FRIENDS
Norway, Macedonia, 2010, 35 min
Frode Storaas, Elizabeta Koneska
29.01.2011 20:05
Filip is a student at Mac Brod Gymnasium. He stays at the dormitory. Alija is a good friend of him at school. But they relate to different religions and that separate them not only during lunch-breaks at school, but all the time outside school. Filip spends his weekends in his home village Samokov, collecting mushrooms for sale and helping his grandparents and his mother in her small shop. Alija commutes everyday from his home village Plasnica.
The film hints on the situation in Macedonian countryside where unemployment forces people to leave the villages. This situation of dejection shadows the relationships between ethnic and religious groups.
Director, Camera: Frode Storaas, Elizabeta Koneska
As an anthropologist Storaas has worked with pastoralists and agro-pastoralists in Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. General anthropology, i.e. adaptation, economy and politics, has been his main concern.
As a filmmaker he has been involved in projects in Africa and the Middle East, in Greece and Macedonia, in Mexico and USA, in China and in Norway. A theme conveyed in some of these projects has been magic, how magical beliefs may influence everyday life.
Koneska is a senior curator at the National Museum of Macedonia in Skopje, ethnology department. Her main topics of research and scientific relates to: traditional food; coppersmith and tinsmith crafts; Slavic Orthodox community in Istanbul; Shared Shrines; Turkish and other Muslims ethnic and religious community’s.
Koneska has directed 12 films based on research in Macedonia and Turkey.
Production: Macedonian Centre for Photography, Skopje, Macedonia
Edit: Frode Storaas
Language of dialogues: Macedonian, English
Language of subtitles: Czech, English
The compatriotic village of Holuboje was founded in the so called Bessarabia (part of today’s Moldavia) by Czech colonists in 1864. Holuboj compatriots managed to preserve aspects of their language and folk culture, often long forgotten in the Czech Republic, in the manifold national variety of this region. The most extraordinary of all is the folk band which has continuously functioned here for incredible 146 years and which has various Czech songs in its repertoire.
On the basis of a social anthropological case study, this film documents the birth practices of the Bunong in Mondulkiri province, located in the northeast of Cambodia. Social, economic and political changes are transforming the province tremendously and are affecting villagers´ beliefs, perceptions and habits regarding pregnancy, delivery and early motherhood. Traditional midwives, pregnant women, mothers and their families give a personal insight into their present decision-making strategies, which are at the crossroads between tradition and modernity.
