films listed in chronological screening order.uit.no/content/309895/nafa2012filmcatdes.pdf1 nafa2012...

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Nafa2012 Film Screenings (Tromsø, 23-26 August 2012)

All screenings at Verdensteatret

Films listed in chronological screening order.

Title: Contact

Year: 2009

Length: 78 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Martin Butler/Bentley

Dean

Producer/production company: Contact Films

Country of production: Australia

Country/location of film: Australia

In 1964 Yuwali was 17 when her first contact

with white men was filmed. Her mob of 20

women and children were the last aboriginal

people living traditionally, without any knowledge of modern Australia. Patrol officers were sent to

evacuate their desert home, ahead of rocket tests. Yuwali gives a riveting account of being chased

hundreds of kilometers to escape the ‘devils’ in ‘rocks that move’ (trucks). Now 62, she tells the

story behind this incredible footage

Being screened Thursday 23 August at 14.30

Title: All that glitters

Year: 2003

Length: 33 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Irene Petropolou

Producer/production company: Granada Centre for

Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester

Country of production: UK

Country/location of film: Greece

A cool look at social reality in the balance between

tradition and globalization in the Greek village of

Olympos. In summer, the former inhabitants of the

village leave their countries of adoption to come

back to their roots where, during the glittering festival of the Virgin, they sell handicrafts and the

image of themselves ‘uncontaminated’, in traditional costume. The film shows different points of

view: from the traditional one of the local priest to the economically involved standpoint of the

festival’s organizers; from the mothers, who still believe in certain values, to their daughters, who

scoff at the idea of staying in that little lost village. The tourists, lucky them, believe the fairytale

stage-set and think they are in the place where ‘time stands still’. Being screened Thursday 23 August at 16.30

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Title: The High Cybercafé. Internet ion

the Nepal Himalayas Year: 2012

Length: 28 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Tanel Saimre

Producer/production company: Visual

Cultural Studies, University of Tromsø

Country of production: Norway

Country/location of film: Nepal

Internet and telecommunications have

penetrated the world to a degree of not even being amazing any longer. We take the ability to

connect to people and machines on the other side of the planet for granted. How does this

technology adapt to a mountain village in Nepal, and how does the mountain village adapt itself to

it? The High Cybercafé depicts the lives of two young Nepalis working in a cybercafé in Namche

Bazaar, on the trail to Mount Everest. We see their working day and take a side trip to the computer

lesson at the local elementary school. We witness the change as it happens. Being screened Thursday 23 August at around 17.15

Title: The Honey Hunting

Year: 2011

Length: 14 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Lotta Granbom

Producer/production company:

Department of Social Anthropology,

Lund University

Country of production: Sweden

Country/location of film: Thailand

The Honey Hunting is an ethnographic

film about Musa and his big family

living on the island Ko Lanta in Thailand. Musa lives in a society, which in a few years has become

very popular for tourist to visit. He lives in the only village left on the seaside on the island where

Westerners still haven’t settled. After the tsunami in December 2004, rapid tourism development

impacted significantly on their traditional life-style, a transition into market economy. The increase

in living costs and the decrease in fishing harvest have made Musa find new ways to support his

family. In this film we will follow Musa and his sons collecting honey in the jungle. Being screened Thursday 23 August at around 17.50

Title: Europaland. A Journey into

Popular Cameroonian Imagination

Year: 2011

Length: 30 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Balz Andrea Alter

Producer/production company: Ottou Ottou

André Rodrigue, France

Country of production: France/Switzerland

Country/location of film: Cameroon

Europaland broaches the issue of the image

of Europe of young Cameroonians. Among

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them Europe is both Heaven on Earth and the derivation of the African misery. The film follows the

upcoming Cameroonian Reggae artist Ottou Ottou André Rodrigue taking the viewer on a trip

through the social imagery of Europe as a ‘whiteman’s kontri’ (white man’s country). Being screened Thursday 23 August at 18.45

Title: Sunday in Brazzaville

Year: 2011

Length: 51 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Enric Bach & Adriá Monés

Producer/production company: Fasten Seat Belt

Country of production: Spain

Country/location of film: Congo

A young radio talk host, Carlos La Menace,

unveils in his weekend show three figures of

Congo's capital, Brazzaville. The Sapeur, Yves Saint Laurent, surrounded by extreme poverty,

chooses elegance as a way of life. Cheriff Bakala is not a usual rapper. Finally, Palmas Yaya,

Brazzaville's wrestling champion is relying on voodoo to defend his throne in a crucial moment of

his life... Being screened Thursday 23 August at around 19.30

Title: Parallax

Year: 2011

Length: 58 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Arjang Omrani

Producer/production company: Arjang

Omrani

Country of production: Iran/Germany

Country/location of film: Germany

Parallax is a collaborative docu-fiction

project as a result of a provocative and inter-

subjective series of dialogues between the director and the participants as collaborators. The

outcome is a form of audio-visual interpretation of each collaborator (including the director) about

the concepts of disorientation and displacement. The project is inspired by the notion of ‘shared

anthropology’ introduced by anthropologist/filmmaker Jean Rouch in the 1960s, with attempt to

explore and expand its borders and limits. Being screened Friday 24 August at 14.30

Title: Shooting Freetown

Year: 2011

Length: 29 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Kieran Hanson

Producer/production company: Granada

Centre for Visual Anthropology,

University of Manchester


Country/location of film: Sierra Leone

A decade since Sierra Leone's

devastating civil war, from the ashes

rises a new dawn of creativity in audio-visual media. Inspired by Jean Rouch's ‘shared

anthropology’ and ‘ethno-fiction’, Shooting Freetown follows three people forging their way in film

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and music in the nation's capital, facing the constant struggles with vision and resourcefulness. By

incorporating collaborative video projects, their stories give a fresh image of post-war Freetown -

presented to the world through their own lens. Being screened Friday 24 August at 16.30

Title: The well – water voices from

Ethiopia Year: 2011

Length: 56 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Paolo Barberi and

Riccardo Russo

Producer/production company: Paolo

Barberi and Riccardo Russo

Country of production: Italy

Country/location of film: Ethiopia

This is the Horn of Africa, a region of the

world that is periodically shocked by

terrible droughts. Each year, in the dry Oromia lowlands (southern Ethiopia), when the drought

comes, the Borana herders gather with their livestock, after days and days of walk, around their

secular, astonishing ‘singing’ wells. With its strong photography and its epic narration, the film

follows their life during a whole dry season, showing a unique traditional water management

system that allows managing the little available water as the property and right of everyone, without

any money being exchanged. Being screened Friday 24 August at around 17.15

Title: When spirits ride their horses

Year: 2012

Length: 28 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Itsushi Kawase

Producer/production company: Itsushi

Kawase

Country of production: UK/Japan

Country/location of film: Ethiopia

Zar is the possession cult widely spread

in the East Africa and the Middle East. In

Gondar, Ethiopia, the possessed body of the Zar spirit medium is referred to as ‘the horse of Zar'. In

this rhetoric, spirit possession can be understood as the spirit riding the body of the medium. The

ceremonial space has to be “warmed up” by the dance, music and various kinds of smells to awaken

spirits’ power. Spirit possession takes on almost sensuous overtones. The film portrays a woman

who devotes her life to Zar spirits and explores the sensory quality of the interaction between her

and various spirits, including Seyfou Tchengar, who is said to be one of the most powerful spirits in

the region. Being screened Friday 24 August at 19.15

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Title: Koukan Kourcia, the cry of the

turtledove Year: 2010

Length: 62 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Sani Elhadj Magori

Producer/production company: SMAC

Country of production: France/Niger

Country/location of film: Niger, Ivory

Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana

A long journey from Niger to the Ivory

Coast with the meeting of people from

Niger who had been pushed into exile twenty years ago, encouraged by the songs of Hussey, a

professional singer. Today, she travels to visit them, performing a song begging them to return to

their home country. Being screened Friday 24 August at around 20.00

Title: In the light of memory

Year: 2010

Length: 40 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Alyssa Grossman





Country/location of film: Romania

In the light of memory explores evocations

of memory in post-socialist Bucharest,

nearly twenty years after the fall of

Romanian communism. Cişmigiu Gardens, one of the oldest parks in the city, is a central space

attracting people from all walks of life, a place for social interaction and solitary reflection.

Interweaving recollections of the past with glimpses of present-day scenes from the park, the film

constructs a montage of stillness and motion, images and voices, landscapes and people. Being screened Saturday 25 August at14.30

Title: Quest

Year: 2010

Length: 30 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Ionut Piturescu

Producer/production company: Aristoteles

Workshop, Bucharest

Country of production: Romania


Two characters, a carriage and a horse.

Where are they going? Towards what?

Joy, torment, and indefinable music. Vulnerable, yet they do not surrender. They are the poets of

time. Being screened Saturday 25 August at15.30

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Title: Playing with Nan

Year: 2012

Length: 88 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Dipesh Kharel and

Asami Saito

Producer/production company: Jagdish

Kharel, Media Help Line

Country of production: Nepal

Country/location of film: Nepal/Japan

Playing with Nan is the story of a Nepali

young man who migrated to work in a

Nepali restaurant in northern Japan. The film explores his daily life at work and his family at home,

which reflects socio-cultural problems related to globalization. Twenty-eight years ago, Ram was

born in a rural village in Nepal. Working on the farm Ram saw little hope apart from surviving in

the poor conditions. One day he decided to escape from the village and poverty. In Kathmandu he

worked for 12 years at several restaurants. However, he could not change the family’s situation. He

heard a beautiful story from a broker about the work and earning opportunities in Japan. He paid the

broker 20,000 USD to buy a work visa to enter in Japan. He borrowed the money from his relatives

and friends with the commitment of paying back them later with a 20 % interest. Several dramatic

consequences occurred within Ram’s life and his family’s after his migration to Japan. Being screened Saturday 25 August at16.45

Title: The wild ones

Year: 2012

Length: 30 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Lucy Kaye

Producer/production company: Lucy Kaye


Country/location of film: UK

Impact Pupil Referral Unit in Bootle,

Liverpool, provides a last chance for

teenagers expelled from school to gain

qualifications. This term, seven pupils get to

leave the Unit to try a new way of learning in an unlikely sanctuary for rescued horses, in the heart

of this run-down neighbourhood. Run by local resident, Bernadette Langfield, several wild ponies

that she saved from being culled need taming. But these horses, like the pupils, have their own

troubled backgrounds, and in order for a relationship between them to develop, both horses and

teenagers have to first deal with their own behavioural difficulties. Being screened Saturday 25 August at19.00

Title: Coffee futures

Year: 2009

Length: 22 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Zeynep Devrim

Gürsel

Producer/distribution company:

Documentary Educational Resources,

U.S.A.

Country of production: Turkey

Country/location of film: Turkey

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Coffee Futures weaves individual fortunes with the story of Turkey’s decade’s long attempts to

become a member of the European Union. Promises and predictions made by politicians, both

foreign and domestic, are juxtaposed with the rhetoric and practices of everyday coffee fortune-

telling. The widespread custom of coffee fortune-telling in Turkey is an everyday communication

tool. Coffee fortunes are both a way of dealing with hopes, fears and worries, and also a way of

indirectly voicing matters usually left unspoken. Like any language, this narrative form has its

protocols, rules and tropes, and yet simultaneously each telling bears distinct marks of the teller’s

personal style and the individual fortune seeker’s condition. Being screened Saturday 25 August at19.45

Title: The Tour

Year: 2011

Length: 38 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Eva la Cour


Anthropology Programme, Free

University, Berlin

Country of production:

Germany/Denmark

Country/location of film: Svalbard

(Spitsbergen), Norway

The Tour explores the relationship

between actual and virtual realities

within and across Longyearbyen on Svalbard, by touring the place with Maxi Taxi, one out of two

taxi companies in the Norwegian settlement, and its employees. A verbal montage, based on three

taxi drivers from Norway, Denmark and Russia, illuminates the role of the individual as a

simultaneously conserving and creative agent. A more general concern of the film is thus how

experience and mediation of place happen, simultaneously, as actively generative forms of

emplacement. The structure of the film, a guided tour, reflects Longyearbyen as a particularly

accessible and well-infrastructured location in the Arctic, characterized by mobility and

temporality, evoked through a reflexive usage of the distinctive expressive structures embedded in

the relationship between image and sound. Being screened Saturday 25 August at20.15

Title: Awareness

Year: 2010

Length: 67 minutes

Director/filmmaker: David & Judith

MacDougall

Producer/production company: Fieldwork

Films, Canberra


Country/location of film: India

Filmed in South India at Rishi Valley

School, founded by the 20th Century

Indian thinker Krishnamurti, Awareness explores the sensibilities of two groups of young Indian

teenagers, a group of girls in their dormitory and a group of boys in theirs, as they live out their

daily experiences at the school. The two groups were filmed separately by David and Judith

MacDougall during their stay at the school over a period of several months. The film highlights

gender differences at this critical stage of adolescence and demonstrates how Krishnamurti’s

encouragement of individuals’ awareness is played out at the school. With humour and attention to

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the processes of learning, the film provides an insight into education at one of the leading

progressive schools of the Indian Subcontinent. Being screened Sunday 26 August at14.30

Title: Fidim pikpik (Feeding the pigs)

Year: 2012

Length: 5 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Peter I. Crawford and Jens Pinholt

Producer/production company: Intervention Press,

Aarhus

Country of production: Denmark

Country/location of film: Solomon Islands, Reef Islands

In some of the diverse cultures of the Pacific, especially

in Melanesia, the pig is the most important domesticated

animal. It is predominantly used for ceremonial purposes

such as in funerals, weddings, and age-set rituals. Several

of the films in the long-term Reef Islands Ethnographic Film Project thus show the killing of pigs in

conjunction with such events, at times giving a somewhat disturbing impression of human-animal

relationships, particularly for audiences used to see meat only wrapped in cellophane at the local

supermarket. In this short film a mummy, daddy, and their little son go out to feed their pigs,

conveying the impression of an altogether different human-animal relationship, one of tenderness,

care, and love, whilst also showing how children learn through awareness of animals, nature and

technology. Being screened Sunday 26 August at15.45

Title: Broscatu: The Storyteller

Year: 2011

Length: 62 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Mihai Andrei Leaha

Producer/production company: Triba film,

Cluj Napoca

Country of production: Romania


“Once upon a time there was a poor man…”

A biographical anthropological video-

documentary, which focuses on Ion Roman

(Broscatu), a fifty-years old storyteller from Chelinţa, Maramureş. Broscatu is a broomstick maker,

a family head, a sociable and religious person and an ex convict. The film explores the various

types of stories that Broscatu tells to the author, his relationship with the filmmaker and also the

meta-reflexive relation between Broscatu and his own film. The stories, move from fairytales

towards intimate life stories confessions, to the storyteller’s opinion about the film, in which he just

acted.

The film tries to address a question: how can stories be meaningful for anthropological research and

how can we explore a person throughout his relationship between camera, stories and film process? Being screened Sunday 26 August at16.30

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Title: Carmen

Year: 2011

Length: 4 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Olatz González Abrisketa

Producer: Olatz González Abrisketa

Country of production: The Basque Country (Spain)

Country/location of film: The Basque Country

A black sock, white thread, a needle, a thimble and a

plea: Santitum zaina urtu, zaina bere lekuen sartu,

which, in a mixture of Latin and Basque, means to

Carmen “Santitum (?), dissolve the vein, put the vein

into place”. This is the full extent of her treatment for

the healing of sprains, which has to be repeated 3 times, on different days. Healing rituals live on in

the Basque Country, a place where magical practices have been transmitted from woman to woman

for generations. For the time being, Carmen has no successor. Being screened Sunday 26 August at17.45

Title: Men of words

Year: 2009

Length: 23 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Johanne Haaber Ihle





Country/location of film: Yemen

Men of Words explores how an ancient

tradition of exchanging poetry on the

Arabian Peninsula is still used as a means to discuss contemporary social and political issues in

Yemen. The film touches upon issues such as the social meaning of words in Yemen, circulation of

the spoken word, and verbal art as a way to obtain freedom of speech in a country that faces a bleak

future dominated by poverty and political instability. Being screened Sunday 26 August at18.15

Title: Skolliales

Year: 2012

Length: 30 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Haukur Sigurdsson


Cultural Studies, University of Tromsø

Country of production: Norway

Country/location of film: Iceland

Wild eider ducks come back year after year

to the same nesting grounds, areas where

they know they are safe from predators. In Dyrafjordur, a remote fjord in north-west Iceland, a

group of gentlemen dedicate more than two months out of the year taking care to protect these

ducks. In return they get to keep the valuable eiderdown that the ducks provide for their nests. The

duck's main predator is the arctic fox, Iceland's only native land mammal. The foxes come down

from the hills and into the fields during the bright arctic nights. The eider farmers, the Grand

General Committee as they call themselves, are ready to fight the sly fox with old jeeps, guns,

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home-made poetry, and cakes. Skolliales is the story of two eider farmers and neighbours, Valdimar

and Zófonías, and their friends. Between the men, the ducks, and the arctic fox there lies a special

connection. A relationship that goes beyond love and hatred, a relationship that is based on

understanding, respect, and friendship. Being screened Sunday 26 August at19.00

Title: Manapanmirr, in Christmas Spirit

Year: 2012

Length: 61 minutes

Director/filmmaker: Paul Gurrumuruwy,

Fiona Yangathu, Jennifer Deger and David

Mackenzie

Producer/production company: Miyarrka

Media


Country/location of film: Arnhem Land

Manapanmirr, in Christmas Spirit shares

the sorrows and joys of Christmas in

Australia’s northeast Arnhem Land. Yolngu Christmas rituals start in October when the first wolma

thunder clouds form, heralding the coming wet season. As the distant rumbling triggers memories

of lost loved ones, quiet tears start to flow. So begins a season in which stories brought by

missionaries in the mid-20th century provide the basis for celebrating the cycling transformations of

life, death and rebirth – and for claiming the enduring place of the ancestral in the contemporary

world. Manapanmirr is a Yolngu expression that refers to a state of being joined or brought

together. The film explores this theme in form, content and effect. What begins as an experiment

with using digital media to “connect cultures through feeling”, as director Paul Gurrumuruwuy puts

it, becomes through the very process of image-making a catalyst for vision, innovation and

connection for Yolngu themselves. Being screened Sunday 26 August at19.45

Programme edited and compiled by Peter I. Crawford (University of Tromsø). Film selection

and programming by the NAFA 2012 Film Selection Committee: Anna Laine (Sweden), Ditte

Marie Seeberg (Denmark), Jan Ketil Simonsen (Norway), Roger Canals (Catalonia/Spain)

and Peter I. Crawford.

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