was kidnapped from West Africa and sold into slavery in Brazil. As a means of survival, Pereira, movingly played by Angolan actor Paulo Pascoal, along with others in enslaved communities developed syncretic spiritual practices that mixed African with Christian tradition, in the form of bolsas de mandinga — amulets to protect fellow enslaved persons from injury. In 1731, after Pereira was sold to a slaveholder in Portugal, the Lisbon Inquisition discovered the practice and tried him for sorcery. He was also notably charged with sodomy, since he confessed to copulating with male demons in the course of making the amulets. Pereira was exiled from Lisbon and condemned to end his days enslaved rowing in a galley. Corpo Fechado: The Devil’s Work imagines Pereira as the agent of his own narrative, reclaiming the terms of representation from the account of his own destruction.

Kiki · Sara Jordenö
Suécia, Estados-Unidos· 2016 · 94’

In New York, young Black and Latino LGBTQIAPN+ people gathered at Christopher Street Pier to practice a form of performance dance called voguing and met at dances known as “balls,” giving rise to the ballroom community. For decades, the ballroom scene has influenced the audiovisual landscape, appearing in popular works such as Madonna’s Vogue music video and Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris Is Burning, both from the 1990s, as well as the series Pose (2018). Today, a new generation of young people from the ballroom scene has formed the Kiki Scene, an artistic and activist subculture.