FILMKLUB 2013 at Weltmuseum Wien
PROGRAMME
18.04.2013
SEASONS OF MIGRATION
John Bishop | USA 2009 | 56 Min. | OmeU
Seasons of Migration shows Sophilene Cheam Shapiro’s four-part classical Cambodian dance of the same name and how it finds inspiration and is reflective of the real-life culture shock as experienced by Cambodian-American residents of Long Beach, California (the largest Cambodian city outside of Cambodia). It blends the dance with commentary about the music and choreography, and personal stories of emigration and culture shock. The dance uses a classical music and movement vocabulary to address contemporary themes.
13.06.2013 – JUNGE PERSPEKTIVEN
NATURE’S KID
Cai Jie | China 2012 | 28 Min. | OmeU
“Warum sind wir lebende Buddhas?” fragt der 14-jährige Dawa seinen Zwillingsbruder Nyima. Die beiden leben im Taga Tempel, einem isolierten Ort auf 3804 Metern Höhe, der das gesamte Jahr in Nebel getaucht ist. Dort verbringen sie das Ende ihrer Kindheit. Jeden Tag machen sie, was andere Kinder auch tun – kochen, die buddhistische Lehre studieren, spielen. Aber ihre Natur und Weisheit unterscheiden sie von den anderen. Dawa und Nyima mögen die Einsamkeit im Wald: “Jedes Mal, wenn ich ein Tier treffe, fühle ich, dass ich es bin und es ich.”
Tag für Tag, durch die Interaktion mit Buddhas und der Natur, konnten Dawa und Nyima innere Zufriedenheit gewinnen. Eines Tages wurde eine neue Regelung eingeführt, die besagt, dass Kinder unter 18 Jahren nicht mehr im Tempel leben dürfen. Diese Veränderung bedroht das friedvolle Leben im Tempel. Die Kinder haben beschlossen, dieses Problem durch die Kraft ihres Glaubens zu lösen. Der Prozess des Erwachsenwerdens macht ihnen ihr eigenes Schicksal bewusster und erlaubt ihnen sowohl mehr über die Welt zu verstehen, als auch ihrer Natur zu folgen.
18.07.2013
PROMISE AND UNREST
Alan Grossman | Philippines 2010 | 79 Min. | OmeU
Through struggle and sacrifice migrant women often stand as sole breadwinners in the transnational family. Separated from her daughter Gracelle at 7 months, Noemi Barredo left the Philippines for work in Malaysia before arriving in Ireland in 2000. Filmed over a five-year period, “Promise and Unrest” is an intimate portrayal of a migrant woman performing caregiving and long-distance motherhood, while assuming the responsibility of providing for her extended family in Philippines. Through the camera lens, the film observes the everyday contours of Noemi and Gracelle’s relationship, their subsequent reunion in Ireland through the “right to family reunification”, and the beginnings of a domestic life together in the same country for the first time. The film’s narrative arc is shaped by the mother-daughter voiceover scripted by Noemi and Gracelle themselves, deliberately staged in two languages: the mother tongue Waray dialect spoken by Noemi in dialogue with an emerging adolescent and accented English – a new and acquired idiom that Gracelle is forced to learn in a new country. Neither had read each other’s script in advance and it was only when they viewed the film together, did they learn what the other thought and experienced in both the distant past and immediate present.
22.08.2013
ART ON THE ROAD
Barbara Nickl | Mexico, Great Britain 2012 | 9 Min. | OmeU
A film about travelling and the desire to move. The subject is the lifestyle of Artesanos – young Latinos or Europeans, travelling around Latin America, selling their hand-made jewelry in order to fund their rather nomadic lifestyle. The experimental documentary, containing Super 8 footage, digital photographs and sound recordings has been produced in order to acquire a Master`s degree in Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester in summer 2011 in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico. It reveals the stories and thoughts of 5 different Artesanos of different backgrounds and age. All of them are living the same lifestyle and come together at Santo Domingo market in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico. The film is a journey in itself. From the departure and rather intangible journey driven by romantic ideas about travelling, cultures and nature, to the arrival in a city and the display of the goods at the market – the only moment in the Artesanos’ lives of visibility in and tangible for the public – and back to the intangibility of another departure towards an uncertain destination and future.
THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED
Andy Lawrence | Great Britain 2011 | 70 Min. | OmeU
A film about one man’s journey across northern India and his search for enlightenment. Rajive McMullen, a history teacher suffering from a debilitating illness, makes the painful journey into the heart of Tantra, searching for meaning in holy shrines, coming close to death in cremation grounds and enjoying the chaos of the Aghori seekers. This film offers dramatic insight into Tantric ideas about the life cycle, particularly death, and contributes much to our understanding of how we seek knowledge and how we die.
The Lover and The Beloved also represents a realistic attempt to understand both the practice and illusive theory behind Indian Tantrism, and is intended to challenge widespread Western misinterpretations of this system of thought. Along the way we visit Kamakhya Devi in Assam and Tarapith in West Bengal, two of the most important centers of Tantric Hinduism.
19.09.2013
TENERE: MAPPING THE DESERT
Edward Owles | Libya 2011 | 25 Min. | OmeU
The film lyrically explores differing attitudes towards the “cultural landscape” of the Libyan Sahara held by a group of European visitors to the region as well as the Tuareg “locals” who guide them. Experimentally filmed and edited, it explores the extent to which we can seek to record the natural environment as a scientific domain, and what this means for the people who live there. The film was made within the context of an Oxford University archaeology trip researching the rock art of the area.
EDUCATION SANS EXCISION
Lukas May | Senegal, Germany 2010 | 60 Min. | OmeU
At the beginning of the year 2010, the Singer Sister Fa and her band, with the support of the NGO Tostan and other organizations, realized a tour through the Senegal with the Title “Education without circumcision – a project to raise awareness to end FGM (Female Genital Mutilation)”. For this purpose, they held concerts in Dakar and the Casamance region, as well as organizing discussions and film screenings about the subject. This film accompanies this committed and successful project.
17.10.2013
Y TAMBIEN GAELLE
Natalie J. Halla | Spain 2011 | 65 Min. | OmdU
In 2010, an earthquake shook Haiti, thus reducing the poorest country on the American continent to rubble. A team of Spanish firefighters, accompanied by their rescue dog Turco, became the protagonists of a rescue well documented by the media: two-year old Redjeson was found alive 48 hours after the earthquake, quickly becoming a symbol of hope. One year after the tragedy, when the world seems to have forgotten about the little island, three Spanish firefighters decide to return to search for Redjeson but also to try to heal their wounds.
14.11. 2013 – STUDENT’S CORNER– Filme junger Kultur- und SozialanthropologInnen
SUMA QAMANA
Ane Lyngstad Oltedal | Norway 2012 | 29 Min. | OmeU
In the Bolivian indigenous and revolutionary city of El Alto activism has become a way of life, pushing for change, holding people together and demanding respect in an existence market characterized by poverty and discrimination. Their activism is a fight for the good life. Yet the active, political, reflective, communally oriented life is itself part of what constitutes “good living”. Two residents give us a glimpse into their daily life and struggles, sharing their reflections on activism, city life, change, respect, ideals, and hope.
MUJERES PA’LANTE – WOMEN MOVING FORWARD
Tanja Wol Sorensen | Great Britain 2012 | 29 Min. | OmeU
Through the stories of three Latin American women living in Barcelona, who all form part of the Mujeres Pa´lante association, the film provides an insight into the reality of being a migrant woman and a domestic worker in Spain today. The audience learns about their motivations for crossing oceans to live in Catalonia, and why they choose to keep living outside their native country. Despite the discrimination and abuse they experience, these women are actively trying to improve the rights and conditions for themselves and for others.
TENDER KISSES ARE HARD TO FIND
Ines Ponte | Portugal, Great Britain 2011 | 18 Min. | OmeU
This film shows the filmmakers’ grandparents in their daily lives. They have known one another since childhood. Of very different characters, the familiarity underpinning their relationship has been crafted through time. This refers to both – the small episodes of everyday life, as well as the longer duration of their lives.
12.12.2013
TAGWERK
Jakob Brossmann | Austria 2011 | 52 Min. | OmdU
Work pursued regularly has a formative impact on people. It dictates their daily rhythm and the parameters of their immediate environment. Thus work articulates the contradicting coexistence of human lives, while perhaps also creating it. The “Salzburg Festival” fall into the Ramadan and Ali, delivering an Austrian daily, fasts all day. He shares a one-bedroom apartment with three friends, and the bicycle that he drives to the city center everyday at 2am doesn’t have brakes. In the afternoon while he plays cricket with his friends, Helmuth gets into his car to drive from his country home to the city printing office. Soon the press run starts. Meanwhile Hedwig rushes to her next deadline. The sponsoring-back-out from Credit Swiss possibly endangers the completion of an Artwork by Christian Boltanski. After interviews and meetings, she has written an article and planned the agenda for the culture editorial department. Now she’s rushing off to the “Salzburger Festspiele” – her workday won’t be over until the paper’s newest issue is distributed throughout the still sleeping city. Following the tradition of working-class documentaries, “A Day’s Work” accompanies these highly diverse lives for a day. The uncommented observation of the protagonists’ everyday life reveals the interdependence of culture and work, of society and economics.
