2015 was the end of an era forEthnofest and the beginning of a new one, signalled by new ideas, high profile synergies and initiatives.
Ethnofest had the honour of inaugurating a collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and Sports, specifically the Division of Modern Cultural Assets and Intangible Cultural Heritage. The Intangible Cultural Heritage Section, which included four films in 2015, will expand in the future and become a starting point from which to explore what the term “intangible heritage” means exactly and how it enriches our perception of current cultural practices and their relation to those of the past.
The second newly introduced section, Summer School, screened the works of students attending the Visual Anthropology Summer School, organized by Ethnofest in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute of Athens. This is the first time in Greece that an educational initiative places the urban environment within the general theoretical context of visual anthropology and the ethnographic method. Students are introduced to various audiovisual ethnographic methods and create a short ethnographic film. In its first edition, the section included 10 films made by 30 students who attended the program in July 2015. The diversity of their chosen themes highlighted various aspects of the Greek crisis, showcased their different perceptions of Greek reality, and offered a new way of looking at a city we think we know too well but never ceases to amaze us.
In honour of the late Chantal Akerman, who passed away a few weeks before the opening of Ethnofest, we hosted a special screening of News from Home(1977) in collaboration with the French Institute of Greece. The screening of this exceptional film aimed to introduce our audience to the filmmaker’s distinguished, albeit relatively unknown, work that influenced not only ethnographic film but creative documentary filming in general.
For the second year in a row, the Ethnofest special thematic section became an attraction. This time it focused on the Images of Desire in Different Times of Crisis aiming to put the term “crisis” into a wider perspective, not solely associated with economic insecurity. The section was curated by anthropologist Irene Avramopoulou and included six films, lectures, a day conference and a workshop on ethnographic filmmaking by anthropologist filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravicius, who presented his new in-progress work Mariupol for the first time.
The audience had the chance to interact with many of the filmmakers whose work was shown in the section, such as Treasa O’Brien and Mary Jane O’Leary (Eat Your Children, 2015), Maria Binder (Trans X Istanbul, 2014) and Güliz Sağlam (A Dream School in the Steppes, 2014). Other filmmakers in attendance included beloved Stavros Psilakis, young anthropologists Natalia Coutsougera, Thelma Petraki and Constantinos Kalantzis and the ethnomusicologist Giannis Kanakis.
Ethnofest 2015’s programme proved to be more vibrant than ever, motivating many meaningful discussions within and around the welcoming space of Exile Room. The sixth Ethnofest edition offered an ideal closing to the festival’s first era and a promising introduction to the next one.
Central to this year’s Themed Section is the question of desire in its multiple manifestations, materialities and excesses, especially at times when ‘crisis’ has become one of the most over-rehearsed key-words to connote both the escalation of different forms of violence, poverty, displacement, dispossession, as well as effects such as fear, violence, trauma and horror in the context of shifting gendered, sexualised, racialised, ethnicised and classed dynamics.
Understanding desire as an affective and political state intertwined with crisis capitalism and processes of neoliberalism, globalization, migration, colonialism, and slavery, but also affected by theoretical analyses on subjectivity, power and resistance, we are screening ethnographically sensitive films that employ feminist, postcolonial, queer and other critical perspectives on the interrelation between desire and crisis.
Our intention is to spark a dialogue based on the following questions:
How can we stage the scene of desire at different times of crisis?
What are the expressions of desire amidst marginalised identities at times of crisis?
Films that speak back to these questions might be connected, but not limited to, themes pertaining to issues of sexuality, pornography, bonded labour, neo-colonialism, migration, grass-root movements and politics.
The curator,
Eirini Avramopoulou
A selection of films that were produced by Summer School students. The Summer School is being co-organized by Ethnofest and the Netherlands Insitute at Athens (NIA).
Μasterclass with Mantas Kvedaravicius
Social anthropologist and director Mantas Kvedaravicius was invited to Ethnofest for a unique masterclass that focused on the relationship and distinction between ethnographic films, documentaries and fantasy films and the ways in which camera can be used as a tool for political mobilization, imagination and sensibility, causing a “crisis in representation”. Also, on a practical level, this masterclass shared useful information on the process of film production and distribution while provided the opportunity to those who were already approaching this field to discuss their plans.
Conference: Images of Desire in Different Times of Crisis
How the “crisis of representation” is directly related to the economic, social, political and existential crisis that people experience every day, but also the way desire for life crosses a path that constantly confronts it with survival, loss, mourning and death as well as dreams, hope, claim and creation, was examined through this conference in the context of the Special Thematic Section.
The conference aimed to produce a fruitful dialogue on the interrelationship of theory with representation and image through analysis concerning the construction of the “pain” of the Other and the silence that frame it. The commonality of compassion for lives that are in abandonment, the historicity and the virtual representation of trauma and genocide, the ghosts of the past that haunt the present, the approach of sexuality and homosexual desire, but also the radical policies that open through the politics of desire and trauma.
These issues were developed by speakers: Ifigenia Anastasiadis (Panteion University), Hypatia Vourloumi (DIKEMES, International Center for Greek and Mediterranean Studies), Costas Giannakopoulos (University of the Aegean), Dimitra Makryniotis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) and Andianni Simati (University of the Aegean).