Close Up

24 November 2018: November Film Festival Programme 5

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Beny Wagner and Max Goran will be present for a Q&A.

Outside
Beny Wagner
2017 | 14 min | Colour | Digital
UK festival premiere

Outside traverses two metabolic paths in the attempt to forge a reciprocal relationship between the two. Moving from the metabolism of the human body to the metabolism of waste infrastructures, the film creates an inverted exchange wherein the concealment of waste inside the human body turns to the concealment of the human body inside waste. The boundary that divides waste from production would seem to contain an underlying set of moral implications. The film considers these as situated somewhere between law enforcement and class structure as defined through labor positions.

Diga-me, o Que é a Ciência? – I & II
Ana Hatherly
1976 | 13 min | B/W | Digital
Portuguese with English subtitles
UK premiere

Ana Hatherly (1929-2015) was born in Porto, moving to Lisbon at an early age. After undertaking formal musical training in Portugal, France and Germany, she took a degree in Modern Languages at the University of Lisbon. She then enrolled at the London International Film School (1971-74) and subsequently moved to the United States where she completed a doctorate in Golden Age Hispanic Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. During the 60s and 70s she was a central member of “PO-EX” the Portuguese experimental poetry movement which aligned itself with the revolutionary forces against the Salazarist dictatorship. Filmed shortly after the Carnation Revolution (which Hatherly participated in) Diga-me, o Que é a Ciência? I + II, [Tell me what is science I + II] marks not only a departure from Hatherly’s more well-known poetic and text based art works but represents a significant juncture in her own filmmaking practice. Equally the film acts as an important historical curiosity in its own right. Hatherly enters the immediate post-revolutionary situation with a workers’ inquiry ethos with the aim of investigating the early implementation of cooperative farming policies. The mixture of responses to the question of science and technique capture the uneasy and uneven spread of the well-intentioned if high-minded revolutionary ideals of the first Socialist government of Portugal.

Filming dad's ass while he's chopping logs with his chainsaw
Max Goran
2018 | 22 min | Colour | Digital
Swedish with English subtitles
UK premiere

I want to see my lumberjack dad, who I have limited contact with, out of interest in connections being made between right wing populism and working class affiliation. Through the use of a camcorder I approach our relationship, tainted by political disagreement and different life circumstances. The lack of common ground becomes bridged through the camera, through him performing himself, and me capturing his image. A practice holding both violent and mending qualities.

Total runtime: 64 min


Part of November Film Festival