Expanding Cinema presents A forecast, a haunting, a crossing, a visitation by Emilia Beatriz. Join us for a public screening, followed by Q&A with Emilia Beatriz moderated by Jessica Gordon-Burroughs.

“In a forecast, a haunting, a crossing, a visitation, a psychoemotional narrative plays out, combining fictional spaces with archival footage, oral histories and other research. Written from a diasporic perspective between Scotland and Puerto Rico, the film focuses on military-occupied Cape Wrath in the North of Scotland, wherein a series of characters Uranio (Uranium), Agüita (an affectionate name for water) and Vientazo (a gust of wind), write letters to one another. The letters appeal to the water, the wind and the toxic land, speculating upon the navigation of bodily crisis, health and grief, speaking of the feeling of mourning environmental loss and addressing colonial narratives that live in the land.”

(from programme’s note, (Im)material World, LUX and CCA Glasgow, 2022)

Emilia Beatriz (they/elle) is an artist and access worker from Puerto Rico’s diaspora, based in Glasgow. Informed by Aurora Levins Morales’ ‘historian as healer’ methodology, Emilia’s films weave historical and speculative narratives – grounded in oral history and community archiving – centering dreaming, action, and griefwork attuned to climate and place. Recent work includes the exhibition ‘In Dispersion / En la Dispersión, VISARTS, Maryland; the talk On Moss as Matter & Metaphor with Amelia Merced; Sappho’s Wake, a performance/reading for a wake: on mourning, marking and moving forward together with joy hosted by Birds of Paradise and San Alland; and ‘declarations on soil and honey’ exhibition CCA, Glasgow, 2019. Their new film Barrunto (2023) was recently premiered at the 19th Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival.

Expanding Cinema is a research cluster comprised of early career researchers focused on artists’ moving image and experimental cinema. It offers a platform for researchers, practitioners, and public audiences to respond critically and discursively with aesthetically and formally inventive and radical filmmaking that seeks to engage with the complexities of contemporary times. The group welcomes staff and post-graduate students from across the University of Edinburgh. If you would like to join, or for further information: aurelien.froment@ed.ac.uk