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MARA CHAVEZ

@mar.achavez

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Morne Fortune premiere @thenyff sept 29th & 30th
fellow @sinematranstopia @fcgloria_at

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It is an honour for our film Morne Fortune to be introduced by Nadine Valcin, whose words so accurately capture what we have been working towards with this project.

There is something surreal about seeing the film start to take on a life of its own, meeting its audience and opening up new feelings and stories. To have it accompanied on this journey by the words of an artist we’ve been looking up to for years makes the whole thing feel even more meaningful ✨️

Thank you Nadine, and thank you M.B and M.Z for helping with the tricky work of translating the text into German!

Link in bio for the full text by @mar.achavez

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12 days ago

👯🏽 meet the mentees & mentors pt. V

💫 Mara Chavez wird im Bereich Regie von Gala Hernández begleitet!

🎞 Mara Chavez ist mexikanisch-österreichische Filmemacherin und Künstlerin. Ihre Arbeiten beschäftigen sich mit dem Auftauchen und Verschwinden von Narrativen in fortwirkenden kolonialen Strukturen. Sie hat Dokumentarfilm an der Goldsmiths University of London sowie Medien/Film & Kunst an der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien studiert.

🎬 Gala Hernández López ist Künstlerin, Filmemacherin und Produzentin. Ihre interdisziplinäre Praxis verbindet Film, Videoinstallation und Schriftstellerei und vereint dabei theoretische Forschung mit formalem Experimentieren. Im Mittelpunkt ihrer Praxis stehen forschungsbasierte Arbeiten, die materialistische Kritik, spekulative Fiktion und dokumentarische Elemente verbinden.

#fcgloria #mentoring #fcgloriamentoring #feministfilmmakers by @mar.achavez

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14 days ago

After many years of work and research across five countries, and countless hours of conversations, we are incredibly excited and proud to finally share our short film in the Currents Section of the New York Film Festival, where it will have its World Premiere.

Our gratitude goes to all the Martinicans and Saint Lucians who made this projet possible, and believed in it even before we knew what it would look like. Your trust, patience and honesty made everything for us.

We’re especially moved to bring the story of the Saint Lucians freedom fighters out of the archive, to honour their struggle and resound their names. May this contribute to greater conversations on reparation, decolonisation and self-determination in the Caribbean and beyond.

Thank you @baxxano for bringing color and texture to the film through your original sound work, and to @alnima for making imagined spaces tangible through animation. Thank you @thenyff and @sixpackfilmvienna for helping us bring the film into the world. by @mar.achavez

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2 months ago

Thank you so much for joining us for a program curated by @mar.achavez ‘Performed as Given: How Realities are staged, repeated, and undone’ and a Q&A with @zszophia moderated by @mar.achavez at @viennashorts 💚

Attention shifts from content to construction, where realities are re-enacted, circulated, and kept in play. How do archives, art, science, and film sustain what passes as given? In this program, the performance doesn’t quite hold. Echoes of colonial image-making resurface – gestures repeat, roles shift, meaning slips. Moving through spectacle and storytelling, these films stage myth until it starts to crumble. What appears as given reveals itself as constructed. Attention: the frame shows!

World premiere of the film China Girl by Sophia Yuet See (@chinagirlfilm, @zszophia). Curated & Moderated by Mara Chavez (Gewächshaus).

📸 (c) Peter Griesser/Vienna Shorts

#gewaechshausnetwork #gewaechshauscommunity #bipocfilmmakers taken in Vienna, Austria by @mar.achavez

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4 months ago

Really happy to to share part of 𝑯𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑳𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒑𝒆𝒔, a hybrid video born out of doris duhennois’ research and our creative collaboration in Saint Lucia and Martinique. More to come soon!

It’s shown alongside beaut works in the framework of the curatorial project 𝑳𝒆 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒅𝒖 𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒗𝒂𝒊𝒍 𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆: 𝑳𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒑𝒆 by @dereckmarouco exhibited at @laboratoire.kontempo in Mokili na Poche, Kinshasa with the support of @goetheinstitut. It’s the first creative output of this work in progress ⛰️⛰️⛰️

01 speculative monuments by @alnima & me
02 re-enactment: return of the inniskilling monument
03 exhibition announcement - Mokili na Poche, Kinshasa
04 speculative landscape
05 & 06 exhibition publication designed by @annas.works
07 opening Laboratoire Kontempo 📷 @sym_touch_ taken in Kinshasa, Congo by @mar.achavez

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10 months ago

Say hi to our newest team member, Mara Chavez (@mar.achavez)! ✨📹

Mara is a Mexican-Austrian filmmaker. Her work combines different methods of research and storytelling to explore the links between community, extraction, memory and migration.

Mara will help us with Community Management and ensure that activities of Gewächshaus are flowing smoothly.

Welcome, Mara! 💫💜

#NewTeamMember #FilmmakersOfColour #Community taken in Vienna, Austria by @mar.achavez

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a year ago

We are so excited to announce that ‘Video of the Month’ is finally back! Every month, you can watch a new one 24/7 at Hegelgasse 14, 1010 📍

Snippets from the Video:
Déchoukaj | Healing Landscapes | 13 min (work in progress) | 2025
A film by Mara Chavez @mar.achavez in collaboration with doris duhennois @ris.dodu  
 Déchoukaj | Healing Landscapes is an experimental documentary that explores questions of memory, erasure and repair in relation to public space in the Caribbean.

The project deals with the topic of success in two ways: Firstly, it looks at success as the ability to control a narrative, partake in official memory making and its transmission. By entering in conversation with those first affected by the legacy of colonialism, the work shifts perspective and redefines success as the ability to resist, reclaim and re-imagine.

In Haitian Creole, “déchoukaj” means uprooting, a term now adopted throughout the Lesser Antilles to refer to the destruction of statues built during colonisation. Taking these sites of memory as a point of departure, the film explores how post-colonial communities redefine material heritage.

Déchoukaj | Healing Landscapes is rooted in doris duhennois’ doctoral research on colonial memorialisation and Mara Chavez’ blended media approach. By layering oral history, 16mm and 3D animation this first chapter of a film in progress attempts to understand how people feel, live and resist in spaces containing racist symbols and creatively re-imagine public space. taken in DAS WEISSE HAUS by @mar.achavez

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2 years ago

@ris.dodu and I have been collecting inscriptions around monuments and elsewhere

01 monument, fdf, martinique
02 monument, fdf, martinique
03 wall, fdf, martinique
04 agave, vauclin, martinique
05 agave, vauclin, martinique
06 caribbean sea by @mar.achavez

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3 years ago

3D Scanning dismantled statues in Martinique is our first step in trying to find out what future spaces of memory and commemoration could look like in the Lesser Antilles. It forms part of our larger creative research exploring the reassessment of colonial landscapes in the Caribbean.

01 3D scanning of dismantled statue of Joséphine de Beauharnais
02 3D scanning of dismantled statue of d‘Esnambuc
03 Scanned inscriptions on the remaining pedestal of d‘Esnambuc monument

In collaboration withe the baddest ass PhD person I know @__ddoriss___

Big thanks to @superrrnetwork and @allianzfdn for their #risktakersfellowship that provides me with support and space to explore and develop new ideas for this project. taken in Martinique, Antilles by @mar.achavez

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3 years ago

always a bit late in announcing… but very excited to start sharing isthmus in the americas after nice lil run in europe!

catch screenings at
@festivalequinoxio in bogotá
@lightfilmfest in NYC
#studentworldimpactfilmfestival
@alucineto and #torontomulticulturalfilmfestival in toronto
@fecibacine in mexico city

big thanks to star 🎥 teammate @coco.power.ranger and @nasimluczaj doing her magic with words by @mar.achavez

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4 years ago

ISTMO, a narrowing of land (2021)

Cinematography: @coco.power.ranger & Mara Chavez by @mar.achavez

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5 years ago

An attempt to spy on a well by @mar.achavez

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5 years ago