Double-exposure film image of two figures at a monument with a projected map and a single miniature soldierES

Cinema, sound art and research brought into a single practice of inter-fiction and material memory.

02

About the Work

The concerns running through Rafael Ramírez’s films regarding the relations between language and world demand—and find—a cinematic expression capable of challenging every limit imposed on film language. That ambition, markedly metaphysical, places his work in a singular position within Cuban audiovisual experience. In Winter Campaigns, staging, visuality, music and montage weave a corporeal, spectral and unstable syntax, prepared to sacrifice the standard grammar of cinematic narration in favor of the rhetorical possibilities of its expressive resources. These are works conceived as laboratories of language, questioning cinema’s established forms with sufficient radicalism to occupy its borders and place its generic identity under tension.

03

Complete index

Rafael Ramírez during a live electronic performance

Selected Festivals & Venues

  • Locarno Film Festival
  • IFF Rotterdam
  • DocLisboa
  • IDFA
  • FIC Valdivia
  • Mar del Plata International Film Festival
  • Frames of Representation
  • DocumentaMadrid
  • MAFIZ
  • FestCurtas
  • Frontera Sur
  • Neighboring Scenes
  • Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano
  • Muestra Joven ICAIC
  • Yale Film Festival
  • Munich Student Film Festival
  • Almacén de la Imagen
  • DOCMA (personal retrospective)
  • Cortos Cali
  • documenta fifteen Kassel
  • Irida Visions Athens
  • e-flux Events New York
  • Henry Dunant Museum
  • Festival Panalandia
WorkFieldYearDurationAccess / Status
Ethno☰hauntological Matrix20266 hIn progress
Poster for the Ethno☰hauntology Vol. 1 Festival
DescriptionFilm Curatorship · 2026 · —

The Ethno☰hauntology Vol. 1 Festival, directed by Rafael Ramírez and Iakovos Vroutsis, was based on the artistic manifesto first published in Fantasma Material magazine in December 2024 by Rafael Ramírez, Oderay Ponce de León and Carlos Terán Vargas. The manifesto proposed a methodology that engaged specters through the use of cinema and art as a means of rethinking time, space and social reality. This first edition in Athens functioned as a laboratory for applying this method within a living festival. From January 22 to 28, 31 films from Latin America haunted the screen of NEWMAN Cinema. Poetic documentaries, genre cinema, experimental films and hybrid works moving between different forms brought to the surface the ghosts of colonialism, migration, political upheavals and popular narratives that continued to shape contemporary Latin American societies. Most of the films in the programme had their Greek premieres. Art exhibition at the Kypseli City Market From January 21 to 27, Ethno☰hauntology Vol. 1 also presented—in collaboration with the Kypseli City Market—an expanded art exhibition centered on the hypermedia installation Pabellón de Melancólicos. The exhibition was co-curated by Oderay Ponce de León and Anna Gradou. It extended a line connecting analogous phenomena and memories between Greece and Latin America. Team Festival production Otter Space XR ΑΜΚΕ, Renia Papathanasiou, Iakovos Vroutsis, Orfeas Oikonomou Poster / Graphic design Κat Art exhibition production Orfeas Oikonomou, Sokratis Morfonios, Anna Gradou Translation Dimitris Polemis Video editor / Trailers Stavros Vroutsis Press office Ismene Daskarolis Still photographer / Instagram page admin Vasilis Pastapas Facebook page admin Giorgos Pantelis DCP / Subtitling Sokratis Morfonios, Omar Lara

Archive
Film202645′Post-production
Multichannel202512′Installation
Ethno☰hauntology Manifesto (with Oderay P. de León and Carlos T. Vargas)Essay · Theory2024—Read
Auralwork202251′Listen
Film201713′View
Film201612′View
Book (poetry translation)2015—Read
Book (fiction)2014—Read
Found footage20093′10″View
Film200840′View
Rafael Ramírez during a live electronic performance
04Auralworks. Sound-art projects by Rafael Ramírez

Tsarichina

Institute of Acoustic Ruins

Archival rewriting, field research and the material transformation of recorded sound.

05

OST / Music for Films

Selected films featuring original music composed by Rafael Ramírez.

Mi sangre es petróleo · Vania Quevedo · 2026

Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia

El regresado · Armando Capó · 2026

Miami Film Festival · Guadalajara International Film Festival · Havana Film Festival New York · AFI Silver DC Caribbean FilmFest

La historia se escribe de noche · Alejandro Alonso · 2024

IFF Rotterdam · DocumentaMadrid · DokuFest · Minikino Film Week · L’Alternativa · INSTAR Film Festival

La tierra de la ballena · Armando Capó · 2024

Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana · Havana Film Festival New York · Festival Internacional de Cine de Gibara · Festival de la Crítica Cinematográfica de Caracas

Matar a un hombre · Orlando Mora · 2024

LEFFEST · Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana · ÍCARO · Chicago Latino Film Festival · Festival de Cine Global de Santo Domingo · Skyline Benidorm Film Festival · Cinélatino / Rencontres de Toulouse · FÀCYL · Trinidad+Tobago Film Festival · Vancouver Latin American Film Festival

Tartessos Dune · Josué G. Gómez · 2023

Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana · MIDBO · MAMUT Festival de Memoria Audiovisual · INSTAR Film Festival

Tundra · José Luis Aparicio · 2021

Curta Cinema · Sundance · Miami Film Festival · Santa Fe International Film Festival · Pendance · San Diego Latino Film Festival · Houston Latino Film Festival · BAFICI · Fantaspoa · New Jersey International Film Festival · NYC Independent Film Festival · Seattle Latino Film Festival

Nara · Rosa María Rodríguez · 2021

Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana

Entre perro y lobo · Irene Gutiérrez · 2020

Berlinale Forum · Gijón International Film Festival · Las Palmas International Film Festival · Third Horizon Film Festival · Trinidad+Tobago Film Festival

Centella · Claudia Claremi · 2019

Ji.hlava IDFF · Philadelphia Latino Arts & Film Festival · Trinidad+Tobago Film Festival · Santiago International Film Festival

El proyecto · Alejandro Alonso · 2017

Visions du Réel · DOK Leipzig · DocumentaMadrid · BIFF Colombia · Lima Indie · Havana Film Festival · Cine Las Americas · documenta fifteen

06

Practice

Rafael Ramírez is a Cuban filmmaker, sound artist and writer based in Athens. He studied Audiovisual Communication at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana and later specialised in documentary filmmaking at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV de San Antonio de los Baños.

His films move between cinema of the real and fiction, while incorporating procedures drawn from experimental cinema and the essay film. They emerge from processes of research and writing in which anthropology, science fiction, philosophical essay and sound art converge within the same cinematic construction. The document is never treated as fully legible evidence; it is brought into contact with apocryphal narratives, imaginary archives, esoteric systems of knowledge and materials produced by obsolete technologies.

CV · English PDF CV · Spanish PDF

Teaching

Current
Founder and Director, RiaLMaster’s Programme in AI and Cinema of the Real
Since 2024
ProfessorInstituto de Cine de Madrid, Spain
2023–2025
ProfessorUniversity of O’Higgins, Chile
Since 2020
Director of the INTERZONA Master’s ProgrammeEscuela Internacional de Cine y TV de San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba
2017–2020
Professor and Coordinator of the Humanities DepartmentEscuela Internacional de Cine y TV de San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba
2009–2013
ProfessorFine Arts Academy El Alba, Cuba
2008–2013
ProfessorInstituto Superior de Arte / University of the Arts, Cuba

His teaching has involved students from screenwriting, editing, cinematography and sound, as well as the documentary and fiction directing fields. He has also worked as a visiting professor and project adviser at film schools, universities and independent educational programmes in Latin America and Europe.

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