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Society for Visual Anthropology, American Anthropological Association
Joyce Hammond, SVA Film Festival Chair
For 2006 festival program, click here. For 2005 festival program, click here. For 2004 festival program, click here.
If film title is underlined, you can click to see a Quicktime clip, read a description, or find the distributer of a film. For Award-winning films and jury remarks, click here. To search films by keyword, click here. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28 5:10 PM - 7:00 PM Motherhood: Risk and Loss 7:00 PM - 9:20 PM Awards Ceremony THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29 9:00 AM - 12:15 PM Gender Issues 12:15 PM - 5:45 PM Global Culture 5:45 PM - 7:58 PM Expressive Culture FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30 3:10 PM - 8:03 PM Portraits I SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1 12:50 PM - 7:41 PM Moral Choices AWARDS AND JURY REMARKS Woven into the film’s dialectic of finely depicted characterization is a mélange of cinematic voyages with irony, dream sequences and horrific revelations by masked labor activists and knowledgeable but hopelessly outmaneuvered factory inspectors. At a few moments in the film, the fabric of China Blue itself almost tears at the seams as when family members of a factory worker, petrified about being filmed, can’t seem to decide whether they want to say that capitalism is better than communism, or when it is disclosed that after police frightened off the project’s local filmmaking crew they also drove the film’s director to complete his work even more deeply underground than he was before. China Blue raises a gamut of ethical issues. First, viewers cannot run from its demonstration of how globalization renders us, consumers, culpable in distant atrocities. We see only too well the amorality of the self-blinded European and Wal-Mart buyers who swallow wholesale blue jeans and wholesale lies about factory working conditions, the amorality of the well-attired exploitation of teenage girls threatened with unemployment and blacklisting, and finally the problematic moral decisions of the filmmaker himself. Micha Peled must thoroughly have deceived the factory owner, going so far as to make this natty paragon a short promotional video that uses some of the same factory footage later repurposed to crucify him. China Blue is in many ways a messy film, outrageous, funny, problematic and insightful … a must-screen for classes on the contemporary Chinese and global capitalist chaos More information about the film, Chinese labor and international sweatshops is available at the film’s PBS website: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/more.html. A study guide, very useful for the classroom, is available: Director Anne Makepeace and cinematographers Joan Churchill and Barney Broomfield follow the families for two years—from the refugee camp, through the excitement of arriving in the U.S., to the first real footholds carved in their adopted country. Along the way there is alienation, disillusionment and, finally, a hopeful equilibrium as the families gather to celebrate the birth of their first American-born child. Rain in a Dry Land is a compassionate, multi-layered story of families caught in the crosshairs of politics and ethnic strife. Intimate, affectionately filmed and rigorously crafted, viewers sense from the start that they are in the hands of storytellers at the peak of their craft. Both ethnography and biography, Everything’s Fine accompanies Dr. Konate on his everyday rounds as he treats an assortment of injuries and ailments. A man with an enlarged prostate comes to the clinic to ask about an operation. “We all die in the end,” the man says. “Yes,” replies the doctor, “but it’s best to delay it by getting cured.” Many patients come to the clinic only after traditional healing methods have failed to cure or have made things worse. With skill and sensitivity, the film navigates the narrow space between belief in traditional healing and a fragile faith in Western medicine. Everything’s Fine reveals deep-seated cultural values about everyday life in southern Mali, while providing important insights into the chaotic inadequacy of health care in Africa today. The film never lectures or intrudes. It carefully, thoughtfully considers Dr. Seydou Konate’s life, his work, and the moral choices he has made in remaining one of the few country doctors in rural Mali. In each, the personality of the judge comes through with unforgettable clarity. He is devout, patient, good humored, intelligent, capable of admitting error, and decisive in arbitration. His words are often compassionate and wise. As the film unfolds, the man is also shown to be a tolerant father, seriously addicted to snuff, not infrequently short on sleep, and generous beyond normal measure to disputants whom he judges to have been wronged, despite whatever weaknesses he discovers about them (as do the viewers) in the course of the proceedings. By focusing on conflict resolution, Justice at Agadez not only brings personalities of the judge and disputants to the forefront, it also allows the viewers a means to appreciate intimate details of day-to-day coexistence in the city. May-December marriage strife, property misappropriation, theft, witchcraft accusations and assault are all brought to the court. Some cases are forwarded to the police and left unresolved. Others have happy endings. Justice in Agadez could profitably be screened, in courses on the anthropology of law, with another excellent film, Ayisi’s and Longinotto’s Sisters in Law, that follows three cases in Cameroon. Justice in Agadez spreads its net wider and with larger mesh. Sometimes, as in the first of its seven stories, the viewer has the impression of possessing all the details needed to understand the case and the decision of the judge. In others, notably that of the police dispute involving seven shouting witches, the audience is puzzled and agog with questions not addressed. Yet throughout, the film succeeds in honoring and explaining much about the Cadi and his decisions, the variety of his cultural universe, and the Koranic wisdom he can brilliantly dispense. Patrick Ross by Ervin Chartrand is constructed through fragments of the canvas, the environment and close-ups of the artist fabricating a montage that draws the viewer into his world as spectral images emerge in his painting. Through Chartrand’s skillful direction Ross’ narrative becomes a conversation about his own identity and aspects of his culture that is manifested through art. Apples and Indians by Lorne Olson is a whimsical portrait of the filmmaker who searches out for his own identity through a variety of ever-changing allegories and analogies of what it means to be “Indian,” Métis, half-breed, Oji-Cree, Indian, Native, Aboriginal, and other labels. My Indian Name by Darryl Nepinak and Nganawendaanan Nde'ing (I Keep Them In My Heart) by Shannon Letandre engage aspects of “traditional” culture that continue to connect the filmmakers to family, history and identity, that become displaced in the contemporary cityscape. Each film is self-contained, presenting the vision of its director through intimate reflection, humor, style and grace. Though short, a surprising level of complexity and sophistication charges each film that confront the myriad issues constructing and contesting the filmmakers’ identities. The film's first challenge, to provide a theoretical analysis of the escalating violence, is met with historical and cultural arguments. First is reference to thirty-six years of what UN documents call a civil war of genocide, in pursuit of which government soldiers were trained to kill and torture women as supporters of guerrillas. From genocide flows a second historical contributor, impunity, "the cancer of Guatemala." If even half-hearted police investigations are begun, most relatives of murdered women refuse to cooperate: in the climate of impunity, they fear reprisals by the killers. A cultural or ideological argument is offered as the film's third powerful theoretical explanation for the homicides, the role of machismo and the universal disempowerment of women. Acts that in the United States would seem insignificant, a woman going out at night or wearing fingernail polish, are cited by both police and incarcerated killers as moral justifications for murder and proof that the victim was a prostitute. As a protest poster in the film declares, in Guatemala, "Machismo is death." Together, the film's arguments are impressively dimensional, but not all are valid. "Guatemala has always been a violent country," the narrator intones. Ancient Mayan ruin once housed "alters for ritual murders of young virgins." This appeal to exoticism and projection of ancient elite practices onto the present is specious. Furthermore, contemporary ethnic Mayans were the victims, not perpetrators, of Guatemala's genocide. The film's second challenge is to document police and judicial negligence. The evidence includes examples of officers' outright refusal to act quickly while a victim may still be alive, dismissal of involvement on the ground that the victim deserved whatever she got, willful contamination and destruction of evidence, endless delays in investigation, and even murder accusations levied against persistently complaining family members. This lexicon of governmental irresponsibility can offer a useful contrast in the classroom for the evaluation of other systems of justice. Finally, the film meets its third challenge by presenting inspiring portraits of Guatemalan activists, notably Norma Cruz, a mother who promoted women's self-help groups across the country. Profiled too are many family members who risk the reprisal of killers and police by dedicating their lives to the reformation of their country's criminal justice system. Killer's Paradise introduces a solid theoretical perspective, case study and testimonies of governmental neglect, and humanizes the work of those who resist the chaos. This complex film opens its window to a cultural world that is grotesque beyond belief, and then forces the viewer to believe. Information about the filmmakers, impunity in Guatemala and the question of women and violence is found at the film's website, http://www.nfb.ca/webextension/killersparadise.
The SVA awards the Best Short Work to Peter Biella for Textiles from Artes in Ayacucho. This un-narrated film about weaving in Peru is beautifully photographed and sensitively observed. It renews the viewers’ sense of wonder and respect for the ancient craft of weaving. Beginning with wrestling a llama from the herd to be sheared, the film includes spinning the wool, dyeing the yarn, warping and setting up the loom, designing the patterns, and weaving blankets. Subtly emphasizing that this is a continuous activity, the film ends where it began, with the llama in a mountain pasture. The film stands out for its relaxed and well-visualized encounter with material culture. “You see a lot of smiles here,” a teacher tells us, “but when you read their journals, you discover that every child has been touched in some way by violence.” Our fifth grade guide, Clarence, expresses a broader view—one of optimism, hope and stubborn wisdom. “Hunters Point is sometimes dangerous, “Clarence tells us, “but it just matters how you think and learn.” Produced as part of the Visual Anthropology Program at San Francisco State University, Malcolm X Academy succeeds at every level, especially in the way it uses film as a medium to engage kids in conversations about their own lives and education. On screen, these fifth graders seem to take ownership of the film. Malcolm X Academy is perceptive, carefully crafted, simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful. More than anything, it is a record of the trust between filmmaker Jennifer Wolowic and the children and teachers of Hunters Point. That trust, earned over a period of nine months working with the school, is palpable in every scene. STUDENT FILMS |
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