Paper short abstract:

Lorenzo Ferrarini is a documentary filmmaker, photographer and sound recordist, and lecturer in visual anthropology at the University of Manchester.

Paper long abstract:

Nyimajun (working title) is a film on ecological change in rural Burkina Faso, approached through the story of Sibiri, a ritual specialist whose altar is threatened by transformations precipitated by the construction of a dam. The film follows the entanglements of human activities that create environments where certain plant and animal species prosper, and others disappear. Among them, the spirits with whom Sibiri works at maintaining a precarious balance between humans and wilderness.

I will present excerpts from the film and connect its visual and acoustic poetics to ecocinema, here meant as a form of filmmaking that attends to the complexity of environmental relationships.