Drawing a map that cannot be reduced to one perspective may take more than one author indeed. “Mapa filmico de un pais”, “filmic map of a country” is the long name of the MAFI collective formed by seventeen Chilean filmmakers. The map they draw combines places, things and religious acts on a flat surface, without hierarchies, classifications, evaluations: This exists here and this here, but then there is also that. There are statues of the Virgin Mary, pious songs and lonely prayers, but also burnt-down churches and a blasphemous comedian dressed as Jesus. A collage emerges that is also the picture of a conflict.

The Pope’s visit to Chile in 2018 serves as leitmotif and fire accelerant. The fault lines become sharper: dogmatic conservatism against emancipatory potential, polymorphic popular belief against unified religion as a media spectacle. Thousands cheer the Papamobil, but in the foreground unimpressed skaters practice their jumps. The Pope is probably lost to capitalism, but is this true of faith in general?

Lukas Foerster