Cinema Metropolis: The Image of the Cruel | Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Rio de Janeiro

How do everyday public buildings become tools of a dark regime, and how does the state utilize architecture to disappear, conceal, or justify its crimes? Last century's dictatorships in Latin America left behind traumas that manifest in the urban space to this day. The brutal oppression was expressed not only through enforced disappearances and torture, but also through "spatial parasitism": public buildings, from schools to police stations, were secretly converted into interrogation rooms and detention cells. Iconic structures like the National Stadium in Santiago became massive concentration camps, and in Buenos Aires, the Navy Mechanics School remained ordinary-looking from the outside—yet functioned in practice as a relentless mechanism of murder and torture.

Under the auspices of the Cold War, Chile and Argentina became neoliberal laboratories under the rule of dictators Augusto Pinochet and Jorge Rafael Videla. While masses were persecuted, sealed shopping malls and gated communities were constructed for the regime's elite, designed to screen out the atrocities and protect the oppressors. This politics of spatial concealment reached its peak in Rio de Janeiro during the reign of Emílio Garrastazu Médici. Throughout history, and even more intensely ahead of mega-events like the Olympics and the World Cup, the administration actively worked to hide the favelas from the urban landscape to produce an illusion of progress. The state addressed the social margins only through a touristic prism: the entry of the "Pacifying Police Units" (UPPs) was carried out selectively only in favelas accessible to tourists, deploying more "representative" and friendlier police officers, while oppression and neglect in the rest of the city continued uninterrupted. Standing against the institutional attempt to erase informal space is the community architecture of the favela itself—one rooted in solidarity and collective self-construction.

In the face of this reality, the role of cinema was also reformulated as an act of resistance and protest. For subversive filmmakers, the camera was a literal matter of life and death, and the only way to document the truth behind the exotic facade of South America. In the lecture, we will examine how architecture and cinema in the major cities of Argentina, Chile, and Brazil shaped and documented the violent political space—a reality that invites us to rethink the global and covert forces shaping the cities we live in, and the ways we choose to remember or conceal our past.

Following the lecture, we will screen the film "I'm Still Here" (Walter Salles, Brazil, 2024, 135 min.), a historical political drama based on a harrowing true story in 1971 Rio de Janeiro. Under the suffocating grip of the military dictatorship, the life of a local family shatters when the father, a former politician, is abruptly taken by the secret police and disappears. Through the relentless struggle of the mother, the film exposes the true face of the city—presenting cinema as an uncompromising tool of resistance against a state apparatus trying to erase all traces of its crimes.

Event Schedule

19:00 Hangout with "Anan Records" and drinks by Cafe Lev

19:45 Lecture - The Image of the Cruel

20:30 Intermission

20:40 Screening of the film "I'm Still Here" (Walter Salles, Brazil, 2024, 135 min.)

Unassigned seating; alternative seating.

Arriving at doors open to secure a seat is recommended.

Registration is available for individual events. Session content is independent.

Moderator: Shani Kiniso, Film Researcher and Critic

Content Development: Moran Navon, Content Manager, Liebling House

The event is a collaboration between Liebling House (one of the cultural institutions of Bialik Square), Intangible Cinema Project , Devek, and Anan Records.

"Cinema Metropolis" is an event series addressing cities around the world at their moments of crisis and turning points: from wars and political or religious tensions, through social and economic hardships, to periods of prosperity and peace. In each session, different cities will be examined through cinema, helping us learn how historical crises shaped the face of the city—both in reality and on screen. By looking at other cities in moments of crisis and change, we will attempt to re-examine the reality of our own space and think about the future we wish to shape here Image: FERNANDA TORRES as Eunice in ‘I’m Still Here' Image: Alile Onawale. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics