24.-25.1.2014
INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF MOVIES
WITH ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEMES

NOISE THAT BRINGS MONEY

Norsko, 2013, 41 min
Konrad Pilot
25.01.2014 21:05

At the blacksmith market in Maroua, in the Far North region of Cameroon the hammers clang all day long. Here the local blacksmiths turn scrap iron into objects for everyday use. Car bodies become wheelbarrows, truck wheels are transformed into ploughs and smaller pieces of scrap iron end up as spoons. The film is a portrait of Abakar, a young creative blacksmith pursuing his dream to medernize his workshop and to established a blacksmith enterprise. Following Abakar at the work at his workshop, at home with his family, at the meetings and exhibitions movie presents a persistent struggle of an individual to fulfill his  dreams of successful enterpreneurship, by bringing seemingly unusable pieces of iron back to life.

Konrad Pilot was born in Poland. He studied Social Anthropology with Philosophy and religion Studies as minors at the LMU in Munich, Germany and Visual Cultural Studies in Tromsø, Norway. Noise That Brings Money is his first film.

Dialogues: French, Fulfulde, subtitles: English, Czech
Production: Visuelle kulturstudier, University of Tromso, Norway
Director, camera: Konrad Pilot

THE WORLD PREMIERE!
 

ON THE COMMON GROUND

Velká Británie, 2013, 25 min
Sophie Wagner
25.01.2014 20:10

On a small hill in the north of Israel the members of a religious kibbutz, a community of artists and an Arab village – who share a politically fraught history including losing homes and reclaming identity – live as neighbours in a hillside. Although villagers of the three communities do not hold many narratives in common, they do share an understanding of the power od mastering them. The way in which each story, and they are often conflicting ones of victim-hood and guilt, pride and wrongdoings, contains the other without neccessarily relating to it, laid bare a sense of unavoidable inter-subjectivity- This film is an attempt to communicate alternative points of views to the often quite stereotypical imagery we, in central Europe, are bound to perceive via dramatic media reports on the situation in Israel. We follow people´s lives in a shared enviroment and begin to understand, that individual identifications to rarely match up with official categories, which are deployed by state sponsored narratives. The governing of those is a powerful tool – therefore the creation of contemporary, shared, narratives of land and people is a politically meaningful act. On Common Ground points to the question if, and how, this can have an effect in a country that is divided within and under constant pressure from the outside.

Sophie Wagner graduated from cultural and social anthropology at the University od Vienna. Now, she is currently finishing her second MA in the Centre of Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She is also working for the Ethnocineca – Vienna´s documentary and ethnographic film fest.

Dialogues: English, Hebrew, Subtitles: English, Czech
Production, director, camera: Sophie Wagner

THE WORLD PREMIERE!

BEHIND THE WHEEL

Velká Británie, 2013, 20 min
Elise Laker
25.01.2014 17:45

Every year, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers leave Tajikistan in search of employment. The money sent back provides a huge boost to the economy; in fact, Tajikistan is the most remittance-dependent country in the world. The vast majority of these migrants are male, which means the Tajik population is becoming ever-more female. So what happens to the women who are left behind?
Behind the Wheel serves as an inquiry into the moral and emotional turmoil of Nigora, an Uzbek woman whose traditional life of being a housewife is interrupted after her migrant husband fails to send back enough money and she finds out he has been having an affair. No longer able to rely on her husband, Nigora defies prevailing gender norms and sets to work fixing car tyres.

Elise is a recent graduate of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, where she received training in observational filmmaking. Alongside her MA, she hold a BA in French and Russian from University of Nottingham. Elise has travelled extensively throughout Central Asia and has a fascination with post-Soviet countries.

Production: The Granada Center for Visual Anthropology, University of Mancherster, UK
Director, camera: Elise Laker
Dialogues: Uzbeck, subtitles: English, Czech