Tuesday
24. January 2023 – Senatsaal (MZH)
Program
On Tuesday we show student films by filmmakers from Vienna, Berlin, Göttingen and many other cities
Film 1 – Water Ways
We see trucks, cargo ships, inland ships, planes and trains passing by on a daily basis, yet very few of us have any idea of the lives that are lived aboard. Families that live and grow up on ships, in constant mobility, live according to another rhythm than the rest of society. The physical visibility versus social invisibility of transportation jobs stands central to Waterways. The film allows the viewer to experience the way of life of the inland shippers by showing and engaging with the diverse crews on four different ships. Geerte Rietveld is a former Master-Student from the Netherlands. For her masters in humanitarian action, Geerte delved into the effect of mass media on Dutch policy on missing refugee children. This research showcased to her the importance of people-centered humanitarian-imaging, leading her to specialise in visual ethnography in her second MA.
Film 2 – The Impact of the Economic Crisis
This is a short documentary that shows the impact of the economic crises that started recently in Lebanon in 2019; specifically on the health services. Knowing that the crisis is any event that is going (or is expected) to lead to an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community, or a whole society, the film shows visually and through interviews with individuals who loses the ability to control the exterior factors influencing their choices and possibilities, and therefore, loss of balance and temporary disorder occur.
Film 3 – Inna
After fleeing from the war in Ukraine, Inna and her children start a new life in Vienna, trying to stay optimistic despite separation from her husband and lack of money.
Film 4 – Precious
The short film “Precious” is a result of collaborative work within a seminar of Visual Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin between master students of Social and Cultural Anthropology and African students who fled the war in Ukraine.
The ethnographic film is based on an semistructured interview with Precious, a young Nigerian woman who fled from the war in Ukraine and has just arrived in Berlin. The film explores how the protagonist crafts her new life in the city. In the film Precious deals with
important issues such as her experience of racism and trauma, her relationships and her plans and dreams for the future. The short film was created intimately portraying a person at a crucial moment of change beyond her control, a situation in which a crisis, a catastrophe can lead to the opening up of new agentive possibilities and opportunities.
Film 5 – Eroberung
What is it like being trans* and looking for intimacy online? Valerie is in her 40s and has so far lived her femininity almost exclusively in her apartment – most people around her don’t know about her trans* identity (yet). Besides her home, Facebook is another space she navigates as a woman. She uses closed queer and trans* Facebook groups to talk about trans* topics, make friends, and establish and try out intimacies. In the film, we accompany her on the digital surfaces of her computer and in the safe space of her apartment.
Katharina Neumaier and Miriam Homer are MA students of Social and Cultural
Anthropology at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich.
Film 6 – Queerfeminist Futures
In the completely independent and self-financed film project entitled “Queerfeminist Futures”, the ethnological creators Franzina Braje and Wiebke Riedel explore, broadly speaking, what queerfeminists want and why. Since their Master’s degree in Transcultural Media at the University of Bremen, they have been working together as a team on various projects.
In the first part of the film, seven collaborators reflect on their personal shame, themselves and their attitude towards their body, gender, sexuality and identity in a collective shame performance. Using abstract artistic means, they show together how they are already countering patriarchal shame with resistance and transformation. In the third step of the process, shared queer-feminist futures are able to be radically imagined in order to make them livable. The film serves as empowerment, on the one hand of those people who are themselves involved in the film and who reveal and perform their personal stories in it, in order to finally cathartically free themselves from their shame and self-regulation; on the other hand, it is meant to encourage those who watch the film to reflect on themselves. In addition, queer identities, relationship models and ways of living are to be made visible in society as a whole and normalised with the rejection of patriarchal taboos and shame.
