20:30—00:00 uur
Culture is — Togetherness in Time
In samenwerking met het EYE Filmmuseum presenteert het Prins Claus Fonds met enthousiasme een kortfilmprogramma gevolgd door een discussie tijdens Amsterdam Art Week. Kom op 1 juni om 20.30 uur naar Cinema 1 van het EYE Filmmuseum — de avond wordt geopend door de directeur van het Prins Claus Fonds, Marcus Desando, met een welkomstwoord van de directeur van het EYE Filmmuseum, Bregtje van der Haak.
De avond wordt geleid door Jesse Gerard Mpango — een verhalenverteller, ontvanger van de Prins Claus Fonds Award en medeoprichter van Ajabu Ajabu, een multimedia curatorencollectief gevestigd in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
Door de nadruk te leggen op de filmmakers en kunstenaars uit het netwerk van het Fonds, komen we samen in de verkenning van wat cultuur vandaag de dag voor ons betekent. Het programma zal een verzameling verhalen van over de hele wereld bevatten die diep ingaan op ingebedde stiltes van het alledaagse. Van Kantarama Gahigiri’s Terra Mater, gesitueerd in stedelijk Kenia, Luis Alejandro Yero’s verhaal Los Viejos Heraldos gebaseerd op het platteland van Cuba, tot aan de kust van Pakistan in Hira Nabi’s All That Perishes at the Edge of Land en de intieme reflectie van Newsha Tavakolian’s For the Sake of Calmness in de hoofdstad van Iran, overdenkt elk van de kunstenaars de onuitgesproken dingen die we gemeen hebben.
Bij het overwegen van de vragen van onze tijd, terwijl we geconfronteerd worden met grote mondiale uitdagingen, biedt kunst een unieke ruimte voor diverse manieren van weten, en creëert het de ruimte om te twijfelen en te groeien door onszelf te zien in elkaar op elk moment — en het herwinnen van samenzijn in de tijd.
Zorg ervoor dat je meedoet — de tickets zullen beschikbaar zijn op de website van het EYE Filmmuseum vóór het evenement, en om de avond goed af te sluiten, zullen we het gesprek voortzetten met drankjes en muziek in het EYE Restaurant.
Met in de hoofdrol:
Newsha Tavakolian, Iran | For the Sake of Calmness (2020)
Newsha Tavakolian is an Iranian photographer, visual artist, and educator known for her work that captures human emotions. Newsha began her career in photography at a young age, eventually becoming a prominent figure in the field. Her photography is characterized by its evocative storytelling and her keen eye for capturing the delicate emotions that shape us as humans. She has covered a wide range of topics, from the challenges faced by women in Iran and worldwide to the aftermath of tensions in conflict zones. Her work often combines artistry with documentary, blurring the lines between reality and the imagined. Newsha received the Prince Claus Fund Award in 2015.
In her film For the Sake of Calmness (2020) Newsha explores how does one visualise an amorphous idea, one that has become abstract to the point of obscurity? Landscape, real and imagined, provides the backdrop for a visual narrative, while sound, intertwined with a self-narrated monologue, adds a third dimension to this specific portrayal. Newsha Tavakolian is detached from the real world and yet achingly affected by it. An experimental take on a reality intensified by the emotional flare of PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome).
Hira Nabi, Pakistan | All That Perishes at the Edge of Land (2019)
Hira Nabi is a filmmaker and visual artist who examines the multiple elements of contemporary reality with political insight and poetic intensity. She explores in detail the local consequences of overarching issues such as globalisation and environmental degradation, boldly contrasting harsh fact, inventive narrative and lyrical imagery. Combining critical research and a personal aesthetic vision, she demonstrates the next generation’s ability to resist mass populism and reclaim individuality. Hira received the Prince Claus Fund Award in 2020.
Her film All That Perishes at the Edge of Land (2019) features Ocean Master, a decommissioned container vessel, entering into a dialogue with several workers at the Gadani yards. The conversation moves between dreams, desires, places that can be called home, and the violence embedded in the act of dismantling a ship at Gadani. As the workers recall the homes and families they left behind, the long workdays mesh indistinguishably into one another, and they are forced to confront the realities of their work in which they are faced with death every day. How may they survive and look towards the future? The film looks at the bodies, lives (and afterlives) and livelihoods entangled within the shipbreaking industry, and asks us to consider its costs, and to assign culpability.
Luis Alejandro Yero, Cuba | Los Viejos Heraldos (2019)
Luis Alejandro Yero is a filmmaker from Cuba. He has a degree in Documentary Direction from the International Film and Television School (EICTV). His short films have been screened at IDFA (2020), Bali International Film Festival (2019), Sheffield International Documentary Festival (2019), Málaga Spanish Film Festival (2014), and Olhar de Cinema (2018) among others. He has also received awards at FICUNAM (2019), Mar del Plata (2018) and Havana Film Festival (2018). Through the medium of documentary filmmaking, he explores how political violence is revealed in the most intimate settings and what resistances arise to confront it. Luis received the Prince Claus Fund Seed Award in 2021.
In his film Los Viejos Heraldos (2019) an elderly couple in their nineties live a plain and solitary life in the Cuban countryside. Their everyday routine unfolds in rituals celebrating the small things. Building a traditional charcoal oven; keeping it hot, while a storm approaches. The groundbreaking news concerning the country’s political scene reaches them through a dilapidated TV set. A documentary with beautiful black and white imagery that observes how personal stories roll in the flow of History.
Kantarama Gahigiri, Switzerland / Rwanda | Terra Mater – Mother Land (2023)
Kantarama Gahigiri is a Rwandan-Swiss writer/director. Born in Geneva, she’s holding a Master’s degree in International Relations. Today, Kantarama pursues her passion, immersed in an exploration of identity, migration, empowerment and on-screen representation, through her recent projects shot sometimes in Switzerland, and most times in East Africa. Kantarama is an alumna of Realness Residency (2018), La Fabrique Cinéma at Cannes FF (2019), Le Moulin d’Andé (2020), Berlinale Talents (2021), Locarno Filmmakers Academy (2022) and Atelier Grand Nord (2023) with Tanzanite, her latest project, a feature film in development.
In her film Terra Mater (2023) Kantarama asks: what happens when we create trauma to the body of the Land? Who will be harvesting the consequences? What about the ties between colonisation, capitalism and climate change? Is climate justice even possible? The film is talking about land, a vast and complex issue in East Africa, and the continent in general. An issue that is directly linked to the people, their heritage, their future, very concrete, very tangible. But it could really be anywhere. There are economical, political and spiritual aspects to the land, and we are part of its ecosystem. Our human bodies depend on the health of the body of the Land. Therefore we need to protect and restore, to repair and honour it, on a global scale.
Jesse Gerard Mpango, Tanzania
Jesse Gerard Mpango is a storyteller based in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Jesse is a founding member of Ajabu Ajabu, a multimedia curatorial collective based in Dar Es Salaam. Ajabu Ajabu employs participatory, open-ended approaches in its programming and events as a way of exploring de-centralized and communal forms of presentation, production, and preservation of audio-visual work in Tanzania. Recurrent within his work as part of Ajabu Ajabu, and as an independent practitioner, is the capacity for participatory rituals of imagining to unsettle and dislocate dominant narratives and extractive power structures.
Some of Jesse’s recent projects include Manifested Belonging, a multidisciplinary examination of formal and aesthetic contributions of Dar Es Salaam’s screen communities, and a component work, the award-winning documentary short Apostles of Cinema. Jesse received Prince Claus Mentorship Award in 2024.
