ARTIST SPOTLIGHT:
SIMON(E) JAIKIRIUMA PAETAU

THU MAY 4 | 7:30 PM | THE BEACON CINEMA
AVAILABLE VIRTUALLY MAY 4-7

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau

**Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau** is a Colombian-German interdisciplinary artist working between film, video installation, and performance, dealing with queer decoloniality.

In this special program we review more than ten years of the multifaceted audiovisual work of Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau, from one of their first short films, Mila Caos (2011), to their most recent film, Aribada (2022). Jaikiriuma Paetau's cinema is difficult to categorize since it moves in hybrid and indefinite spaces between narrative, documentary, experimental cinema and performance. Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau creates a vividly colored universe where anything is possible, directing and engaging with their characters in a way that gives them a voice and agency. Each work selected as part of this program features strong characters unafraid to look back at whoever is paying attention in a game of confrontation with the camera and the audience.

Artist Spotlight: Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau (in person, shows May 4 at The Beacon Cinema, online May 4-7):

MILA CAOS (in-person & online)
Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau; 2011; Cuba/Colombia; 18 min.

Every weekend at an illegal drag show in a suburb of Havana, Sebastián, a 17 year old Cuban teenager, transforms into »Mila Caos«. He suffers from his mother's indifference and dreams that one day she will see him on stage.

POSH (in-person & online)
Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau; 2012; Germany; 22.min.

Posh is a film about RONIQUE XXX a Berlin based artist and scientist experimenting with life as an extraterrestrial in human form. She writes, composes and performs her own invention of sound called Hard Sci Fucking' Funk. She witnesses a murder and transforms into a mutant femme-fatale avenger.

CRUISING IN HIGH HEELS (online only)
Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau; 2014; Germany; 47 min.

'Cruising in High Heels' is a film about two apocalyptic sissies between Bogota, Berlin and Cartagena. One is a dancer, the other a Filmmaker. What starts as a documentary about a dancer, transforms slowly into a performance for film. The performances they create play with the in-between, male female, and the appropriation of spaces and expectations projected onto them. Jair says to Simon: "Look, my friend Victoria Beckham, when she has the flu, she puts on high heels, puts on make-up, makes herself look amazing and the flu goes away. This is achieving such self-knowledge that a flu goes away with lipstick and high heels."

TRYING TO FORGET YOU (in-person & online)
Aérea Negrot, Simon*e Jaikiriuma Paetau; 2019; Germany; 8 min.

"In the middle of the night, a broken farted finds music in the arms of beautiful strangers.“

ARIBADA (in-person only)
Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau & Natalia Escobar in collaboration with Zamanta Enevia;
2022; Colombia/Germany; 30 min.
Embera-Chami with English Subtitles  

In Aribada, the scintillating color and dreamlike imagery of Colombia’s coffee region become a vivid landscape—a space between documentary and mythology, where Las Traviesas, a group of trans women from the Emberá people share knowledge and reinvent rituals. Here, Aribada, a half-jaguar, half-human monster awakens to the formation of their utopic alliance informed by the power of their jais (spirits).