Director: Diego Samper
Producer: Diego Samper
Photography & Image Manipulation: Diego Samper
Editor: Jamie Griffiths/Primal Divine Productions & Diego Samper
Composer, Sound Design & Audio Mix: Steve Wright

This dreamlike, surreal animated film was created from photographic images taken by Diego Samper in 2003, just a few days after a 120-year old Colombian prison was closed and emptied of its prisoners before a complete renovation was begun in order to house a new cultural centre. Built for political prisoners in the late nineteenth century in the Colombian town of Ibagué, the architecture was loosely based on an emerging British surveillance design called a Panopticon. The film journeys through a rich visual underworld of prisoner art and psychology and through it, reveals aspects of contemporary Colombian social and political realities. But beyond that, it reflects upon the principle of freedom, asking if perhaps the eighteenth century concept of the Panopticon has become a useful metaphor for the global loss of freedom itself, on a modern planet awash with technological surveillance at all levels of society.

 

Esta película animada, onírica y surrealista, ha sido creada a partir de las fotografías realizadas por Diego Samper en 2003, días después que una prisión colombiana fuera desocupada tras 120 años de uso continuo, para ser restaurada y convertida en centro cultural. Construida en la ciudad colombiana de Ibagué para contener prisioneros políticos, su diseño arquitectónico esta basado en el concepto llamado Panóptico, una arquitectura para la vigilancia. La película revela un rico universo visual de arte en la prisión y su sicología, y a través de éste, aspectos de la realidad social y política en Colombia. Pero mas allá de ello, es una reflección sobre el principio de libertad, y propone el concepto de Panóptico como una metáfora válida ante la pérdida global de libertad, en un planeta dominado por una tecnología de vigilancia en todos los niveles de la sociedad.

Diego Samper was born in 1954 in Bogotá. Artist and designer, his work turns around the dialogue between humankind and nature. As an artist, he works in different media: photography, painting, artist’s books and sculpture. With his wife Marlene, he has designed and produced 12 illustrated books and designed 8 travelling exhibitions. He lives in Gibsons, B.C.

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