Libertad Gills

Profile

I am a filmmaker, researcher, video essayist and writer on film. I joined the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds as Lecturer in Film Studies – Videographic Criticism in 2025.

Before that, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher for the Future of Cinema & the Audiovisual Arts at the Università della Svizzera italiana, in collaboration with Locarno Film Festival from 2023-2025, and I was a Film Professor at the Universidad de las Artes Ecuador from 2017-2023.

I completed my PhD in Art, Literature and Cultural Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid with a dissertation on reappropriation and archival practices in contemporary experimental film, my MA in Visual Anthropology at FLACSO-Ecuador and my BA in Film Studies at Wesleyan University.

Research interests

My current research is focused on videographic criticism and the reappropriation of archival images in experimental film. I have recently co-edited a double issue of Academic Quarter dedicated to Academic Filmmaking (articles and video essays), co-authored an article on experimental filmmaking as research, and published articles and video essays in the academic journals Short Film Studies, [in]Transition and Tecmerin. I also made a film titled 1922 using only archival materials about Ecuador’s worker’s uprising that year, screened at Mimesis Documentary Film Festival in 2023.

I have also published a book about film criticism in Latin America (La crítica es una escuela, UArtes Ediciones, 2022) and another one on analogue and experimental film practices in Guayaquil, Ecuador (Guayaquil en ruinas, Guayaquil Analógico, 2023). I have shared my research on Ecuadorian cinema at international conferences, most recently at the Orphans Film Symposium at the Museum for the Moving Image in New York City and the AIM Conference in Portugal in 2024, and published a chapter on amateur film from Guayaquil in the book Small(er) Cinemas of the Andes: New Aesthetics, Practices and Platforms (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). In 2024 was invited to give a keynote lecture on film collectives and my work with Guayaquil Analógico at the Winterthur International Short Film Festival in Switzerland.

I was invited to curate a film program for the Cinemateca de Bogotá in November 2024 and have collaborated on curatorial projects including Rialécticas, ULTRACinema México, and Berlin Critics’ Week in 2023. 

<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Some research projects I'm currently working on, or have worked on, will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>

Qualifications

• Postdoc Researcher, Università della Svizzera italiana
• PhD in Art, Literature and Cultural Studies, Universidad Autonóma de Madrid
• MA in Visual Anthropology and Documentary Film, FLACSO-Ecuador
• BA in Film Studies, Wesleyan University

Student education

I lead the module on Videographic Criticism and I currently contribute teaching to modules on topics including videographic criticism and practice-based research.