Close Up

25 November 2018: November Film Festival Programme 7

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Rafael Guendelman Hales will be present for a Q&A, with Marcos Serafim, Jefferson Kielwagen & Steevens Simeon on skype.

Gede Vizyon
Marcos Serafim, Jefferson Kielwagen & Steevens Simeon
2018 | 15 min | Colour | Digital
Haitian Creole with English subtitlesUK premiere

A walk through the Port-au-Prince Grand Cemetery guided by one of its inhabitants. The images suggest a psychogeography of the cemetery: a place of Vodou practice, a historical landmark, and an index of the destruction caused by the 2010 earthquake. The images are combined with audio documentation of Vodou songs and improvised poetry, both in Haitian Creole. Gede Vizyon comments on the ethnographic gaze and human-animal relationships while exploring the material and immaterial complexities of the cemetery. Shot with action cameras during the 5th Ghetto Bienalle, this video experiment is the result of a collaboration between Brazilian and Haitian artists.

Dislocation Blues
Sky Hopinka
2017 | 17 min | Colour | Digital
London premiere

An incomplete and imperfect portrait of reflections from Standing Rock. Cleo Keahna recounts his experiences entering, being at, and leaving the camp and the difficulties and the reluctance in looking back with a clear and critical eye. Terry Running Wild describes what his camp is like, and what he hopes it will become.

Two radishes in the family are too much
Rafael Guendelman Hales
2017 | 25 min | Colour | Digital
Spanish with English subtitles
European premiere 

In the year 1985, the artist’s mother, Carmen Hales, was kidnapped by the DICOMCAR (Dirección de Comunicaciones de Carabineros, the Chilean police force’s Direction of Communications), one of the military dictatorship’s organisms for oppression. In spite of having a hood pulled over her face, she was able to recognize the route taken with her kidnappers through a specific counting system. This orientation and memory exercise is the starting point for reflecting on the differences that exist between hyper-connected times, such as ours, and a bipolar and linear past, exploring different ways of moving through and relating to space.

A God’s Shadow
Bernhard Hetzenauer
2017 | 20 min | B/W | Digital
Spanish with English subtitles

Chon, a member of the Native Mexican Wirrárika community, tells the story of his cousin Faustino, son of the shaman of an indigenous settlement in the mountains of Nayarit called La Mora. In the 1980s Faustino had proclaimed himself to be god and the community´s spiritual leader, which then had been accepted by his father and the inhabitants. Together with an armed group he menaced and terrorized other neighboring villages. When Chon witnessed his cousin kill various members of their own community, he escaped La Mora and reported the incidents to the police of the larger village nearby, Santa María del Oro.

Total runtime: 71 min


Part of November Film Festival