Videos from latin America often differ from European or North American works. They are unwieldy, more difficult to decipher, yet also of a sometimes surprising formal lightness. Many videos are politically oriented dealing with topics of the respective country that result from the hot-cold treatments of dictatorship and democracy. Latin American videos are, in a way, devoid of history having, nevertheless, a history of their own: Because of the political changes, no continuity of developing video could be established, impossible to get in contact with foreign video makers whose works were often not even known. And what’s more, the political situation often even oppressed any exchange among themselves. Chile has a long tradition of working with video. Under Pinochet’s regime, a sophisticated underground network for distributing tapes existed, serving the opposition. Contents were important, the formal language corresponded to conditions similar to “Guerilla Tapes” as analysed by Faber/Horsfield in their article on the history of video in the USA: it was either consciously antitelevision, or it was just lousy quality because of the fact that the tapes had to be produced secretly, even risking life. The VideoFest will screen a number of Latin American tapes without attempting to be representative. They will be commented by Eduardo Milewicz and Maria Civale, Media Buenos Aires, and by Harmut Horst, MedienOperative, an expert on the Brazilian video scene.