Invisible (2023): Film Screening and Panel Discussion

Invisible (2023): Film Screening and Panel Discussion

The film explores the daily challenges faced by domestic workers in Colombia who commute on public transport. Followed by a Q&A session.

By Affective and Immaterial Labour

Date and time

Thursday, May 30 · 1 - 2:30pm GMT+1

Location

QMUL ArtsOne

Mile End Road London E1 4PA United Kingdom

About this event

  • 1 hour 30 minutes

Date: Thursday 30 May 2024, 13:00-14:30
Where: BLOC Cinema, ArtsOne Building, QMUL Mile End Campus

The School of Languages, Linguistics and Film (SLLF) at QMUL invites you to a screening of:

'Invisible' (30 mins), a short documentary directed by Valentina Montoya Robledo, Daniel Gómez Restrepo & Andrés Gonzalez Robledo (in Spanish with English subtitles).


Invisible refers to something that is present but not seen. In Colombia, the contribution of domestic workers has long been invisible, but today they are speaking out. This documentary film is part of the project ‘Invisible Commutes’ that seeks to make domestic workers’ long, and often violent, commutes more visible and to campaign for public transport that takes their needs into account.

Synopsis: Two domestic workers, Reinalda in Medellín and Belén in Bogotá, explain the challenges they face when travelling on public transport day after day from their own neighbourhoods to the communities where they work. Their long, costly and overcrowded journeys are invisible to their employers and to those that plan the public transport networks. Despite everything, they carry on with characteristic tenacity. Each day they wake up and keep a part of Colombian society going by undertaking a job that is undervalued and underpaid. They fight for a better life – for themselves, for their communities and above all for their children and grandchildren and their co-workers.


Following the screening, we will hold a panel discussion and audience Q&A about the film and the issues it raises.

The panel will include:


This screening is being organised as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project 'Affective and Immaterial Labour in Latin(x) American Culture'. For more information about the project, see the blog site, which includes a post that Valentina and Rachel have co-authored about the making of Invisible and about the Invisible Commutes project.


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Organized by

Affective and Immaterial Labour

Affective and Immaterial Labour in Latin(x) American Culture is an AHRC-funded research project led by Dr Rachel Randall. The project explores representations of wet-nurses, migrant domestic workers and sex workers in Latin(x) American photography, film, literature and digital culture from the late nineteenth century to the present day. It explores the similarities and differences between these kinds of work by analysing them as forms of immaterial labour, which is work that creates immaterial products, including social relationships, emotional responses and bodily feelings – also termed ‘affects’. The project asks what an analysis of Latin(x) and Latin American cultural productions featuring these workers can contribute to our understanding of the links between these forms of labour, and to a public appreciation of these kinds of work, which are often marginalised or denigrated.