
20:30—00:00
Culture is — Togetherness in Time
In collaboration with the EYE Filmmuseum, the Prince Claus Fund is excited to present a short films programme followed by a discussion during Amsterdam Art Week. Join us on June 1, 8.30 pm at the EYE Filmmuseum Cinema 1 — the evening will be kicked off by the Prince Claus Fund Director Marcus Desando with a welcome word by EYE Filmmuseum Director Bregtje van der Haak.
The evening will be hosted by Jesse Gerard Mpango — a storyteller, Prince Claus Fund Awardee and a founding member of Ajabu Ajabu, multimedia curatorial collective based in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
Highlighting the filmmakers and artists from the Fund’s network, we come together in the exploration of what culture means to us today. The programme will feature a collection of stories from across the world that look deep into embedded silences of the everyday. From Kantarama Gahigiri’s Terra Mater set in urban Kenya, Luis Alejandro Yero’s story Los Viejos Heraldos based in rural Cuba, to the coast of Pakistan in Hira Nabi’s All That Perishes at the Edge of Land and the intimate reflection of Newsha Tavakolian’s For the Sake of Calmness in capital of Iran, each of the artists contemplate the unsaid things we have in common.
In considering the questions of our time, while facing major global challenges, art offers a singular space for diverse ways of knowing, creating the room to question and a space to grow through seeing ourselves in one another at each moment — and reclaiming togetherness in time.
Be sure to join us — the tickets will be available on the EYE Filmmuseum website prior to the event and to round off the night, we will continue the conversation with drinks and music at the EYE Restaurant.
Featuring
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.