All films will have up to 5 minutes for speakers to introduce the film and up to 15 mins afterwards for Q&A and discussion
Day 1: 13:00-14:00
“District 6: disrupting the dream deferred” (12mins 15 secs)
Janine Lange, Je’nine May, and Evan Zerf
The film highlights the history of forced removals, and the new movement towards occupation as decolonial praxis working against an ineffectual system of land restitution, using the very method that was entrenched by the apartheid government to prevent black Africans in particular and the poor more generally, from taking up permanent residence in cities all over South Africa. It features among others, those who were born in District 6 and who are still awaiting justice regarding the restitution of their land and homes, and of the occupants who have built their homes on the original District 6 site.
Day 1: 18:00-20:00
“Nkabom: A little medicine, a little prayer” (90 mins)
Lily Kpobi and Erminia Colucci
‘Nkabom: A little medicine, a little prayer’ is an ethnographic documentary which examines the nature and process of building working partnerships between healers and health workers from different health paradigms in three rural communities in Ghana. It highlights the approach to negotiating for collaboration, and shows how such partnerships can be instrumental in minimising coercion and physical restraint.
Day 2: 13:00-13:20
“Virtually Once in a Life Time” (7 mins)
Gary McLeod
Google Street View gives foresight into destinations or nostalgic looks on past lives. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, it has also served as a poor substitute to understanding places that cannot be visited in person or for holidays that cannot be had. Glitches, geographic limitations, performances, and seemingly decisive moments have all been observed in its content. GSV is now just another tool for viewing normality until, that is, a significant change happens where events become presented as ‘before and after’ pairings. GSV is not a single time-zone but rather a subtle patchwork of temporalities where navigation is problematic. This desktop documentary observes an everyday ‘walk’ around Kamaishi, one of many cities on Japan’s north-eastern coast decimated by the 2011 tsunami. At risk of erasure through future updates, this impossible and arguably unrepeatable walk describes an experience of being guided by the city’s topography but led by a temporally dispassionate algorithm.
Day 2: 13.20-13.35
“A Dream Turned Into Ice Ice Baby” (3 mins 31 secs)
Amanda Hill, Alexandra Cantu and Lauren Cuevas
This is an example documentary that was collected as part of the Westside Stories project conducted at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, TX. The project partnered students with business members in the community.
Day 2: 13.35-14.00
“Stay Away” (15 min 50 sec)
Collaborative film made by 13 women from western Nepal supported by Sara Baumann and Sara Parker and the Dignity Without Danger team
Stay away is a short drama written performed and filmed by 13 Nepalese women in Kanchanpur Far West Nepal that explores the beliefs and practices that surround menstruation. The women were trained in how to use Go Pros in Jan 2020 and this is one of the films that they have made. Edited by Sara Baumann and supported by Sara Parker and the Dignity Without Danger team this short drama aims to contribute to breaking the silence that surrounds menstrual stigma and taboos in Nepal.
Day 2: 18:00-19:00
“Decolonising the Curatorial Process” (40 mins)
Orson Nava
Orson Nava’s documentary film “Decolonising the Curatorial Process” features conference footage and recordings of individual interviews with a range of contributors who examine ways that decolonial activists, museologists, political scientists, historians and other scholar-activists from South Africa, Kenya and the UK are working with radical museum curators to challenge Eurocentric approaches to the study of history. These important museum-based consultations, research narratives and conference discussions also foreground the lived experiences (and collective memories) of communities from the global South who have been severely impacted by the racialised violence, cultural conflicts and legacies of the colonial past. Consequently, issues of restitution and legislative activism (involving legal requests for the rightful return – or “repatriation” – of stolen artworks and heritage artefacts back to their countries and communities of origin) are a significant aspect of the decolonial de-accessioning process. Case Studies Two of the key case study institutions featured in the film include: Museum of London in Docklands, West India Quay – where scholars such as Dr Melisa Bennett (Museum of London staff) and Dr Kirsty Warren (University of Leicester, UK) reflect on the recent consultation strategies and knowledge production approaches undertaken in 2018 to revise and update displays about enslavement, resistance and emancipation featured in the “London, Sugar and Slavery” galleries. Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford – where Maasai scholar-activists and rights campaigners from Kenya – Scholastica Ene Kukutia, Kuweya Timan Mollel, Yannick Ndoinyo, Samuel Nangira and Francis Shomet Ole – worked with curators to reinterpret and revise the catalogue descriptions and display labels for colonially sourced holdings within the Maasai artefact collections. A key aspect of this curatorial co-production of knowledge involved acknowledging the sacred and spiritual contexts to handling cultural objects. When discussing ancestral objects taken from Maasai communities during the colonial era, women’s rights activist Scholastica Ene Kukutia said: “Maasai culture is a living culture. When a person dies, the item is still alive.”
Day 2: 19:00-20:00
“8 days” (37 min 24 sec)
13 female film makers from Western Nepal edited by Sara Baumann and supported by Sara Parker and the DWD team
This collaboratively filmed documentary covers the variety of menstrual beliefs and practices in a village in Western Nepal. Filmed over a 10 month period involving 13 film makers we get an insight into how these beliefs impact on women at the local level. The aim is to generate discussions to help break the silence that surrounds menstruation and enable local people to address any practices which they feel are harmful.