Liquid Conviviality in Chilean Documentary Film : Dynamics of Confluences and Counter/fluences

Guided by the concept of liquid conviviality, referring to the conflictual connectivity, interrelation, and interaction between human and nonhuman actors in aquatic ecosystems, this Working Paper focuses on the staging of aquatic, and especially fluvial, agency in three examples of recent Chilean documentary films produced between 2008 and 2021. Building on theoretical insights in the blue humanities and material ecocriticism, it scrutinizes the filmic strategies and procedures that frame water as an active player. Furthermore, within a broader perspective of aquatic agency, we ask to which extent the liquid poetics, aesthetics and materialities in these films perform counternarratives facing neocolonial forms of invasion such as extractivism and devastation of watery ecosystems in Indigenous territories. Here, dynamics of confluences and counter/fluences are revealed by performing acts of dissident power and by focusing peripheral knowledges, as well as strategies of resistance.