Kiltr@
SIN KABEZA Productions
2012

24:54 min
16/9
CHILE/USA
Directors: Lissette Olivares & Cheto Castellano
Genre: Documentary, Multispecies Activism, Ecological Ethnography, Anthrozoology

Kiltr@ is an emotive journey in search of alternate kinship approaches between people and street dogs. Through a series of interviews with artists, cultural institutions, and their companion species, as well as primary footage of dogs who live beyond the borders of domestic life in Santiago de Chile, we explore the co-evolutionary relationships between kiltr@s and »humans«, looking for clues about how they help each other to survive.
Etymologically, the term »quiltro« comes from Mapundungun (Mapuche indigenous language) and was once used to classify a mixed breed of small furry dogs. In its everyday use Kiltro is a term that codifies species and racial hybridity and that translates as mutt, mongrel, or mixed breed. Kiltro is also the most common term used to classify the roughly half a million »homeless« or street dogs found across Chile. Kiltro is often used as a slur with a derogatory undertone, to devalue dogs without pedigree, or when used to refer to people who are of mixed race or who have indigenous ancestry. In this project we hope to resuscitate Kiltr@ as a decolonization term, that resists colonial and modern notions of purity across nature, culture, race, ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality, and that reminds us of our co-constituted and co-evolutionary subjectivities.