Dernière séance à la Cité solaire (Cali, 1971-1977)

Abstract

This article aims at understanding a social process: the aesthetic formation of a cinema known under the genre film of “tropical gothic”. In Cali, the third Colombian city, beset in the 1970’s by a brusque process of urbanisation, some cinephile friends start a collective with a cine-club, a journal and a partnership for the auto-production of movies. Named “Solar city” after Tommaso Campanella’s utopia, the house they live in also host other visual artists, travellers and rebel students. This ephemeral community arises from the ashes of the Colombian “period of Violencia” and of the anomic period peculiar to the whole continent racked with a social and cultural upheaval. As an answer to such a new experience, this generation progressively elaborate, through cinephilia, its own gaze that will lead to the creation of accomplished works of art.

Keywords

• Collective
• Cinephilia
• Colombia
• Anomia
• Utopia