Friday 27.03


10.00-14.30

Etnographic film production in Estonian National Museum


15.30

Unworldly


Siberian village Okunevo is known as a sacred place for many years. Recently it became the place of pilgrimage for people of various religions simultaneously.  Sergei and Valentin are the residents of Okunevo. Sergei is mentally retarded and Valentin is unable to walk…

Vladimir Golovnev
was born in Omsk city in 1982. In 2004 he graduated historical faculty of Omsk State University. In 2005 he received the diploma of Independent School of cinema and TV INTERNEWS (Moscow).


Central Cemetery


Mondays are “the day of the souls” at the Central Cemetery in Bogota. People come to pray so they may rest in peace and also to confide their sorrows. There is Salomé who protects the poor; Sigmund Leopold Kopp who listens and helps the ones looking for work and there is also all the tombs of the unknown (nameless) who are never neglected.

In the aisles of the cemetery the day-to-day and the sacred go hand in hand. We come across men, women and children who through their gestures, words and silences tell us about their history and about their relationship with the "souls" in their everyday life.

At the heart of the town, right in the middle of all the violence and agitation, the "souls" bring some comfort and relief to the living.

Andrés Melendez
Andrés Melendez was born in Santa Fe of Bogota, Colombia, in 1975. He studied film making in Paris at the University of Paris VIII and is now working as cinematographer and light technician for short films. In 2005 he directed a documentary about the "Exodus of Violence in Colombia” for the PNUD (Program of the United Nations for Development) in Colombia. He has also directed some films somewhere between experimental video and documentary of which the most remarkable would be a short film about the market of "Corabastos" in Bogota.  


Lifelibrary


The public library is an institution that has had little attention in anthropological debate or in the minds of most of its users. Upon further consideration, its seemingly unobtrusive or neutral position in the conscious thought of many brings about questions of its use, history and future. Manchester was one of the fist cities in England to open a public library. How will the Manchester Central Library evolve?

Amanda Hill

Amanda holds an MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester and has worked on several participatory film and storytelling projects. She is currently working on collaborative storytelling and soundscape projects with the art collective, Kinokophone. Her latest film project, “Kikimashouka”, will be completed during an artist in residency in Japan in 2009. “Lifelibrary” is her first film.


17.30


Vera and Janis Lacis


The documentary film “Vera and Janis Lacis” tells of an ordinary day in the life of a married couple. Vera and Janis Lacis have lived their whole lives in the village of Timofeyevka, located in Novosibirsk province of the Russian Federation. Timofeyevka was founded in 1894 by emigrants from Latgale, a region in the eastern part of present-day Latvia. Due to various social and political pressures, as well as agrarian reforms, many people in the mid 19th and early 20th centuries were forced to leave their homelands and emigrate to another regions of Czarist Russia and even further abroad in search of land, livelihood, and a better life. Vera and Janis are the third generation of Latgalians still living in Timofeyevka.

Villagers are often perplexed about the Lacis family: why is it necessary to keep such a large farm and continue working? Wouldn't it be better to spend one's retirement relaxing? Even though Vera and Janis do not live together with their children and grandchildren, their labor is nevertheless directed towards providing for their future. Vera and Janis' family model is characteristic of that in many small Siberian villages, where all work and behavior is based on and regulated by a tradition of “feminine/masculine”. All of the farm chores and working times are tied to the rhythm of the sun. As is common in the area, their farmyard is surrounded by a tall fence that conceals it from the looks of neighbors and the cows and pigs that roam the streets.

Aigars Lielbardis
Is a PhD student in folkloristics in Latvia since 2007. Since 2005 he works in the University of Latvia, Institute or Literature, Folklore and Art as a research assistant.Since 2007 he is the chief specialist of the audivisual studio of University of Latvia, Faculty of Philology. His fields of research include visual culture, charming tradition and traditional music.



Lakshmi and me


"What sin did I commit to be born a woman?" Lakshmi wonders aloud. A 21-year-old housemaid in Mumbai, she works ten hours a day, seven days a week. One of her employers is Nishtha Jain, who begins to make a documentary that explores their relationship. Nishtha films Lakshmi at home, and at work in various houses. Lakshmi's is a precarious existence to begin with; illness and romance compound her problems in unexpected ways. Nishtha films through a year and a half of dramatic changes. The process of filming has its own impact on the unfolding events and on their relationship. As Nishtha is drawn deeper into Lakshmi's life, she is forced to question many of the things she has taken for granted.

Nishtha Jain
After graduating from Delhi University, where she was active in street theatre group, Nishtha Jain did an MA in Mass Communication and then worked as an editor and director at TV Today and HTV.  In 1995 she joined the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, specializing in film direction. She worked briefly as commissioning editor for a non-fiction channel, Chakra and since 2002 has lived and worked in Mumbai as an independent filmmaker.


19.30



On the way

Music is an emotional language which enables us to communicate well beyond words. Quentin Dujardin is a musician who feeds his art with travels. His guitar as only piece of luggage, he submerges himself into various musical communities in Spain, Morocco and Madagascar. His all quest is based on human exchange.

This very personal approach discovers itself by successive touches. Just like an initiatory trail, he feeds his musical palette meeting different people.  The artifices and pre-established codes neglecting leads him to an intuitive and genuine approach, right into human relationship freed from social and cultural constraints. This documentary follows the trip of this musician all along the creation intimate process and proposes, through music, another sight on the World.


21.00

Dizzy Quit Rest Start Again: a portrait of my dance teacher

It is a documentary about Esther’s dance teacher Jeanine Coco. Her weeks are filled with teaching, performing and choreographing. It was filmed in a period of two months, in which Jeanine realised she is working too much. The film shows you how dance can fill a (daily) life, a body and a mind, by presenting you a personal story. “Dizzy Quit Rest Start Again” is a film about professionalism in dance; art; knowledge of and about the body; teaching and about professional and personal relationships.

Esther Maagdenberg
Esther Maagdenberg is an undergraduate Anthropology student at Universiteit van Amsterdam, where she participated in a course called Visual ethnography, for which the film Dizzy Quit Rest Start Again was completed. Esther is interested in Anthropology of the body and is an enthusiasticamateur dancer. Out of these two interests this film is born.


SHE-J

Each seemed to have what the other desired...

One from Europe, the other from a country aspiring to be European for centuries…Yet, both are women, DJs and mothers to 11-year old sons.

SHE-J is the story of two alter-egos; DJ Beyza from Turkey and DJ Dame (Natasja) from Holland. It is also a film about Turkey with its young urban face and its confrontation with Europe.

Beyza, the first female DJ of Turkey says her work is like selling pork in a Muslim neighbourhood. She travels from one city to another performing and has hardly any time to see her son, Dunya. Life conditions in Turkey force her to live a lonely life, unable to find a partner who would accept her marginal lifestyle.

Natasja, on the other hand, chooses to put her son Kyan in the centre of her life and music comes second. She has a supportive partner and a more structured family life. Yet she feels stifled by the lack of chaos and yearns to spend more time doing music.

At first, both women seem to desire what the other one has. Yet, over the course of the year they discover that the grass is not always greener on the other side.


Elvan Kivilcim
Elvan Kivilcim worked for network television in Turkey as post-production editor and production assistant upon her graduation from Bogazici University. Later, she completed her higher education in cultural and media studies at the University of Warwick, UK and undertook academic research at the University of Osnabrück, Germany, where she also taught courses on culture, media and cinema. Upon her return to Turkey, she worked with various international networks, i.e. Arte, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera English as land producer for news and documentary video projects.  Most recently she worked as the senior producer for the Al Jazeera English Istanbul bureau.  She is a member of the Association of Documentary Filmmakers in Turkey (www.bsb.org.tr) and one of the founding members of Filmist (www.filmist.org), a collective for independent documentary filmmakers.  She-J is her first independent documentary.