Curated audiovisual programme

Photo: Pavel Gabzdyl

Convenors/curators:
Michal Pavlásek (Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences)
Pavel Borecký (Graduate School of the Arts and Humanities, University Bern)
Jaroslava Panáková (Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology, Slovak Academy of Sciences)

The audiovisual section of the SIEF2023 closely follows and sensorially reflects the conference theme Living Uncertainty. The board of convenors decided to give space to the presentation of ethnographic films and film documentaries that seek an alternative new path not only for expressing and understanding the many uncertainties of the current world but also for the uncertain future that we already live in and has something to say. What will become visible and what will we hear when we begin to permeate the landscapes of an uncertain future?

By making these invisible landscapes visible, ethnologists, cultural and social anthropologists, and filmmakers bring important testimonies from these alternative ways of searching for an understanding of contemporary worlds.

The audiovisual program is structured according to the following issues: Sensory Landscapes, Future Unfolds, Witnessing Uncertainty, Identities in Transformation, Body and Intimacy.

Each screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers, who will be on-site in person.

Thursday 8 June

Curated by Michal Pavlásek

Convenor/curator Michal Pavlásek decided to give space to the presentation of ethnographic films and film documentaries that seek an alternative new path not only for expressing and understanding the many uncertainties of the current world but also for the uncertain future that we already live in and has something to say. What will become visible and what will we hear when we begin to permeate the landscapes of an uncertain future?

By making these invisible landscapes visible, ethnologists, cultural and social anthropologists, and filmmakers bring important testimonies from these alternative ways of searching for an understanding of contemporary worlds.

09:00 - 10:45 Invisible Landscapes (47 min)
11:15 - 13:00 Living Water (77 min)
16:45 - 18:30 The Visitors (83 min)

Friday 9 June

Curated by Pavel Borecký

Tribute to Jana Ševčíková

09:00 - 10:45 Old Believers (46 min)
11:15 - 13:00 Gyumri (68 min)
16:45 - 18:30 Those Who Dance in the Dark (78 min)

Saturday 10 June

Curated by Jaroslava Panáková

24th February triggered me questioning my own personal and professional boundaries. Is the technology of the quotidian that has made me comfortable with my life, unable to leave everything behind and to make a free fall into the unknown, so to speak, whether it is a new ethnographic field or situation? And is it the same technology that has brought the industry of killing into being and now challenges me again: Are you capable of taking the risk and making the rupture with your comfortable, way too comfortable self?

These questions led me to the selection of two films. They are made by two extraordinary woman film directors, Greta Stocklassa and Viera Čakányová, who without hesitation introduce fiction, playfulness and certain formalism into the documentary film making. Both films are dedicated to the issue of how technologies foster creation of unsecure, unstable, and challenging spaces in which a human being is often unwillingly confronted with identity and value questions. Both films were shot in the extreme northern environments where the physical, even physiological discomfort, harshness, and desolation foster the challenging self-inquiry that gradually dissolves into the interrogation with humanity, elucidating today world’s utopies and distopies.

I wonder how non-anthropologists perceive the extreme North, how they deal with the extremes and extremities, thematically, methodologically, practically but also personally. Is it this part of the planet that can teach us to disentangle the bundles of worries, anxiety and insecurity? And could we bring the new skills back home?

09:00 - 10:45 Kiruna - A Brand New World (87 min)
11:15 - 13:00 FREM (73 min)