Cineteca de Madrid - Ciclo DOCMA (2021-Present)

Curation of a monthly documentary series premiering in Madrid, film criticism writing, moderation of Q&A.

Recent titles include: Una Sombra Oscilante by Celeste Rojas Mugica, Negro limbo by Lorenzo Benítez, Hija del volcán by Jenifer de la Rosa Martín, Soc filla de ma mare by Laura García Pérez

DOC NYC - Kaleidoscope Competition (2021-Present)

Films premiered include: The Falling Sky by Eryk Rocha, Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, Welcome Interplanetary and Sidereal Space Conquerors by Andrés Jurado, Afterwar by Brirgitte Staermose, Dark Light Voyage by Tim Dirdamar & Eva Cadena, For Your Peace Of Mind, Make Your Own Museum by Pilar Moreno & Ana Endara, Mother Lode by Matteo Tortone, Nuestra Pelicula by Diana Bustamante, White Night by Tania Ximena & Yollotl Gómez Alvarado.

Healing Portals - Union Docs (2023)

How can we define ritual? How are artists using ritual in their work to affect emotional states and physical processes? Can we think about conscious and unconscious processes being expressed in ritualized actions while embedded and represented through video and cinema? Screening was part of the workshop and public program Ritual and Magic: Portals for Audiovisual Creation & Healing, with films by Andrés Senra, Raisa Maudit, Tiffany Hopkins, Theo Cuthand, Ruth Somalo & Bradley Eros.

Filming One's Own Ghosts - Union Docs (2023)

An evening of cinema and conversation with Helena De Llanos as we screen her feature documentary film Journey to Somewhere

Absence, Space and Memory in Documentary Cinema - Cuéntalo (2021)

Curator of the film Section of the Cuéntalo Festival of Narratives, presenting the programs: “Absence, Space and Memory in Documentary Cinema” Logroño City Council, Spain, 2020

Family, History and Affect in Documentary Cinema - Cuéntalo (2020)

Family is our origin and our destiny. It is a huge mirror in which we can see ourselves. It is the worn photo album of our past and the intuition of what we will be in the future. It is the warmest of shelters and the place to which it sometimes hurts to return. It is a deep sea that holds more doubts than certainties. There are as many types of family relationships as there are families, and it is this plurality that underpins this new documentary film series, which uses original narrative strategies to address family legacy, neglect, and abandonment, new domestic rituals during the pact of silence of the transition, secrets, the duality between biological and adoptive motherhood, attachment to those who care for us, the need for redemption, and romantic love. Series curated in collaboration with Patricia Andrés

Tell Me When You Die: Politics, Performance and Queer Love in the Time of Capitalism - Union Docs (2019)

An evening curated by Ruth Somalo to traverse the space between physical limitations and freedom politically and corporally. Filmmakers Amber Bemak and Nadia Granados will be present for the world premiere of “Tell Me When You Die“, a trilogy of performative films that reframe porn as a genre which can be empowering in its engagement with women and their bodies. Bemak and Granados work collaboratively with text, language, and the body to illustrate the colonial narratives that are still deeply entrenched and grappled with amongst minorities. Ruth joined Amber and Nadia in conversation to discuss the politics and reclamation of the nude body as a site for empowerment and experimentation within filmmaking.

From Utopia to Queer Utopia - Union Docs (2018)

Ruth Somalo presents the work of Andrés Senra.

From Utopia to queer Utopia presents two works born out of Andrés' research about the city as a body where social, political and economical tensions are acting and being projected onto. His process involves a mixture of documentation, archive, fiction, reality and poetry. Auslandia: Paraiso is a performative work of speculative fiction where an originally utopian community goes through a full civilization cycle ending up in violence. Kommune is a film about the Birth of a new city, based under the common interest of creating a utopia established on the most radical freedom. A project about the very concept of utopia, its limits and possibilities, in relation to the history of Western thought and literature. The Free Town of Christiania is a self-managed city of about 900 residents in Christianshavn district in the capital of Denmark, Copenhagen. Christiania proclaimed itself an independent community on September 26, 1970. The history of Christiania begins with the occupation of a military abandoned area by parents who were claiming for spaces where their children could play. Senra created a series of portraits about notions that should be considered when talking about how a community works: feelings, structure, empowerment, urbanity, architecture, design, dreams, nature, expectations, agreements, organization, fears and inside / outside the city.

HOLY FLUIDS - Union Docs (2018)

Bodily fluids, like emotions, flow, seep, infiltrate. And if they belong to the female body they are systematically controlled, judged, stigmatized. Even today, the way that our fluids are understood is not a universal scientific concept, but emerged from our own history and cultural concepts. Re addressing one’s own body perceptions and reclaiming our secretions help us confront the notion of the body as a passive object that could be abused, transformed and subjugated.

How do misconceptions on the female body shape the cultural position of women? UnionDocs is excited to present Holy Fluids and Absent Wounds, a program by filmmaker & curator Ruth Somalo that presents the work of seven filmmakers that directly or indirectly deal with the female body, its secretions, its functions and its representation.

Work included the US premiere of Neither Spring Nor Estuary by Brazilian filmmaker and anthropologist Valentina Homem; Absent Wound by Iranian filmmaker Maryam Tafakory and Infinite Galatea by the french-spanish team of Julia Maura in collaboration with Mariangela Pluchino, Ambra Reijnen, Maria Chatzi, and Fátima Flores Rojas.  These three amazing works of video are presented in a rhythmic conversation with the alchemic 16mm films of British animator extraordinaire Vicky Smith (Noisy Licking, Dribbling and Spitting, Rash and Sobbing, spitting, scratching) and the powerfully incisive cinematic statement that is Toxic Shock by Vanessa Renwick. Vanessa and Vicky were in conversation with curator Ruth Somalo.

DocumentaMadrid - Cineteca (2017-2019, 2023-Present)

Ruth is a programmer for DOCUMENTAMADRID, a festival organized by the Madrid City Council and dedicated to multiple expressions of documentary film and the search for itineraries of the reality that are open to the genre’s new languages and expressions.

Ruth has worked under the artistic direction of Andrea Guzmán and David Varela, and currently works with director Luís Parés in curating retrospectives, selecting the films for the official sections, writing texts for the catalogue and moderating post screening discusions.

BROKEN SENSES - 2017 Flaherty NYC Winter/Spring Season - Anthology Film Archives (2017)

BROKEN SENSES explores the relationships between the senses, knowledge, the creation of memory, and our experience in understanding the world. How does one represent sense memory? Can one identify with sense memories one has never had through the experiences of hearing, touch, smell, taste, vision, kinesthesis, and altered states? Through personal and historical experiences, ranging from the joyful to the solemn, these embodied interventions conjure affective strategies to address blindness, sexuality, government surveillance, family, aging processes, death and grief, bliss, trauma, love, fear, and spiritual awakening.

Artists include: Xander Marro, Dryden Goodwin, Roddy Bogawa, Steve Reinke, Clint Enns, Chris Marker, Ivana Larrosa, NazlıDinçel, Guido Hendrikx, Mea de Jong, Sophie Calle, Sandra Ruesga, Mareike Bernien, Kerstin Schroedinger, Soda_Jerk, Mónica Savirón, Luis Parés, Jorge Leon, Eric Stewart, Peter Tscherkassky, Ruth Patir, Jay Rosenblatt, Jonathan Schwartz, Chu-Li Shewring and Adam Gutch

The Limit of our Gaze: Women Filmmakers and Contemporary Documentary in Spain - KJCC (2015)

Curator of The Limit of Our Gaze: Spanish Women Filmmakers and Contemporary Documentary Symposium, Sponsored by NYU King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, NYU Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E). With the presence of Mercedes Álvarez, Neus Ballús, Cecilia Barriga, Virginia García del Pino, Pilar Monsell, and Sandra Ruesga. Curated with Lur Olaizola.