We end where we began: in a fairly typical movie theatre. In fact, the exact same one where the audience had briefly stared at a knife all blade without really watching it. This time it is not for a film festival, though, but for another special kind of screening. It is 2009, and the venue is hosting the Mostravídeo project, a monthly series of video programmes proposed by guest curators. I had put together a three-day cycle called Denied Distances, which encompasses audiovisual works pertaining to different genres. Some of them could be called video art, others expanded cinema, and others audiovisual performances. There are even a couple of documentaries thrown in the mix. What these works have in common is the fact that all of them mobilize the negative spaces of cinema in a significant way. The programme has a historical character, but not the corresponding linearity. Instead of following a clear chronological progression, the works are shown in a topological order, going from the most immediate scales of the circuit to the broader ones. Sessions took place once each week.

Denied Distances was designed to be a critical platform within its given circumstances. It was based on the curatorial gamble that certain works, by virtue of their joint presentation, could speak of the configuration of cinema technology and against its conventionality.