2020-2021 Edition

BY KONRADIN KUNZE, 2019 (IN GERMANY AND TANZANIA)

In Old Moshi, Tanzania, a skull is missing: the skull of Chief Meli, who fought the German colonial occupation of his territory and was executed in response to his resistance in 1900. This animated film, based on archival sources and oral accounts provided by Chief Meli’s grandson, sheds light on the racist roots of physical anthropology and ethnological museums.

BY CATARINA ALVES COSTA, 2019 (IN MOZAMBIQUE)

The films and photographs made in colonial Mozambique by Portuguese ethnologist Margot Dias in the 1950s are brought back to Mozambique, where they become the protagonists of an inward journey among the Makonde people, who gradually untie and reflect upon the circumstances in which these archives were shot and produced.

BY PIER-LOUIS DAGENAIS SAVARD, 2019 (IN CANADA)

Trous de mémoire, an ethnographic film directed by Pier-Louis Dagenais Savard, transmits with humor, depth and authenticity the point of view of a Wendat participating in archaeological excavations as a student. Presenting itself as an “inverted” ethnography, the short film offers a liberated and liberating look on archaeology and university excavations.

BY DOROTHÉE-MYRIAM KELLOU, 2019 (IN ALGERIA)

À Mansourah, tu nous as séparés documents, through memories, the little-known story of forced migrations that took place during the Algerian war. An important historical document revealing through a personal journalistic investigation the fallibility of collective memory, this feature film evolves to the rhythm of the memories of its main protagonist, Malek, the filmmaker’s father.

BY COSTANZA BURSTIN, 2018 (IN INDIA)

Women against water shortage. An observational documentary that explores the peculiar and constant relationship between women and water in a small Muslim village in the Rajasthani desert (India). In such a context, albeit water scarcity represents a real and severe problem in terms of daily maintenance, health and sanitation, local women tackle this daily struggle with tenacity, determination, elegance and sometimes humor. The film, indeed, highlights the way in which women’s agency emerges through the collection and management of water: fundamental responsibilities for the survival of their family and the whole community.

BY DAVID JACLIN & JÉRÉMIE BRUGIDOU, 2018 (IN BOTSWANA, MOZAMBIQUE AND SOUTH AFRICA)

Named for the nearly full moon that is the bane of anti-poaching patrols in southern Africa, Poacher’s Moon explores the intertwined worlds of wildlife, poaching and big-game hunting. Along a multispecies and multimodal approach, the filmmakers ask, ethnographically, about current human-animal relationships and their managerial turn in southern Africa. The film is a production of the HumAnimaLab (HAL), a research platform at UOttawa interested in contemporary multispecies, multisites and multimodal anthropological engagements.

BY CAROLINA MONNERAT & THEODORE COLLATOS, 2019 (IN BRAZIL)

Larger-than-life actress, cabaret performer, activist, and proud sex professional since the age of eleven, Luana Muniz – arguably one of Brazil’s most famous transgender personalities – shaped a new reality in her hostel by providing a safe working environment for generations of young transgendered women in the neighborhood of Lapa, in Rio de Janeiro. Queen of Lapa explores these women’s day-to-day lives, their quests for love, the Brazilian political climate, and some housemate rivalries, all under matriarch Muniz’s watchful and guiding eye.

BY EVA KAUKAI, MANON CHAMBERLAND, 2019 (IN KANGIRSUK)

Eva Kaukai and Manon Chamberland practice the Inuk art of throat singing in their small village of Kangirsuk. Their mesmerizing voices carry through the four seasons of their Arctic land.

BY KEVIN PAPATIE,VÉRONIQUE PAPATIE, 2016 (IN CANADA)

Political documentary highlighting the issues regarding ancestral rights for Canada’s Indigenous communities.

BY BRYAN COOCOO, 2016 (IN CANADA)

David Boivin, a former Wemotaci Chief, gives us a testimony about his commitment to the lifestyle and to the Atikamekw territory.

BY MELISSA MOLLEN DUPUIS, 2018 (IN CANADA)

In Les Tributaires du territoire (Those Who Belong to the Land), four influential members of Ekuanitshit take us to the heart of Innu culture by sharing their attachment to the caribou and demystifying some symbols worn by the animal. A genuine tribute to a majestic creature who is critically endangered.

BY PETER POUCACHICHE ET KOBE WAWATIES, 2018 (IN KITIGANIK)

On a Sunday morning, Peter Poucachiche wakes his grandson up at dawn to go moose hunting. A contemplative exploration of Kitiganik’s territory.

BY ELISA MOAR AND SIPI FLAMAND, 2016 (IN CANADA)

Atikamekw-Nehirowisiw governance goes through women and harmony with the Nitaskinan, the territory. Kokom Cotit was inspired by this principle to manage her family territory.

BY NATHAN PARADIS, 2020 (IN CANADA)

Nathan Paradis, is the Pauquachin official fisherman. Everyday he catches prawns and fishes in the Saanich Inlet to provide seafood to the elders and other people in need.

BY LANDON MOISE, 2018 (IN CLEARWATER RIVER)

Eight-year-old nature enthusiast Landon Moise takes us on a tour of his favourite forested spots in his home community of Clearwater River Dene Nation in Northern Saskatchewan. Along the way, he tells us why it’s important for us to preserve the environment we live in.

BY ASHTON JANVIER, 2017 (IN PATTERSON LAKE)

This film wants to inspire the young generation to start caring about our lands and culture while raising awareness about the ravages of uranium mining in Patterson Lake, SK.

BY ASHTON JANVIER, 2018 (IN CLEARWATER RIVER)

Media Resistance: Land & Water is Ashton Janvier’s second Wapikoni project that sheds light on the environmental injustices brought forth onto Dene land in Northern Saskatchewan by invasive uranium mining operations. Multigenerational voices reflect the crucial fight against environmental destruction.

BY TARA WILLARD, 2019 (IN CANADA)

An ancient melody of gratitude, respect and remembrance of Sacred Water and our connection and responsibility to the source of all life.

BY UAPUKUN MESTOKOSHO MCKENZIE, 2020 (IN CANADA)

Thanks to the testimony of a man on hunger strike to send a message to leaders on Indigenous land issues, a young woman proud of her Innu heritage illustrates her love for mother earth with images of her own experiences. She wants to raise awareness of environmental and indigenous causes, which for her are deeply linked.

BY KIM O’BOMSAWIN, 2017 (IN CANADA)

According to a 2014 RCMP report, close to 1200 Indigenous women are missing or murdered in Canada. Many believe that even then, the number was greatly underestimated. Today, the situation has become increasingly more alarming. Why is an Indigenous woman at higher risk than any other Canadian citizen? How can this situation persist in a country like Canada, which strives to be a model for human rights? Sex workers, victims of domestic violence, activists, the loved-ones of missing or murdered women, men as well as women, all bear witness to this troubling reality, and cry out from the heart to protest this quiet killing…

BY ROGER HORN, 2019 (IN SOUTH AFRICA AND ZIMBABWE)

An experimental cinematic incursion into the journey of a Zimbabwean migrant family as they visit their native country, Scenes from a Transient Home is an intimate film that captures the affective dimension the anthropologist has developed with his field of study and the subjects of his research.

BY MAÍRA BÜHLER, 2019 (IN BRAZIL)

Filmed over five months of intense coexistence with the subjects, Let it Burn is an ethnographic feature film presenting with great sensitivity, poetry, and honesty the life of crack users residing in an apartment building of temporary social housing in São Paulo, Brazil. A camera drifting through the hallways, rooms, elevators and stairs of this building captures deeply real characters engaged in a hallucinated quest for bonding who fight passionately for their lives and their humanity.

BY LUCIE MARTIN, 2019 (IN BELGIUM)

Demeure, the first film by director and sociologist Lucie Martin, presents an ethnography of precarious living environments without lapsing into maudlin miserabilism. Through a few moments captured with Etienne in his apartment and sometimes captured by himself, this film proposes an original, sensitive and reflective writing that questions the ethics of the representation of vulnerabilities by our institutions and by cinema. According to the director, “Demeure does not pretend to be a film about, but rather it is situated – to use Trinh T. Minh-Ha’s expression – as a film as close as possible. “

BY RAPHAËLLE BESSETTE-VIENS, TOM BOYAVAL, 2019 (IN FRANCE)

Tom underwent a mastectomy surgery on March 21, 2018. Following a healing complication, he is waiting for his surgeon’s approval to resume his daily activities. The film focuses on his post-surgical journey. He recounts his altered body and his eagerness to go on vacation.

BY ANDREW SCOTT, 2018 (IN INDIA)

A sensory exploration of a city, its people and a sound that unites them. Working its way from very quiet to a raucous crescendo, the horn and its honk are the lead characters in this short observational documentary.

BY MICHAEL B MACDONALD, 2019 (IN CANADA)

Amplify, an Indigenous hiphoppa and member of the Edmonton-based hip hop group Unspittable, reflects over the three years the group has been together in the hour before a gig. Rich of intimate performances, Unspittable is an improvised ethno-fiction film immersing its audience into the reality of Indigenous hip hop in urban Canada.

BY MARCOS BONISSON AND KHALIL CHARIF, 2019 (IN BRAZIL)

Experimental, short and hypnotic, the work, which takes place in the suburbs of Copacabana, takes the form of a collage of current images and archives in Super 8. Narrated by poet Fausto Fawcett and sound editing by musician Arnaldo Brandão.

BY CLIFTON EVERS AND JAMES DAVOLL, 2019 (IN THE UNITED-KINGDOM)

An experimental work with an oppressive atmosphere that recounts the experiences of reckless men surfing on noxious waves in a post-industrial ecosystem on the shores of the North Sea in England. These waves, polluted with human and industrial debris, are those of a toxic Anthropocene.

BY MARTIN SAXER, MARLEN ELDERS, DALER KAZIEV, 2019 (IN TAJIKISTAN)

Murghab, a city formerly well maintained by the Soviet Union, is now the scene of human resilience, of a population that struggles daily to live and survive in the ruins of socialism and in the very harsh environment of Tajikistan.

BY CHARLES FAIRBANKS AND SAUL KAK, 2019 (IN MEXICO)

A sensory short film that portrays, with an experimental treatment, the daily life of the Mexican indigenous community Zoque, which is marked by the ghost of a volcanic eruption that occurred in 1982. An immersion filmed over a period of six years, punctuated by powerful and relevant images.

BY YRSA ROCA FANNBERG, 2019 (IN ICELAND)

A man and a woman live with their flock of sheep on the outskirts of Iceland’s most remote cape, where nothingness recedes. It is autumn, and Ulfar and his wife are visited by their grandchildren, who help them to drive the sheep from the hills to the farm for the last time. This experimental ethnography presents a way of life undertaken for the very last time in an almost tangible, hazy, steel-blue cinematic fabric.

BY BORIS SVARTZMAN, 2019 (IN CHINA)

In 2008, local authorities evicted 2,000 villagers from Guanzhou, a peninsula in southern China, to design new urban projects. Despite the demolition of their homes and police pressure, a handful of residents returned to the peninsula. For seven years, Boris Svartzman filmed their battle to save their ancestral land, from the ruins of the village where nature is slowly reclaiming its rights to the construction sites of the big city, which is moving inexorably in their direction.

BY EMMANUELLE MAYER, 2019 (IN GHANA, ISRAEL AND NETHERLANDS)

A painful, luminous film about the daily tragedies of a scattered Ghanaian family, fragmented by socio-political constraints, but nevertheless alive, united and driven by the visceral need to have a geographical and affective place to call home.

BY FRANCESCU ARTILY, 2019 (IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)

The island of Jean Charles, in southeast Louisiana, is destined to disappear under the ocean within a few years. As a project to relocate the island’s indigenous Choctaw, Biloxi and Chitimacha communities is undertaken by the U.S. State Department, these last inhabitants ponder on their uncertain, precarious future, and on their isolation, between resistance and abandonment to forced migration.

BY JORGE LEANDRO COLÁS, 2019 (IN ARGENTINA)

Five hundred women and a handful of men go to the small town of Sierra Chica to visit the prisoners of its penitentiary every weekend. This prison complex has three units, it houses about 4000 inmates, and it is surrounded by inns, bars and boarding houses that are open exclusively for the visitors whose stay there is both massive and fleeting. Bibi’s boarding house and El Gallego’s bar are two places where the visitors’ life stories come together during a few days.

BY SIMON KESSLER, 2019 (IN FRANCE)

Anaelle is 18 years old. In a few days, she leaves for England to attend university. Her belongings are scattered on her bedroom floor: the styles of her school years, holiday mementos, sociology textbooks. She wishes she could take it all. Packing the contents of her life, Anaelle laughs, cries, yells, and lights up a cigarette. She reflects on the past and worries about the future: what she packs in her suitcase connects the two.

BY ANDRÉS SOLIS BARRIOS, 2020 (IN MEXICO AND CANADA)

The Needle and the Drum is a warm and tender look at the director’s grandparents, a story told through memories that intertwine in an abyss of dreams and illusions. Made entirely of archival footage, the film proposes a reflection upon memories and upon the fact that memory deteriorates over the years. Life experience prints itself in time, like embroidery on a white canvas. – Andres Solis Barios is a Mexican filmmaker based in Montreal.

BY ELINA CHARED, 2019 (IN FRANCE)

Marianne’s face defies the notion of age. She seems to bear the marks of many lives. Marianne uses her diagnoses and her peers’ experiences to shape a personal relationship with her psychological condition. She is constantly creating and recreating herself, sometimes playing and losing faith, but always getting back up. Several moments of her daily life are captured, in which she reveals her intimate cohabitation with the voices she hears. The portrait of a woman who fights to exist and to live with difference.

BY TANIA HERNÁNDEZ VELASCO, 2019 (IN MEXICO)

A young woman and her mother undertake the last harvest of a bean field, without any farming experience, in order to convince her grandmother to keep the family’s land. They try to grasp, through the whispers and stories of the field, what the recently deceased grandfather could not teach them. A poetic look at the deep links between the loss of a loved one, the loss of knowledge and, consequently, the deterioration of an agricultural environment.

BY HEATHER ANDERSON, 2019 (IN CANADA)

7 am, sheets, a faint light coming from a window illuminating what seems to be an apartment: a couple wakes up and shares with us, very gently, a fragment of their intimacy.

BY AZAR SAIYAR, 2018

The song Ayriliq, performed by popular Iranian-Azerbaijani singer Googoosh in the 1970s, has been copied several times from one videotape to another. It is now available on the web in all its formally degraded beauty and is presented to us by Azar Saiyar.

BY RUKEN TEKES, 2019 (IN ITALY AND TURKEY)

Aether is a breathtaking feature-length homage to the ethereal essence of Hasankeyf, a culturally and ecologically invaluable cave-city of Ancient Mesopotamia that is endangered by a controversial Turkish hydroelectric dam project. This exquisitely slow and meditative film is shaped by emotions, feelings, and observations, and reveals some of the mythical place’s truths by following an unencumbered chronology.

BY SOLOMON MEKONEN, 2019 (IN ETHIOPIA AND GERMANY)

Emails to My Little Sister is a film concerning the phenomenology of Blackness in Berlin. The film, however, takes place in Ethiopia, where becoming Black is reflected back on in siblings’ email conversations.

BY NICOLÁS AGUIRRE, PARÁBOLO PÁRAMO, 2019 (IN CANADA)

In the words of the filmmaker: “As an immigrant, I had several jobs, one of them being in a recycling company, where I stayed for four months. I was immediately struck by the space and by the way the workers took over it. The place was worn down by the incessant activity. It was repetitive, dirty, and hard work, but there were workers who had been working there for twelve years, always on the verge of alienation, resisting by re-signifying the space, the objects, and their connections. That’s when I became concerned about documenting everything around me with my cellphone, which allowed me to be more discreet, but also more honest, since I was working there. Recording was my way of redefining that workspace.”

BY JÉRÉMY GRAVAYAT, 2019 (IN FRANCE AND ROMANIA)

In the words of the filmmaker: “In Seine-Saint-Denis, for years, Romanian families have been looking for places to live. Having become fellow travelers in their struggle against evictions, we made this film together, in the likes of many open houses. Traveling from abandoned villages to shanty towns, squats and cities, the intimacy of their stories is confronted with a suburb in constant mutation. From large ensembles to the Greater Paris, their trajectories reweave a common history; that of inhabitant solidary and refused relegation.”