Voy a contar algo que pasó en mi niñez // I’m going to tell you about something that happened in my childhood

Conversations were held using questions that draw on memory, everyday life and emotion: “Let's talk about you when you were 8 years old, what was happening in those days? How did you live, what do you remember about your childhood while the war was near?”.  These conversations took place with people between the ages of 35 and 50, who have been or are part of collective communication, environmental or human rights projects and who have been close to the people from the Audiovisual School. After these conversations were compiled, a collective illustration workshop was convened where participants created sketches from their memories. Two public exhibitions will be held - one in Bethlehem and another in Florence. In both spaces, conversations will be stimulated about the meanings of the stories, but also about the experience of recovering, representing and sharing them.

This project is led by José Alirio González. As the founder of the Children’s Audiovisual School (EAI) project in Caquetá, Colombia, José has collaborated with communities for two decades to explore audiovisual narratives and aesthetics, experimenting with audio, video, animation, and illustration tools. His work has granted him the India Catalina award in the television category twice (2013, 2022). He facilitates workshops for several organizations on audiovisual communication and radio production and has participated as a juror at several community film festivals. He has been invited to write about community cinema in magazines such as Nanook's nightmare. Currently, he strives to connect neighbours, spaces, and kitchens with the art of harvesting, narrating and creating.

The municipality of Belén de los Andaquíes is located 43 km south of Florencia, the capital of the department of Caquetá. Due to its geographical position, a hinge between the Andean zone and the Colombian Amazon, it has long been a place of passage. This location means that its population has been immersed in various phases of the Colombian armed conflict, the M19 war of the 1980s, the paramilitary war and the FARC 1995 - 2006. According to statistics from the municipal victim care office, more than 50% of its inhabitants are part of the population that has been affected by the various actors in the armed conflict in Colombia. However, testimonies and stories of war have been relegated to judicial or government spaces without being appropriated by the population. We local narrators have fallen short in this task, the texts are external and we locals are shy about the challenge of telling ourselves from Belén de Andaquíes.