What does it take not only to receive testimony about violence and displacement, but also represent that testimony in narrative? “After the Crossfire: Memories of Violence and Displacement” is a testimonial documentary about the emergence and escalation of armed conflict in Colombia’s north Pacific coast region, and its devastating effects for the civilian population of the region. The film premiered at Bogota’s International Human Rights Film Festival in 2016. Documentarian and scholar Dr. Ricardo Velasco Trujillo will screen the 22-minute version of the film and then engage in open conversation with attendees around this difficult, but vitally important topic.
About Ricardo Velasco Trujillo
Ricardo Velasco Trujillo (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is a documentarian and Assistant professor of Latin American cultural studies at Clemson University, whose research focuses on cultural production in post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies. Since 2009, he has been studying official memorialization practices, as well as cultural activism and micro-scale movements for reparation and historical redress among grassroots organizations, Afro-descendant, displaced and refugee communities in Colombia. His work as a social documentarian has also encompassed the experiences and patterns of forced migration and human rights violations committed against rural black communities in the border region between Colombia and Panama.
Dr. Velasco Trujillo uses audiovisual and new digital media as tools for making his work publicly accessible, and for the dissemination of the struggles and ways of knowing of the communities that contribute to his research. He is currently working on his first book entitled Cultural Ecologies of Memory and Symbolic Reparation in Transitional Colombia and the accompanying digital platform www.culturalecologies.com.
Registration is not required for this event.
This event is co-sponsored by SNF Paideia and the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies and is presented in conjunction with the SNF Paideia designated course “Testimony: Life-writing as Dialogue” taught by Dr. Sarah Ropp.
