The Wireless Set
Year: 2023
Length: 32 minutes
Director/filmmaker: Esme Andrews Producer/production company: UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Country of production: Norway Country/location of film: Scotland
Like many island communities, residents of the Orkney Islands, Scotland are acutely aware of the urban-rural dynamic at play in our ever-globalised world. This character-driven film comes as a contribution to an ongoing conversation – one concerning healthcare provision
for ageing residents of the archipelago’s non-linked isles. It understands this geographical disparity in light of globalisation and the way in which space is perceived from various perspectives of centrality, rurality and mobility. The film follows a summer in the lives of three locals with the intention to re-centre the discourse around healthcare provision and provide an image of the island experience for non-local decision-makers. The camera’s power to listen moves the story onto deeper universal topics of ageing and dying.
Esme Andrews grew up in the Orkney Islands, Scotland. She has an undergraduate degree in anthropology from the University of Aberdeen and a background of freelance photography and videography. As part of a Masters in Visual Anthropology (UiT The Arctic University of Norway) she created both The Bicycle Repairman, a short film capturing the spirit of a family-run workshop, and her master film The Wireless Set. It explores the experience of ageing on one of Orkney’s non-linked isles, where accessing health care can be complicated. The project is part of a larger effort to help re-centre the islands voice in an increasingly centralised archipelago.
Being screened Saturday 26 August at 10.00 at the Ethnographic Exploratory, Copenhagen University
Talking Dreams
Year: 2021
Length: 37 minutes
Director/filmmaker: Bruno Rocchi Producer/production company: Afterdark
Country of production: Italy
Country/location of film: Senegal, Guinea Conakry
In a village in West Africa, dreams play a key role. In the evening, on local radio, neighbours call up to recount their oneiric visions. On the other end of the line, the host of the show answers the telephone while a woman, sitting next to him, carefully listens to each of the voices criss-crossing the darkness of the night before interpreting their words. Simultaneously, we follow the account of a man who dreamed one day of leaving his native Senegal to go and live in Europe, and who has not found the happiness he expected there.
Bruno Rocchi is a teacher in primary school. He made the reportage Monte Gourougou and in 2015 produced Bled el Makhzen, a documentary about power and economy in northern Morocco. In 2020 he finished Talking Dreams, about dream interpretation in Senegal.
Being screened Saturday 26 August at around 10.45 at the Ethnographic Exploratory, Copenhagen University
The body won’t close
Year: 2021
Length: 74 minutes
Director/filmmaker: Mattijs Van de Port
Producer/production company: Mattijs Van de Port, RAI Country of production: The Netherlands Country/location of film: Brazil
The Body Won’t Close is a poetic exploration of the dilemma’s that follow from the fact that human bodies are highly porous entities, intimately connected to the world. The film follows the legend of Besouro Mangangá, a black capoeira player who had invoked all of Bahia’s magic to close his body. No bullets, no knives or daggers could pierce his
skin. But then Besouro’s enemies send a beautiful woman his way, knowing that magical protections are undone in the sexual act … In the film, men in the Bahian town of Santo
Amaro recount the story of Besouro Mangangá. They reflect on the dangers of their violent and precarious lifeworld, and how they have to perform a never-ending balancing act: shielding themselves to make it through the day, while finding ways to open themselves up to the wonders of the world.
Mattijs van de Port is a filmmaker and visual anthropologist at the University of Amsterdam and the VUUniversity. He did fieldwork in Serbia, the Netherlands and since 2001 in Brazil. He is the author of three monographs and made several films, including Saborear Frutas Brasileiras (2013) and the essay films The Possibility of Spirits (2016), Knots and Holes (2018) and The Body Won’t Close (2021). The latter was awarded the Basil Wright Film Prize from the Royal Anthropological Institute and The Excellence in Visual Anthropology Award from the Ethnocineca Festival in Vienna.
Being screened Saturday 26 August at 12.00 at the Ethnographic Exploratory, Copenhagen University
Ashes living in cracks and hollows
Year: 2023
Length: 29 minutes
Director/filmmaker: Haruka Fukao
Distribution company: UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Country of production: Norway Country/location of film: Japan
A filmmaker followed a Japanese couple who experienced the bereavement of two children. The film shows how a couple scatters the children’s ashes and greets them. This film tries to show how the couple perceives scattering of the ashes as an expression of the indivisibility of life and death (purity and danger) in the circulation of nature. This brings existential questions. Another side is how to break the peer pressure to create an alternative way to stay with the deceased adequately. Scattering the ashes is recognised as an alternative way and a not so common practice in Japan. Why do people do it?
Haruka Fukao graduated from Bergen University with an MA in Fine Art. She studied Visual Anthropology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and Ashes living in cracks and hollows is her master film. She is interested in Substance, an original identity constructed before the social identities (definitions/function/
nationality/gender…) come. The idea comes from Taoism, Mono-ha and Zen Buddhism. She seeks to reveal the Substance of people/objects by finding new identities of herself or objects.
Being screened Saturday 26 August at 12.25 at the Ethnographic Exploratory, Copenhagen University
Twice Colonized
Year: 2023
Length: 91 minutes
Director/filmmaker: Lin Alluna Producer/production company: Ánorâk Film, Emile Hertling Péronard
Country of production: Denmark, Greenland Country/location of film: Denmark, Greenland, Canada, U.S.A.
Aaju Peter is a force of nature. She is a renowned Greenlandic Inuit lawyer and activist who defends the human rights of Indigenous peoples of the Arctic, and a fierce protector of her ancestral lands. She works to bring her colonizers in both Canada and Denmark to justice, and deploys her effusive spirit and illuminating wit to provoke self-examination and personal responsibility among Westerners for imposing their colonial ways. As Aaju
launches an effort to establish an Indigenous forum at the European Union, she also embarks upon a complex and deeply personal journey to mend her own wounds, including the unexpected passing of her youngest son. In this inspiring, emotionally powerful documentary, the beautiful lens of director Lin Alluna journeys alongside an extraordinary human being as she plumbs through the social and personal wreckage of sanctioned white dominance to find the strength — within her abilities, her community, and her own vulnerabilities — to transform her hardships and painful experiences into something amazing that can inspire others who also struggle with the poisonous effects of colonialism.
Lin Alluna expresses herself through international, character- driven documentaries that dissolves the limits of reality. With her films she aims to portray brave women who want to change the world, while cinematically exploring how to amplify their stories to an audience. Besides directing, she teaches filmmaking and is chair member at the Danish Film Director’s association. She’s a graduate of the prestigious National Film School of Denmark and an alumni/lab fellow at IDFAcademy, UnionDocs, DFI Outreach, Nordic Talents and Circle Doc Accelerator. Her debut feature Twice Colonized premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2023 and was the opening film at CPH:DOX 2023 and HOT DOCS 2023.
Being screened Saturday 26 August at 16.30 at the Cinematheque of the Danish Film Institute
Fonja
Year: 2019
Length: 80 minutes
Director/filmmaker: Lina Zacher Producer/production company: Mio e. V.
Country of production: Madagascar, Germany Country/location of film: Madagascar
Ten juvenile delinquents from the largest detention institution in Madagascar have joined a four-months film production workshop and discover the camera for the first time. It becomes a tool to observe, to document, to play around, to visualize their own ideas, thoughts and to rediscover and learn about their supposedly familiar surrounding through the camera lens. A journey into the daily life of the minors, shaped by their struggles and dreams and their great spirit to invest all of their creativity, energy and inspiration to make her own film.
Lina Zacher is a German filmmaker and artist. After studying art
education, she founded the MIO intercultural multimedia programme
together with Delphine Bishop, providing facilities for young talents. The focus of her work is socio-political subjects and human behaviours in spatial and social contexts through a participatory approach. Her installation media works and participatory works have been exhibited in several exhibitions, in Germany, the Philippines and Madagascar. Her first feature- length film Fonja has won several awards including ‘best world documentary’ at Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival 2019.
Being screened Saturday 26 August at 19.00 at the Cinematheque of the Danish Film Institute