Workshop programme 5

Workshop programme 5: History

Over The Bones | Charlotte Ginsborg | UK 2008 | 16mm | 30min

As part of an educational training scheme at Studio 174 in Kingston Jamaica, structured as a twofold artists’ residency and summer school, we were invited to participate with six curated artists’ film programmes. Young people from the downtown area of Kingston worked together with students from the University of the West Indies and resident artists on a series of artistic works in various disciplines, including filmmaking, painting, radio, sound art, and photography. The workshops were organised by Openvizor and lead by resident artists Anton Kats and The Rainbow Collective.

The programmes curated by Minou Norouzi were organized thematically. To reflect the interests of the participants we made a selection based on six keywords: dreams, poetry, portrait, music, history, and performance, around which we structured the programmes.

Revolutionary Memories of Bahman who Loved Leila | Farahnaz Sharifi | Iran 2012 | Video | 15 min

Bahman’s father warns him about Leila: she will bring the family nothing but misfortune. Bahman is 20 and tries to listen to his dad, but the year is 1979, and he ends up getting involved with both Leila and the Islamic Revolution. In his father’s mind, the revolution is trouble as well – it’s not up to normal Iranians to decide who should be in power. With the help of photos and in voice-over, Bahman tells of his desire for life, love and protest. In the black-and-white pictures, Bahman is invariably colored red: at a wedding, during a weekend trip to the Caspian Sea, playing soccer. Only when the protests get out of hand and the Shah’s soldiers begin shooting into the crowd does Bahman learn that his longing will bring death and destruction. And he remembers what his father always told him: “I see the bottom of the creek and you the surface.”

The Oyster Effect | Valentina Ferrandes | Italy 2010 | HD | 13 min

Using archive footage shot by the anthropologist De Martino, The Oyster Effect develops into a collage of historical references. The portrayal of women and hysteria is juxtaposed with built environments, architectural spaces, landscape, all with their own narration. A journey that challenges linearity and historicity attempts to bridge the specific representations of women’s subjectivity as products of their cultural environments in northern and southern Europe. This journey is persistently negated by the conflicting relationship between image and narration.