KAREN ELSON ON THE MODEL AS THE MUSE

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October 22, 2018

KAREN ELSON ON THE MODEL AS THE MUSE

A film by Liberatum. Presented by illy. Edited by Caravan Brothers. Music by William Close.

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liberatum

Empowering and Inspiring Communities Worldwide through Culture to Promote Social Change and Raise Consciousness since 2001 ✨🌎🐞

We cannot wait to host another Liberatum in Brazil

We cannot wait to host another Liberatum in Brazil in the not too distant future. Equality, Diversity, Liberty.

📸 Liberatum Brasil, Salvador, Bahia 2023
@im.angelabassett @margarethmenezes @violadavis @taisdeverdade

HUMAN DIGNITY Cinema gives us time to see beyond

HUMAN DIGNITY

Cinema gives us time to see beyond a first impression, label or judgement, revealing the complexity of another human being. Public narratives, particularly online, can do the opposite, reducing a person to a single image, accusation, mistake or identity. How do we see one another in a world increasingly shaped by digital realities? Pure Land Foundation founder Bruno Wang led Lee Daniels, Nadine Labaki and Marisa Berenson in a conversation about whether cinema can restore the human context lost when a person is reduced to an online fragment.

Held at Palazzina Grassi on 7 September as Liberatum marked its 25th anniversary, the programme brought film, performance and public discussion together around human dignity. In partnership with Pure Land Foundation.

Labaki reflected on how quickly online audiences judge, while cinema allows people to encounter a character’s history, contradictions and humanity. Daniels connected this to his own experience of invisibility as a Black queer man, saying his work seeks “to give voice to people that don’t have voices.”

The speakers also questioned what art can change. Labaki acknowledged the limits of cinema’s influence on institutions, while Daniels recalled a viewer of Precious telling him the film made him stop abusing his daughter. For Berenson, such moments matter because “change starts on an individual level.”

✨🤍 🕊️ 🐞 🌎

Director of Cultural Production @alonsoteruel
Chief Creative Officer @lucasvilas.bs
Beauty @armanibeauty
Talent and Media Director @elena.taboada
Venice Producer @totodamosto
Photographer @bestatue
Videographer @lavinia_xausa
Camera @giosperr
Logistics and Travel Manager @mariaguy
Communications Agency @eleventhmillennium
Hospitality @palazzinagrassi

𝐓𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐖 Once we start to work with Femi

𝐓𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐖

Once we start to work with Feminine power we begin to see that it is not our minds that are in control of this power – it ebbs and flows with the movements of the planets, the procession of the seasons, the moons and tides, our own internal cycles of menstruality, anniversaries, the events around us.

All these and more impact our experience and expressions of power. We learn to become aware of these various patterns and their impact on us and work more consciously with rather than against or in spite of them.

We learn that they are all part of the same process. We open towards the energy, rather than shut down to it. We learn to trust the flow. -
Lucy H. Pearce

Art 🖼 @rougegrenadetw

𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐁𝐎𝐑𝐍 Psychologists tell us t

𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐁𝐎𝐑𝐍

Psychologists tell us that by the time we’re in our mid-30s, our identity or personality will be completely formed. This means that for those of us over 35, we have memorized a select set of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, emotional reactions, habits, skills, associative memories, conditioned responses, and perceptions that are now subconsciously programmed within us.

Those programs are running us, because the body has become the mind. This means that we will think the same thoughts, feel the same feelings, react in identical ways, behave in the same manner, believe the same dogmas, and perceive reality the same ways.

About 95 percent of who we are by midlife is a series of subconscious programs that have become automatic—driving a car, brushing our teeth, overeating when we’re stressed, worrying about our future, judging our friends, complaining about our lives, blaming our parents, not believing in ourselves, and insisting on being chronically unhappy, just to name a few.
- Joe Dispenza

Photographer 📸 @joselynbphotography

AN IMPOSSIBLE PICTURE This is an impossible pictu

AN IMPOSSIBLE PICTURE

This is an impossible picture by Susan Meiselas. Impossible because it bears witness to crossing some imagined line about ethics and morality. Meiselas is one of the most important figures in contemporary photography because of here indomitable investigation of the power of photography as a photographer, historian, and an activist.

This image sneaks up on you. Initially the viewer — witness — takes in the lush green landscape of a countryside, possibly tropical, adjacent to a body of water. Horizontal planes take the eye in and down then abruptly back to the foreground. It takes a moment to put it together: pants, legs, a spine, other body parts. Horror or horrors, it is human remains, left to the elements.

Here is her account,, “I used to get in the car as early in the morning as I could and drive, looking for things that seemed unusual. One day I was driving on the outskirts of Managua when I smelled something. It was a very steep hill, and as I got closer to the top, the odor overwhelmed me. I looked out and saw a body and stopped to photograph it. I don’t know how long it had been there, but long enough for the vultures to have eaten half of it. I shot two frames, I think, one in color and one in black and white, then got out. The images I made of the body were powerful partly because of the contrast with the landscape’s beauty. [It’s hard for] the American public [to] relate their reality to this image. They could not account for what they saw.”

Photography can take us to places and provide us with evidence that we can process. Sometimes the information seems seems too much but people are complicated. We do look. We may have range of responses, ranging from a refusal to look further to a sense of a call to action. That is the “power of photography”. - W.M. Hunt

Photographer 📸 @susanmeiselas Cuesta del Plomo, a well-known site of many assassinations carried out by the National Guard, where people searched daily for missing persons. Managua, Nicaragua, 1979.

KOTHIS, HIJRAS, GIRIYAS AND OTHERS Kothis and Hij

KOTHIS, HIJRAS, GIRIYAS AND OTHERS

Kothis and Hijras, and their lovers Giriyas are the terms used by queer underclass, feminine and transgendered persons in their own dialect to define their different and particular sexual relationships and identities.

I made these portraits because this sub-culture is rarely seen outside of its HIV/AIDS victim narratives. The photographs give their subjects an importance which contradicts the popular image of people from these social backgrounds. They also challenge the supremacy of images of the more middle and upper caste/class person from India, that we are normally used to seeing in the history of photography.

The work also interrogates their gendered and sexual life as a whole, covering a range of emotions, anxieties, concerns, dilemmas and dreams to depart from the narrow medical discourse within which they are bound. Around 1994, UN funding for the AIDS epidemic bought all these identities into one umbrella term, “MSM” (Men who have Sex with Men.) This term was conceived to overcome the variety of local cultural differences from Morocco to Indonesia. Although it may have fulfilled its purpose to describe a category of behaviour, however, it failed to provide dignity to the affected communities it refers to, even after its recent inclusion of the term “TG” referring to transgender communities.

When I look at the history of Indian photography, I am overwhelmed by portraits of princely India and the prevailing exoticism around them; these portraits were about class, caste and colonial hierarchies. When I make photographs I want to make something queer but also want to challenge these stereotypes about photography about India. Many of my subjects did not have a studio portrait made in their life-time. Therefore, I attempted to create a space where people could feel comfortable regardless of their class, caste, identity, gender, sexuality, performance; these are individual human beings each with their own nuances. - Charan Singh

Photographer 📸 @random_access01 © Charan Singh

THE BAHAMAS THROUGH MELISSA ALCENA’S EYES Melissa

THE BAHAMAS THROUGH MELISSA ALCENA’S EYES

Melissa Alcena is a Bahamian portrait and documentary photographer based in Nassau, The Bahamas. Alcena’s practice is the lens through which she reintroduces herself to the Bahamian landscape.

Through this exploration and reintroduction, she documents people in situ, expanding the visual tropes often exported from the Caribbean. Stylistically, she grounds the image in chiaroscuro while balancing the natural colors of the terrain. Often in conversation with her subjects, Alcena’s photographs are a testament to kinship and an ode to the landscape. - Tern Gallery

Photographer 📸 @melalcena

Liberation, liberty, libre, livros, love… Liberatu

Liberation, liberty, libre, livros, love… Liberatum. The fact that a deeply insecure, shy, moneyless, traumatised, queer kid from Calcutta, helped by a committed woman - my grandmother - even managed to dream of a big world out there and then go and make his dreams come true is nothing short of a miracle. Thank you, Amma. Thank you, India. Thank you to everyone who helped me along the way. Even those I don’t have in my life anymore. You are all part of the story. I don’t know what success is when it comes to me. I don’t understand when friends talk about my achievements. What achievement. But running an independent organisation in culture since 2001 through hugely painful and difficult phases without selling my soul to corporations perhaps is what I’m most proud of.

I created Liberatum 25 years ago to connect the world through artistic paths. In my own small way. From Papua New Guinea to Venice. From Brazil to Turkey. To bring communities together. To raise consciousness. I still feel I am just beginning. 25 years feels unreal. I have never liked the easy route. Not once taken one. The destination continues to be curiosity.

Thank you Lucas for showing me that the brightest light exists even in complete darkness.

Pablo Ganguli

LIBERATUM PIONEER AWARD FOR LEE DANIELS. PRESENTED

LIBERATUM PIONEER AWARD FOR LEE DANIELS. PRESENTED BY DEBI MAZAR.

In partnership with Pure Land Foundation @thepurelandfoundation

Lee Daniels is recognised for bold, uncompromising filmmaking that has consistently brought subjects largely absent from mainstream American film and television into major public view, including Precious, The Butler and Empire. Daniels’ insistence on depicting Black life, trauma, sexuality and family with candour, at scale and without dilution, has opened space within the industry for narratives previously considered commercially untenable. His selection reflects Liberatum’s recognition of filmmakers who have used popular form to carry unpopular truths.

The Liberatum Pioneer Awards are designed by Svetlana K-Liée @official.k.liee

✨🤍 🕊️ 🐞 🌎

Director of Cultural Production @alonsoteruel
Chief Creative Officer @lucasvilas.bs
Beauty @armanibeauty
Talent and Media Director @elena.taboada
Venice Producer @totodamosto
Photographer @bestatue
Videographer @lavinia_xausa
Camera @giosperr
Logistics and Travel Manager @mariaguy
Communications Agency @eleventhmillennium
Hospitality @palazzinagrassi

LIBERATUM PIONEER AWARD FOR MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ. PRES

LIBERATUM PIONEER AWARD FOR MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ. PRESENTED BY MARISA BERENSON.

In partnership with Pure Land Foundation @thepurelandfoundation

Marina Abramović is recognised for her remarkable artistry that has, since the 1970s, established performance art as a discipline in its own right and expanded its vocabulary further than any of her contemporaries. Abramović’s practice has repeatedly used duration, presence and physical risk to examine the relationship between artist and audience, and her influence now extends well beyond performance art into the wider language of contemporary visual culture. This year, she became the first living woman artist to be honoured with a major solo exhibition at Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia, in its more than 250-year history. Her selection reflects Liberatum’s long-standing interest in artists who have made the body itself a site of meaning.

The Liberatum Pioneer Awards are designed by Svetlana K-Liée @official.k.liee

✨🤍 🕊️ 🐞 🌎

Director of Cultural Production @alonsoteruel
Chief Creative Officer @lucasvilas.bs
Beauty @armanibeauty
Talent and Media Director @elena.taboada
Venice Producer @totodamosto
Photographer @bestatue
Videographer @lavinia_xausa
Camera @giosperr
Logistics and Travel Manager @mariaguy
Communications Agency @eleventhmillennium
Hospitality @palazzinagrassi

LIBERATUM PIONEER AWARD FOR NADINE LABAKI. PRESENT

LIBERATUM PIONEER AWARD FOR NADINE LABAKI. PRESENTED BY ROSSY DE PALMA.

In partnership with Pure Land Foundation @thepurelandfoundation

Nadine Labaki is recognised for a body of work including Capernaum and Where Do We Go Now? that has carried stories from Lebanon and the wider Middle East to international audiences on their own terms. Labaki’s films combine documentary rigour with narrative craft to address displacement, poverty and conflict without sentimentality,
and have positioned her among the most significant filmmakers working from the region today. Her selection reflects Liberatum’s continued commitment to voices that use cinema as an instrument of witness to promote empathy and social change.

The Liberatum Pioneer Awards are designed by Svetlana K-Liée @official.k.liee

✨🤍 🕊️ 🐞 🌎

Director of Cultural Production @alonsoteruel
Chief Creative Officer @lucasvilas.bs
Beauty @armanibeauty
Talent and Media Director @elena.taboada
Venice Producer @totodamosto
Photographer @bestatue
Videographer @lavinia_xausa
Camera @giosperr
Logistics and Travel Manager @mariaguy
Communications Agency @eleventhmillennium
Hospitality @palazzinagrassi

LIBERATUM ART & CINEMA: One magical night in Venic

LIBERATUM ART & CINEMA: One magical night in Venice.

The glorious cast: Michèle Lamy @lalamichmich, Marisa Schiaparelli Berenson, Nadine Labaki, Svetlana K-Liée, Rossy de Palma, Marina Abramović, Bruno Wang, Jessica Sofia Mitrani, Andrea Pallaoro, Ilaria Bernadini, Angela Missoni, Lady Monika Bacardi, Toto Bergamo Rossi, Federico Marchetti, Kateryna Filippi, Lee Daniels, Lucas Vilas, Todd Eckert, Alonso Dominguez, Debi Mazar, Myra Fiori and Sevdaliza.

In partnership with Pure Land Foundation @thepurelandfoundation

✨🤍 🕊️ 🐞 🌎

Director of Cultural Production @alonsoteruel
Chief Creative Officer @lucasvilas.bs
Beauty @armanibeauty
Talent and Media Director @elena.taboada
Venice Producer @totodamosto
Photographer @bestatue
Videographer @lavinia_xausa
Camera @giosperr
Logistics and Travel Manager @mariaguy
Communications Agency @eleventhmillennium
Hospitality @palazzinagrassi

Liberatum Art & Cinema: The Pioneer Awards in part

Liberatum Art & Cinema: The Pioneer Awards in partnership with Pure Land Foundation. Russian artist Svetlana K-Liée designed the awards as part of her sculpture series entitled ‘Spiders-Berries’ which examines the Earth as an ancient female origin through the law of exchange between the planet and the living being.

✨🤍 🕊️ 🐞 🌎

Director of Cultural Production @alonsoteruel
Chief Creative Officer @lucasvilas.bs
Beauty @armanibeauty
Talent and Media Director @elena.taboada
Venice Producer @totodamosto
Photographer @bestatue
Videographer @lavinia_xausa
Camera @giosperr
Logistics and Travel Manager @mariaguy
Communications Agency @eleventhmillennium
Hospitality @palazzinagrassi

Liberatum Art & Cinema: Sevdaliza on The Miracle o

Liberatum Art & Cinema: Sevdaliza on The Miracle of Life

🦋✨🐝🩶

Talent @sevdaliza
Partner @thepurelandfoundation
Chief Creative Officer @lucasvilas.bs
Director @lavinia_xausa
Camera @giosperr
Beauty @armanibeauty

Liberatum Art & Cinema: The Pioneer Awards last ni

Liberatum Art & Cinema: The Pioneer Awards last night with Pure Land Foundation at Palazzina Grassi in Venice, Italy @thepurelandfoundation

Liberatum Pioneer Awards designer Svetlana K-Liée joins Myra Fiori, Artist in Residence at Liberatum, Marina Abramovic and Marisa Berenson. Other honourees, participants and guests included Debi Mazar, Nadine Labaki, Lee Daniels, Youssef Nabil and Rossy de Palma.

✨🤍 🕊️ 🐞 🌎

Director of Cultural Production @alonsoteruel
Chief Creative Officer @lucasvilas.bs
Beauty @armanibeauty
Talent and Media Director @elena.taboada
Venice Producer @totodamosto
Photographer @bestatue
Videographer @lavinia_xausa
Camera @giosperr
Logistics and Travel Manager @mariaguy
Communications Agency @eleventhmillennium
Hospitality @palazzinagrassi

Last night in Venice was pure joy! Liberatum Art &

Last night in Venice was pure joy! Liberatum Art & Cinema and the Liberatum Pioneer Awards in Venice honouring Marina Abramović, Lee Daniels and Nadine Labaki, in partnership with Pure Land Foundation @thepurelandfoundation

✨🤍 🕊️ 🐞 🌎

Director of Cultural Production @alonsoteruel
Chief Creative Officer @lucasvilas.bs
Beauty @armanibeauty
Talent and Media Director @elena.taboada
Venice Producer @totodamosto
Photographer @bestatue
Videographer @lavinia_xausa
Camera @giosperr
Logistics and Travel Manager @mariaguy
Communications Agency @eleventhmillennium
Hospitality @palazzinagrassi

Liberatum Art & Cinema Liberatum 25th Anniversary

Liberatum Art & Cinema
Liberatum 25th Anniversary
7th September 2026
At @palazzinagrassi Venice, Italy

We continue to spread love and light in the world through the cultural lens and we remain committed to build bridges with countries and communities worldwide to raise consciousness.

✨🤍 🕊️ 🐞 🌎

Director of Cultural Production @alonsoteruel
Creative Producer @lucasvilas.bs
Talent and Media Director @elena.taboada
Venice Producer @totodamosto
Photographer @bestatue
Videographer @lavinia_xausa
Logistics and Event Manager @mariaguy
Communications Agency @eleventhmillennium

LIBERATUM ANNOUNCES SEVDALIZA FOR ITS ART & CINEMA

LIBERATUM ANNOUNCES SEVDALIZA FOR ITS ART & CINEMA PROGRAMME IN VENICE

LIBERATUM ART & CINEMA, the inaugural edition of Liberatum’s new multidisciplinary programme will bring together visual artists, filmmakers and cultural figures during the Venice Film Festival on 7th September 2026.

Conceived to mark the organisation’s twenty-fifth anniversary, the programme extends Liberatum’s long-standing work in cultural diplomacy into a dedicated platform for the intersection of visual art and cinema. The artistic programme will include artists and international voices from Lebanon to the United States.

Sevdaliza is an Iranian artist, producer, and entrepreneur whose work transcends music, art, and performance. Known for her boundary-pushing sound and striking visual universe, she has built a world entirely her own, one where vulnerability, identity, femininity, and transformation become powerful forms of expression. Sevdaliza continues to challenge conventions while inspiring a global audience to embrace their own complexity. @sevdaliza

LIBERATUM ANNOUNCES DEBI MAZAR FOR ITS ART & CINEM

LIBERATUM ANNOUNCES DEBI MAZAR FOR ITS ART & CINEMA PROGRAMME IN VENICE

LIBERATUM ART & CINEMA, the inaugural edition of Liberatum’s new multidisciplinary programme will bring together visual artists, filmmakers and cultural figures during the Venice Film Festival on 7th September 2026.

Conceived to mark the organisation’s twenty-fifth anniversary, the programme extends Liberatum’s long-standing work in cultural diplomacy into a dedicated platform for the intersection of visual art and cinema. The artistic programme will include artists and international voices from Colombia to the United States.

Debi Mazar is an acclaimed actress, producer and television personality whose career spans more than four decades. A native New Yorker, she made her feature film debut in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and has appeared in more than 70 film and television productions, including HBO’s Entourage and Darren Star’s Younger. Her career has included collaborations with celebrated directors including Michael Mann, Spike Lee, Cameron Crowe and Oliver Stone.

Before becoming an actress, Mazar was part of New York’s vibrant downtown scene of the 1980s, working as a makeup artist and immersing herself in the city’s art, music, fashion and club culture.

Beyond acting, Mazar has built a celebrated career around food, Italian culture and storytelling. Together with her husband, Tuscan chef Gabriele Corcos, she created and produced Under the Tuscan Gun, which evolved into the Cooking Channel series Extra Virgin. Their cookbook, Extra Virgin: Recipes & Love from Our Tuscan Kitchen, became a New York Times bestseller.

Mazar has also been an outspoken supporter of HIV/AIDS awareness and related causes since the 1980s, drawing on her personal experience of losing many friends to the epidemic.

In 2026, Mazar continues to embrace an exciting new chapter in her career. She served on the jury at the 2026 Tribeca Festival and has several new film projects in the works, including Netflix’s The Last Mrs. Parrish and The Housewife. With her trademark energy, versatility and passion for storytelling, Mazar remains a compelling creative force. @debimazar

LIBERATUM ANNOUNCES ROSSY DE PALMA FOR ITS ART & C

LIBERATUM ANNOUNCES ROSSY DE PALMA FOR ITS ART & CINEMA PROGRAMME IN VENICE

LIBERATUM ART & CINEMA, the inaugural edition of Liberatum’s new multidisciplinary programme will bring together visual artists, filmmakers and cultural figures during the Venice Film Festival on 7th September 2026.

Conceived to mark the organisation’s twenty-fifth anniversary, the programme extends Liberatum’s long-standing work in cultural diplomacy into a dedicated platform for the intersection of visual art and cinema. The artistic programme will include artists and international voices from Colombia to the United States

Rossy de Palma is a multifaceted artist and a fashion icon who has become one of Spanish cinema’s most distinctive figures. Muse to Almodóvar, she has starred in eleven of his films, alongside work with directors, designers and photographers including Robert Altman, Terry Gilliam, Marjane Satrapi, Amanda Sthers , Patrice Leconte, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Sybilla, Thierry Mugler, Alaïa. Herb Ritts, Outumuro, Bruce Weber and Mikael Jansson among others.

She was named UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Cultural Diversity in October 2022, and in May 2022 presided over the Caméra d’Or jury at the Cannes Film Festival. @rossydpalma

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ABOUT
THE WORLD OF LIBERATUM
GLOBAL FESTIVALS
NEWS
CULTURAL HONOUR
FEATURES
FILMS
VIDEOS
LIFESAVING CONVERSATIONS
LIBERATUM FOUNDATION
COLLABORATIONS
PARTICIPANTS
PARTNERS
CONTACT
HOME

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