Ethnofest at Amorφous Summer Camp – ALIEN Project

Tuesday June 20th, 2017
News

The Athens Ethnographic Film Festival – Ethnofest goes to Eleusis in order to participate in the Amorφous Summer Camp, part of the ALIEN Project. The Ethnnofest participation includes a workshop on the history of ethnographic cinema and three screenings.

 

Workshop: Ethnographic Cinema. A history of seeing otherness and ourselves.

Monday, July 3rd | 18:30

Anthropology as a discipline has encountered with the issues of identity and otherness since its earliest steps. In parallel, it has formed a unique relationship with the “image” and especially with the “moving image”. The history of the genre that is called “ethnographic cinema” reflects the evolvement of this relationship. During the last four decades “visual anthropology” has been a dynamic field where the issues of ethnographic cinema and visual representation within anthropology are dynamically debated. Nowadays, the production of ethnographic films is constantly increasing and the theory and methods they carry are often challenging the stereotypes through which we view films and their subjects.

The workshop will be a short introduction to the history of ethnographic cinema and will present current trends in visual anthropology and the filmic representations of “distant” and “familiar” subjects through several fragments of films. Screenings with selected films relevant to the ALIEN project will follow.

 

Speakers: Konstantinos Aivaliotis & Silas Michalakas

 

Screenings:

 

Monday, July 3rd  | 21:30

  • Limpiadores (2015), by Fernando González Mitjáns

 

 

Before professors and students arrive for their morning classes, these are the people finishing work. Fleeing the social and political instability of their home countries, many Latin Americans come to London looking for work opportunities and a safe environment to raise and educate their children. In turn, they are confronted with discrimination, labour exploitation and social “invisibility”. After more than eight years of campaigning, the immigrant cleaners outsourced at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London continue to demand being brought in-house. “Limpiadores” charts the history of their and others’ campaign – from winning the London Living Wage to the deportation of nine colleagues, and the day-to- day invisible labour of cleaners on campus.

 

  • British Born Chinese (2015), by Andy Lawrence and Elena Barabantseva

 

 

The film is about Daniel and Kevin, two school boys born to Chinese migrants and living in Manchester. It engages their everyday struggles of reconciling their Britishness with Chineseness through their experiences at school, as volunteers at a community centre, and at home. The film uses an ethical approach driven by dialogue and close involvement with the film’s subjects to understand the vulnerabilities through which the boys navigate their place in the British society. It not only uncovers new dimensions to understanding the ways the subjects experience their lifeworlds, but also seeks to reduce the epistemic violence of dominant visual forms of representation.

 

Wednesday, July 5th | 21:00

  • Haraka Baraka: Movement is a Blessing (2014),  by Lana Askari

 

 

After having lived in the Netherlands for over 20 years, the director’s parents, Gulzar and Shwan, decide to return back to Kurdistan, their homeland. Escaping the Iraqi regime as refugees in the early 90s, they became part of the larger Kurdish Diaspora who resettled in the Europe. In the recent decade, Iraqi Kurdistan has developed into a regional safe-haven. However, with current tensions around the threat of the Islamic State (IS), the social and political landscape in the Middle East is changing drastically. In “Haraka Baraka”, the director follows her parents’ return to their homeland whilst addressing the renegotiation of belonging, temporality and future during a (seemingly) timeless crisis.

 

For more information on the Amorφous Summer Camp and on the registration, click here.