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- Convenor:
-
Meg Stalcup
(University of Ottawa)
- Location:
- FSS 1007
- Start time:
- 3 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel is dedicated to audiovisual works related to the theme of “movement.” Human scientists, filmmakers, and other artists and practitioners are encouraged to submit films, photographs, audio works, installations and web-based formats or other audiovisual projects.
Long Abstract:
In keeping with the CASCA/IUAES congress' theme in the Call for Papers, we call for audiovisual works on the diverse implications of “movement,” from flows and frictions to displacements and disappearances. Ethnologists, folklorists, anthropologists, and representatives of related disciplines (e.g. urban planning, geography, design) and institutions (museums, archives etc.) as well as filmmakers and other artists (e.g. photographers, sound designer), are encouraged to submit films, photographs, audio works, installations and web-based formats. Special attention will be paid to the specific potential of audiovisual work for the congress’ topic by focusing on material, bodily, sensorial or spatial dimensions, tacit knowledge or other non-linguistic perspectives of movement, and also its blockages and absence. Films and other audiovisual media do more than represent – they are processes of creation that are epistemological, analytic, conceptual and political. Therefore, we are not only interested in classically shaped and linear narratives but also those works which focus on the conceptual value of audiovisual material in the wider sense. In order to be able examine this research and its contributions to the CASCA/IUAES theme, we offer, in addition to the possibility to screen films and other audiovisual works, a space for open question-and-answer discussion. Please note that that submitter must be in attendance to present the audiovisual work and participate in Q&A.
Propose your AV media using the 'Propose a paper' link below. In the long abstract, please indicate: name of author/director, year of production, language, length (in case of a film), number of photos (in case of photo essay), platform (in case of interactive works) and any further important technical data. Please also state the technical requirements for the presentation of your material.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Heather Buist (University of Ottawa)
Paper short abstract:
Title: you can't translate börek Format: Film Director: Heather Buist Year of production: 2016 Language: English Length: 10 minutes Keywords: Turkish, Kurdish, Canadian, immigration, identity, nationality
Paper long abstract:
"you can't translate börek," is a documentary about the questions that arise in immigration from childhood. When one moves to another country as a child, what nationality to they consider themselves? What are their connections to the community after everything they once knew has changed?
Dilara is a 29-year-old Turkish-Kurdish-Canadian that has lived in Canada for over half her life. Discussing various aspects in her life, and the people and things that are most important to her, she has asked herself many of these questions. Partly instructional and partly interactional, Dilara makes a traditional Turkish dish to share with her Canadian friends and fiancé. Going back and forth from interviews in various settings, to cooking at home in Ottawa, ON, she transforms what it means to be 'immigrant' and makes an identity of her own.
The movie displays the nuances of nationality and identity. It shows that what makes someone who they are, does not always fall into neatly packaged categories.
Kala Shreen (Centre for Creativity Heritage and Development)
Paper short abstract:
This anthropological film captures the movement of Kanjivaram silk sari (an indigenous textile of India) during various socio-cultural occasions in the life of a Tamil woman and the co-related emotional subjectivities of the wearer.
Paper long abstract:
Director: Dr.Kala Shreen
Year of Production: 2015
Language: Tamil (with English subtitles)
Duration: 6 min 25 sec
This anthropological film is a musical visual ethnography of the Kanjivaram silk sari, an indigenous textile of Tamilnadu in India. This film captures the intersection of the textile and the Tamil woman during various socio-cultural occasions in her life such as the rites of passage, religious rituals, festivals, traditional art performances et cetera.
As the Kanjivaram sari traverses these different occasions, it does not have a fixed status in its movement across time and space. Its values and meanings are not static. It is dynamic with fluid boundaries between various categories such as an efficacious textile bringing good fortune to the wearer during rites of passage, a symbol of distinction for classical performing artists, luxury fashion attire during traditional festivals and so on.
This evocative song depicts the interplay of the textile, the occasions and the correlated emotional subjectivities of the wearer. Therefore, as the lyricist, I have imaginatively punned upon the Tamil word pattu (meaning silk) by incorporating it in every sentence as an emotional adverb.
Traditional bamboo flutes and a hundred year old sarangi (string) instrument were used during the production of this musical piece.
Four classical Carnatic ragas (musical scales), that invoke the varied emotions associated with the respective socio-cultural occasions, were utilized thereby transforming this song into a raga-maalika (medley of ragas).
David Jaclin (University of Ottawa) Jeremie Brugidou
Paper short abstract:
This film examines wildlife poaching and efforts to prevent it in South Africa and Botswana, as these recreate a racialized and politicized system of private property while preventing millenary animal migrations.
Paper long abstract:
Directors: Jérémie Brugidou and David Jaclin
Year: 2017
Language: Tsonga, Afrikans, Anglais et Français
Duration: 30 min
Since the 1980s, thousands of kilometers of electric fences have been set up in South Africa and Botswana. These fences are meant to prevent poaching, but mostly they recreate a racialized and politicized system of private property. While facilitating animal capture, and industrial exploitation and exportation of livestock capital, such fences also prevent millenary animal migrations. Because of the unequal distribution of land and its fencing, which bear stories of violence and domination, many animals can no longer travel up now-drying rivers. We film the drought, both in the veins of the land and in the veins of the ecology of mind at play behind the gamification of (wild)life. This life is now under strict management, both for the sake of its capitalization as well as for its conservation.
In the film, we experience the violence of the day in the bush: the commodification of animal parts, the slicing of flesh, the exportation of skins and trophies, the electrification of fences, the preparation of military units for night patrols, the cars of tourists with their engine constantly running, the expulsion and displacement of entire village populations. All this is for the proper functioning of the reserves. But there is the night, which overturns these commodification processes and inverts the humanimal gaze. There is the moon. When full, it is said to belong to the poachers.
Capsizing a disruptive ecology of power relations, the troubling light of night nourishes the rights and mightiness of a new explosive biopolitical regime. Under the poachers' moon, one can see as in plain daylight, and the modes of attention that the astrological phenomenon entails allows for propositions of another kind, and unveils very different human-animal relationships.
Mahdi Fleifel
Paper short abstract:
A World Not Ours is an intimate, humorous, portrait of three generations in exile in the refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh, in southern Lebanon.
Paper long abstract:
Director: Mahdi Fleifel
Year: 2014
Languages: English, Arabic
Duration: 87 mins
Filmmakers: Mahdi Fleifel, Patrick Campbell
Ain el-Helweh (literally “Sweet Spring”), set up in 1948, is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon with more than 70,000 people. During the first few years of the camp’s existence, its residents made a point of not building anything resembling a permanent structure, because to do so would have been an admission that there was a chance they were not returning home.
Over time, assigned plots of land were divided as sons and daughters got married and had children. Young families began building their homes on top of their relatives’ houses, creating a warren of twisting alleyways that only those who live there are able to navigate. It is an island of Palestine surrounded by Lebanese army checkpoints. Inside, the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) controls security and gives residents small stipends.
A World Not Ours is an intimate, humorous, portrait of three generations in exile in the refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive and illuminating study of belonging, friendship, and family. Filmed over more than 20 years by multiple generations of the same family, the film is more than just a family portrait; it is an attempt to record what is being forgotten, and mark what should not be erased from collective memory.