Isla Santa María (Graw Böckler)
& Isla del Trueno (Grupo de Búsqueda)
& lecture performance by Graw Böckler

Thursday, September 10th, 2026
from 19h-22h


. 

“a journey to an enchanted Pacific island in the Bay of Arauco (Chile) to join the local resistance against exploitation of rare earth materials”

A group of artists and creatives - a Chilean collective Grupo de Búsqueda from Concepción - travels to Isla Santa María to shoot a short film about the islanders' struggle against the extraction of rare earth minerals. In this film, a woman travels to an island off the Chilean coast to join the local resistance against speculators' exploitation. 

A visionary fiction that, only one year later, would become reality when the inhabitants of Isla Santa María successfully organized protests and a general strike against the mining of rare earth minerals.

The production and its making become the material for Graw Böckler's film that documents this journey to an enchanted Pacific island in the Bay of Arauco (Chile). Graw Böckler play with experimental documentary format, turning upside down the hierarchies between “making of” and fiction.  

Isla Santa María (Graw Böckler), 70’
Isla del Trueno (Grupo de Búsqueda), 3´

Both films are in the original Spanish and will be screened with English subtitles.

Bio: 

Ursula Böckler (*1965) and Georg Graw (*1966) have been working together as the artist duo Graw Böckler since 1997, primarily in the fields of video and photography. Since 2009, they have been based in Berlin. In addition to their artistic practice, Graw Böckler curate exhibitions and screenings. Since 2018, they have run the project space Graw Böckler Garage. In 2022, they organized the garageN festival in the Plänterwald district of Berlin. Ursula Böckler is also a co-director of the Radical Film Network Meeting Berlin.

More about the project on filmfreeway. 

Link to artists’ website.