AFTER WAR, BEFORE PEACE - IN SEARCHING OF DEMOCRACY IN CENTRAL AFGHANISTAN
Switzerland, 2008, 34 min
Christof Thurnherr
29.01.2010 18:45
Lal, a remote bazaar surrounded by the high mountains of the Western Hindu Kush in Central Afghanistan, struggles to find peace after more than 30 years of war. Everyday life in these harsch wintery surroundings don't seem to leave much space to deal with the new situation. Former Mujaheddin Commanders, religious leaders and newly elected state officials each have their respective views of this new system called 'democracy'. In this film these different actors tell us about their past, explain their respective views on the democratic changes and reveal their individual expectations for the future.
Language of dialogues: Farsi, English
Language of subtitles: English
The documentary film is a part of a multimedia study which consists of visual and editorial parts. Apart from the film, the DVD offers thematically digested shots recorded in scope of the research and a photogallery. Visual as well as editorial part connects possibilities of verbal and visual language and is bound to serve as an interception of the complexity of the observed march and to the representation of the dance as a cultural context. The complexity should help to reveal and deliver the connotation of the traditional event in today´s local society. The documentary can be publicised separately as well and its informational value does not depend on the supporting text of the multimedia study.
In October 2007, a group of artists of different nationalities set up atablao flamenco in front of Seville’s Cathedral. They claimed this public space as a place to exhibit and express their art. The audience’s applause transformed these artists into the flamenco group “Son de Afuera” (Not from here). This short documentary shows what it means to feel and create flamenco from “outside” in the context of Andalusian society.
The Klamath River of Oregon and California is one of the most important salmon runs in the United States. While diminished over the past 100 years, it still supports an abudance of life and diverse economies struggling over its future course. This is a film about the Indian tribes of the river ecosystem – what the Klamath means to them and how they draw on traditional and modern resources to restore its strenght, beauty and balance. The film focuses on the Klamath River and the Indian tribes of the lower basin – the Yurok, Hoopa and Karuk. Yet this story has implications for any number of river ecosystems and indigenous peoples around the world. Through the Indian tribes of the Lower Klamath, the film reminds us how the health of a people and the health of its lands are integrally linked.
Documentary mosaic about Czech fellow-countrymen living in a small Serbien village. 90 years ago, family Frič desired a change. They left the rough life at mountainous Banat - the Southern promontory of Rumenien Karpats - and moved to more fertile lowlands stretching along impressive Danube. Soon the others followed.
Fajãs, living between the seaside and the cliffs...
Thanks this movie you can entry into the daily lives of Goluboies inhabitans.The village of Goluboie is original village in Moldova where Czechs live. They setteled this part of southern Moldova in the second half of 19th century. During the summer of 2006 the village had 130 inhabittans of Czech nationality.Movie shoes their daily routine and life style which is mainly based on agriculture (bee-keeping, breeding of domestic animals etc.). On the other hand you can meet with 150 years old original Czech brass band, deeply connected with this village.One of the topics is also question of Czech identity. Which factors have impact of the identity? Is it Czech language or origin of their ancestors?
„Ritual reversals“ or „ritual of rebellion“ are concepts used for mock rituals performend in Southern and Eastern Africa. During fertility rituals, like rain making ceremonies, women in their songs and dances demonstrate obscene behaviour while they behave like men. These are secret performance open strictly for eldery men and women. Still, we were invited to record the rain making ceremony in the land of Chief Chassuka, Manika Province in Mozambique in order to document the ritual for the younger generations. These rituals are a fading tradition probably due to the special character of the songs and dances.
In the middle of the 20th century a numerous group of Moravian reformed evangelicals from the surroundings of Kloubouky u Brna came to the area of Serbien Banat in Vojvodina. One-and-half-century-lasting existence of the reformed charge brought to its members much suffering borne by a process of big history stretching up to the presence. At the beginning of the 21st century the community of Czech speaking reformed evangelicals is dwelling at the verge of determination as the source of belief has been abandoned by the younger generation due to migration and impacts of modern era. The documentary focuses on historical turning points and fates of several charge members. In the foreground, inner latent godlines of the remaining descendants of the Moravian transmigrants appears which represents collective memory and symbolical universum – sources of preserved ethnicity. Faith, fate, presence as experienced past, experienced past as a garvestone.
Country Clubs or ‘Countries’ are gated communities on the outskirts of Argentina’s cities. Under the watchful eye of the private security firms hired to protect them, the clubs act as an oasis of calm for the Argentine rich. In such an environment people in the ‘Countries’ enjoy an apparently idyllic, safe existence surrounded by tennis courts, football fields, golf courses, polo pitches, shopping facilities and sometimes even private schools. Yet this film shows the dilemma and the inner-struggle of those who were born into a privileged position in a state that fails to provide social amenities, justice or peace for the majority of its people.
Desmond Love is a mature man and feels and behaves so. He likes to smoke his pipe and looks after his ducks. Men usually like talking about cars and Dessy´s favourite subject are his two shopping-trolleys. He parks them in front of his house nad likes to enhance them with various details. Desmond is one of the residents at Camphill Clanabogan, that means a person with mental handicap. In the scope of a therapy, he learns how to write on a computer. He writes his own story. This documentary amended with short cartoons let us glimp into Dessys´s memories – word after word, exactly as he remembered them. At the same time, we have got a chance to see Dessys´s home and everyday-life of Camphill community with its permanent inhabitants: mentally disabled people, young volunteers and people, who control and administrate the home.
In Berlin, young self-employed workers live the alternative to a nine-to-five job – low rents and space for creative ideas are still available. A sewing café owner, a freelance journalist and two contemporary dancers give insights in theirs live styles and tell about their independent work. The protagonists are not only part of berlin´s creative class buut they also represent a part of well-educatted generation, who struggles between job insecurity and th wish of self-realization.
‘Roya and Omid’ is an exploration of transsexuality in Iran. Bardia, a young female-to-male transsexual reflects on his childhood spent in the wrong body, when he was known as Roya (‘dream’ in Persian), but wished to be Omid (‘hope’ in Persian). His narrative is crossed the insightful comments of several male-to-female transsexuals in Iran – Donya, Handry, Leila and Shirin, who have to endure the daily scorn of society in their new roles as women.
Salaam Aleykum Copenhagen is a short documentary about Haluk, Allan and Iman – two young boys and a girl with Turkish, Kurdish, Lebanese and Danish backgrounds living in Copenhagen. How do they confront their lives with the atmosphere of Copenhagen, their home? The film is a portrait of their attitudes towards the questions of immigration and integration, their daily problems and challenges, family values, their view on Danish society and Copenhagen itself. While presenting their worlds they are opening the doors towards understanding of Copenhagen itself. They are part of Copenhagen and Copenhagen is part of them.
Side effects: Portrait of a young artist in Lahore
In the summer of 2001 the IWF in Göttingen hosted the conference »Origins of Visual Anthropology – Putting the Past Together«. Important representatives of the field came together to discuss the history of the subdiscipline. Three students were equally interested in their visions about »The Future of Visual Anthropology«. They conducted brief interviews concerning this question with filmmakers and scholars such as Jean Rouch, Ian Dunlop, Paul Henley, Karl Heider, Howard Morphy, Peter Crawford, Harald Prins and Jay Ruby.