Screenings

DOK Leipzig Documentary Film Festival. 2018.
Bogotá International Film Festival.
(Bogotá, September 10-16)
Festival de Cine de Derechos Humanos de Ituango. Opening Film.
Ituango, November 2019
El Circulo Que Faltaba, Kadist Art Foundation 2018.
CAR Madrid, Centro de Acercamiento a lo Rural. 2019.
Centre for Research Architecture. Goldsmiths’ University of London. Free Seminar. 2019.
Cinematik International Film Festival. Piest’any, Slovakia. 2019.
Artecamara. ArtBo Art Fair. Bogotá, Colombia. 2019.
NYU Madrid, Invitated by Allen Feldman. 2019.
Fourth Fanon Rencontres + Focus on the Funk. (Birckbeck University of London, December 6, 2019).

The Shape of Now is part of Kadist Foundation’s Contemporary Art Collection.

Produced & Directed by
Manuel Correa

Coproduced by
Emil Nygard Olsen
Augusto César Sandino

Original Music
Simón Mesa Giraldo

Sound edition & mix
Emil Nygard Olsen

Asistant Director
Sebastián Munera

Location Sound
Francisco Londoño

Camera
Manuel Correa
John Jarlen Quiros
Angélica Toro

Colombia / Norway. 70 minutes, Colour

Film

~ The Shape of Now (2018)

"At first an insect works its way out of the ground – laboriously, trying to get its bearings, brushing the heavy sand from its wings. Coming out of the soil it pierces the surface of the planet and turns once around itself, exactly as if it was taking a look around the present it just crawled into. Manuel Correa’s experimental documentary is a lot like this industrious animal that has soil sticking to its body, whose eyes are still clouded and whose wings are still flapping slowly.

According to estimates around 200,000 people lost their lives in the 50-year Colombian civil war. Another 25,000 were kidnapped, many are still considered missing. When the peace deal between the government and the FARC rebels was made in November 2016, guns were banned from the conflict. But the country’s population have since faced the almost impossible task of having to agree on a common past. “The Shape of Now” illuminates this strenuous process and thus Colombia’s leaden present from very different perspectives. And just like the people of this country – the survivors, the grieving mothers, the historians and experts – this film, too, is still in first orientation mode."

Lukas Stern, DOK Leipzig

“The film started as an exploration of what it means to be able to create the past – and the role of verification. Because if you accept that you can implant false memories into people then how is our own autobiographical memory a reliable source for testimonies and truth-claims? In this sense, it is evident that we have no access to the past. We can remember the past, but every time you may remember something differently and memories may change. I am interested in the idea that the memory of the past is always created in the future. The past is ground for experimentation.”

︎ Interview by Tomáš Hudák, for Desist Film, April 2020

“More than anything, The Shape of Now is about the process of creating historical memory: its promise and its fallibility. Correa interviews a logician, an arms dealer, a peace negotiator, journalists and neuroscientists as well as ex-combatants from all sides and, most touchingly, a group for the mothers of people who disappeared. All of these individuals are, in their own way, trying to piece together what has happened (or what they’ve done) and figure out why, so that they can move on.”

︎ Jenna Sauers, for Cultured Magazine, March 2020

“Por estos días, y por los días pasados, y seguramente por los días siguientes, el gran reto será admitir que, para entender, habrá que dejar que el otro hable sin que necesariamente eso signifique asumir que lo que dice es cierto o correcto. Coexistir es, en resumidas cuentas, lo que propone Correa en su película.”

︎ Laura Camila Arévalo, para El Espectador, Noviembre 2019

” ... Manuel Correa’s new film, The Shape of Now, takes on the gore-soaked mess that is Colombia’s civil war in a sly and inventive way: by casting a cool eye on the oddly surreal social landscape of the country as it is now, with the war officially over and the entire society attempting to move on.”

︎ Michael Atkinson, for Progressive, May 2019

“One of the standout works of ARTBO was presented in the fair’s Artecámara section for emerging Colombian artists. London-based, Medellín-born Manuel Correa’s 70-minute documentary The Shape of Now ... ”

︎ Jenna Sauers, for Cultured, October 2019

“...Qué pasó con los sobrevivientes de más de 50 años de conflicto interno? Esta es la pregunta que se propone resolver ‘La forma del presente’, del director Manuel Correa, de la mano con las víctimas que narran no solo su dolor, sino cómo lograron edificar a partir de él.”

︎ Valentina Valencia, Para El País, Octubre 2019