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- Convenor:
-
Mattia Fumanti
(University of St Andrews)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Film
- Sessions:
- Thursday 1 April, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Long Abstract:
Films
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 1 April, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
As India’s indigenous groups convert to Hinduism, their gods have become broken loosing their power to protect the community from scarcity. While the film offers a portrait of a society in the midst of change, post screening discussions will address etico-political dilemmas of collaboration.
Paper long abstract:
As India's current Hindu nationalist government pushes to redefine India as a homogenous Hindu nation, the ways of life of its indigenous adivasi populations are coming under greater threat. Broken gods documents the social impact of Hindu religious evangelism on the Rathava and Bhil adivasi communities of western India. As indigenous groups join Hindu religious sects, their old gods are literally becoming broken - devotional mural paintings are being whitewashed from homes, and the earthen figurines in honour of village gods and ancestors are being left to fall apart. While for those who convert joining a Hindu sect offers the allure of a better life, those who continue to follow their old ways have become ostracized by their communities. Their broken gods have lost the power to protect them from illness and scarcity. The film is a collaboration between anthropologist Alice Tilche and adivasi activist and filmmaker Dakxin Bajranje Chhara. Post screening discussions will address two interlinked dilemmas linked to the theme of responsibility and who speaks for whom. The first is an ethico-political question: what does it mean to collaborate with marginal indigenous communities, whose members are aligned with powerful right-wing projects? The second is an aesthetic-representational one: while visual anthropology has embraced experimentation and reflexivity as canons for assessing good films, and especially good practice, how do we engage with indigenous or activists’ concern with truth?
Paper short abstract:
Deux Horizons juxtaposes walking through an abandoned rice field with navigating the ocean for fish in the Sine-Saloum Delta. It inquires the relation between life ashore and at sea, novice anthropologist and skilled interlocutors and ethnographic practice via the discursive and via the experiential
Paper long abstract:
The split-screen/two audio channel video 'Deux Horizons' ('Two Horizons', 4:17min, DV) juxtaposes two minimally edited scenes shot on first visits to the respective places and traces the anthropologist's search for the first answers on the dynamics of drought and sea level rise and people's subsequent turn away from terrestrial- towards aquatic livelihood practices in the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal. The protagonists in the video are a young man occasionally working in tourism and a group of young fishermen. The former narrates his experiences with the rice and explains to me a conversation with an older man from a few hours before. In the scene with the fishermen, in contrast, little words are exchanged as we were caught up in fishing practice. The discussion on the film could run along the following themes of the conference: Extinction – Life in the Sine-Saloum Delta is highly affected by Climate Change, yet also has a longstanding history of incessant change and adaptability. ‘Deux Horizons’ moves beyond disaster narratives and highlights how extinction and calamity are met with skilled improvisation and creativity by delta dwellers.Who Speaks and for Whom – ‘Deux Horizons’ offers a radical view onto two first fieldwork encounters and thereby contests the ‘knowledgeability’ of the anthropologist. It lays open the pitfalls of communication and the limitations of intersubjectivity. Responsibility – ‘Deux Horizons’ highlights the anthropologist’s limited response-ability towards and the dependency on his interlocutors. It furthermore challenges the viewer to navigate through two concurrent scenes and two different modes of communication (discursive and experiential).
Paper short abstract:
Deceased in 1876 at the age of 46 the Baron of Juparanã maintained simultaneous relations with five African enslaved women. From these relations, 26 children were born. This film is based on their descendants' memories about violence, abuses, murders and suicides inside their family.
Paper long abstract:
In 300 years of slavery, approximately 10 million people forcibly migrated from Africa towards the Americas, in what was the largest transoceanic migration in history. Here I take seriously the proposal to overcome the “myth of the three races founders" as an invention of the dominant classes in Brazil, but which ended up producing real effects in Brazilian society, leaving no room for other possibilities, or even for other “myths”. During my fieldwork in the district of “Barão de Juparanã”, in the city of Valença - State of Rio de Janeiro, I used the audio-visual tool to give voice to other narratives, other founding myths. For the camera, these people were open to sharing their stories and the stories they heard from their ancestors. I think of films as artefacts since they are objectification composed of narratives, ideas, events, documents and photographs that substantiate certain events. Another important feature of the artefact is its usefulness. The use of film is not only important for my work as an anthropologist, but it works as a mirror that reflects at the same time it produces a reflection on the deep roots of violence in the Brazilian context. My fieldwork ended up focusing on women's narratives, not by my choice. There is also a predominance of narratives about the lives of women in the family. Thus, the videos expose through the stories told a kind of genealogy of violence against black women, but also a genealogy of resistance.
Paper short abstract:
Birangona is about survivor-led ethical guidelines to record testimonies of wartime sexual violence through a historically and archivally informed, intergenerational family story.
Paper long abstract:
Labonno (Labony) needs to do a school project on family memories of 1971, the Bangladesh War. When coming to ask her grandmother (Nanu/Rehana), she wakes the latter from one of her frequent nightmares. What follows is her grandmother’s narration of the history of ‘birangona’ (brave women), the term given by the Bangladesh government in 1971 to honour the women who had been raped during the war. Her mother, Hena, also tells her of the Oral History Project through which they tried to collect testimonies and the need for ethical guidelines. But hidden in these discussions of the guidelines Labonno discovers an intricate secret family history. What could that secret be? What would Labonno feel when she hears of that secret? What will Labonno do in the future about her family and the nation’s history? This film, guidelines and graphic novel (all in Bangla and English) can be used by those who record testimonies of sexual violence in conflict (researchers, human rights activists, feminists, lawyers, filmmakers, photographers, journalists, writers) and is based on Nayanika Mookherjee's book The Spectral Wound. Sexual Violence, Public Memories and the Bangladesh War of 1971 published in 2015 by Duke University Press. The graphic novel has received the 2019 Praxis award https://wapadc.org/2019-Praxis-Award