A Mordida-gender-contagion-and-biopolitics

Between a house in the Atlantic forest and a genetically-modified mosquito factory near São Paulo, a polyamorous relationship between a man, a woman, and a transgender woman struggles to survive a mosquito-born epidemic spreading across Brazil. While in the factory millions of mosquitos are born daily inside test tubes in order to fight the virus, the power dynamics between the characters only intensifies. Drawing lines between psychological and bodily horrors, political and medical crises, the sterile heteronormativity of laboratorial research and non-normative images of reproduction, A Mordida is a film found somewhere between horror, science fiction and a queer drama. A film that points to intimacy and care as possible futures beyond the constraints of a binary mentality.

Following the screening, filmmaker Pedro Neves Marques and Brazilian feminist activist researcher Sonia Corrêa discuss the new valences of virality, contagion, gender, and sexuality that emerge from A Mordida in response to COVID-19 across social and political spheres in Brazil.

An audio introduction, and a transcript of film dialogue will be provided for A Mordida.

A Mordida is limited to viewers in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, UK, USA.

Transcript

Download a transcript of the discussion between Corrêa and Neves Marques.

Presenter Biographies

Since the late 1970s, Sonia Corrêa has been involved in research and advocacy activities related to gender equality, health, and sexuality. Between 1992 and 2009, she was the research coordinator for sexual and reproductive health and rights at DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New era), a Global South feminist network, of which she is presently a board member. Since 2002 she is a research associate at the Brazilian Interdisciplinary Association for AIDS, in Rio de Janeiro. In ABIA, with Richard Parker, she co-chairs the Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW) program, a global forum comprised of researchers and activists engaged in the analyses of global trends in sexuality related policy and politics. She has published extensively in Portuguese and English, including Population and Reproductive Rights: Feminist Perspectives from the South (Zed Books, 1994), and Sexuality, Health and Human Rights co-authored with Richard Parker and Rosalind Petchesky (Routledge, 2008).

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Pedro Neves Marques is a visual artist, filmmaker, and writer. They have had solo exhibitions at Castello di Rivoli, High Line, Pérez Art Museum of Miami, e-flux, Gasworks, and Museu Colecção Berardo, and have shown in screenings and group shows at Tate Modern Film, Serpentine Cinema, Kadist Foundation, Fondación Botín, SculptureCenter, Matadero, VAC Foundation, Guangdong Times Museum, and in film festivals like the Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Go Shorts, London Short Film Festival, Short Waves, IndieLisboa, among many others. They have published widely between art, anthropology, and ecology, as editor of the anthology The Forest and The School (Archive Books, 2015) and e-flux journal’s Supercommunity (2015), and as author of two short story collections, most recently Morrer na América (2017), and a poetry collection, Sex as Care and Other Viral Poems (2020). They were awarded the Present Future Art Prize at Artissima (2018) and have been shortlisted for the Pinchuk Future Generation Art Prize 2021. Forthcoming solo shows include at 1646, CA2M, and CaixaFórum, Liverpool Biennial, and Gwangju Biennale. Born in Lisbon, Portugal, they have lived in London, São Paulo, and New York.

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Transcript

Presenter Biographies

A Mordida: Gender, Contagion, and Biopolitics

Video Documentation

Discussion between Sonia Corrêa and Pedro Neves Marques accompanying the screening of A Mordida.