KIBONUMWE / METEORITE

- “I can only describe it from what I’ve seen on tele­vi­sion. A huge pointy ele­ment that pierced the ground. And the earth around it… [makes ges­tures] fell every­where. Dis­turb­ing the peace, dis­turb­ing the status quo, the way things are.” 

KIBONUMWE / METEROITE by visual artist Simon Rittmeier is an unusu­al, exper­i­men­tal short film that explores the phe­nom­e­non of the mete­orite and raises epis­te­mo­log­i­cal ques­tions. How do we create our real­i­ty from the phe­nom­e­na of the world, where are the limits of the describ­able? 

This film will be screened simul­ta­ne­ous­ly at Unseen as part of our #Junction_Nairobi, fol­lowed by a shared discussion.

WHAT REMAINS ON THE WAY

Those flee­ing pover­ty or vio­lence and per­se­cu­tion must be good on their feet. A woman with four chil­dren choos­es the long march from Guatemala through Mexico, like many others hoping to reach the USA. Lilian has left an abu­sive hus­band, the car­a­van – plus the film crew trav­el­ing with her - offer her pro­tec­tion for this enor­mous step. Along the way, she finds other women with sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences, who are like her flee­ing not only for mate­r­i­al rea­sons. The film accom­pa­nies the won­der­ful­ly cohe­sive family and lets us expe­ri­ence a process of self-asser­tion of a young mother at first hand. A great doc­u­men­tary film that stands out impres­sive­ly from common reportages about migra­tion prob­lems. 

Jakob Krese worked for human rights NGOs in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca for sev­er­al years. He worked as a free­lance pho­tog­ra­ph­er and writer for radio fea­ture pro­duc­tions. Krese stud­ied camera and film direct­ing in Berlin, Havana and Sara­je­vo. His films were screened at fes­ti­vals such as IFFR Rot­ter­dam, Gua­na­ju­a­to and DOK-Leipzig. In 2019 he became co-founder of Majmun Films.  

Danilo do Carmo is a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er with inter­est in socio-eco­nom­ic issues, espe­cial­ly colo­nial his­to­ry and black iden­ti­ty in Latin Amer­i­ca. 

Direc­tors: Jakob Krese, Danilo do Carmo
Cin­e­matog­ra­phy: Arne Büt­tner, Danilo do Carmo
Editor: Sofía A. Machado
Pro­duc­er: Annika Mayer, Majmun Films
Dis­tri­b­u­tion: Majmun Films 

THE HOMES WE CARRY

THE HOMES WE CARRY por­trays a family torn apart by the tur­moil of world his­to­ry between Ger­many, Mozam­bique and South Africa. At the centre is Sarah, a young Afro-German mother. She wants her daugh­ter to have the rela­tion­ships she lacked as a child. There­fore, she trav­els with her to Africa, where her father and the child’s father are wait­ing for them. But meet­ing Lua­na’s father, who sud­den­ly has to grow up when Sarah shows up at the door with his daugh­ter, presents them with sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges.  

Mean­while, Sarah’s father, Eulidio, recalls the Mozam­bi­can con­tract work­ers’ almost for­got­ten and unjust his­to­ry in the former GDR. In his nos­tal­gic day­dreams, he returns to the ori­gins of his Euro­pean family and their sudden sep­a­ra­tion - a fate he shares with many other German-Mozam­bi­can fam­i­lies. 

 

Fit­ting in and family are often not as syn­ony­mous as they should be. Espe­cial­ly when putting the two in sync means tra­vers­ing dif­fer­ent time­lines, dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic and racial real­i­ties. This is in addi­tion to cov­er­ing the geo­graph­ic areas of Ger­many, Mozam­bique and South Africa. For Sarah, a young Afro-German mother, these dif­fi­cul­ties must be over­come for the sake of giving her daugh­ter a fight­ing chance to belong to a family she fits into. How­ev­er, begin­ning this process by trav­el­ing with her daugh­ter to Africa, shows Sarah the true nature of the chal­lenges. Start­ing with her daughter’s father in Mozam­bique still trying to mature and her father in South Africa still trapped in the nos­tal­gia of the unjust his­to­ry of Mozam­bi­can Con­tract work­ers in the former German Demo­c­ra­t­ic Republic(GDR).  

As an obser­va­tion­al doc­u­men­tary, Brenda Akele Jorde skill­ful­ly shows the com­pli­ca­tion, the dif­fi­cul­ty and the injus­tice that can per­vade lives gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion. With the lens of her camera, she shows how nuanced it can be to grap­ple with issues of account­abil­i­ty, respon­si­bil­i­ty, belong­ing and most impor­tant­ly family.  

(Ulan Garba Matta, stu­dents’ plat­form) 

SHE, HERSELF

Susan, a young Iran­ian woman in Berlin, lives not too much accord­ing to the expec­ta­tions of the regime. Fol­low­ing close­ly the nuanced rit­u­als and prac­tices of her every­day life, Navid Ghadimis sen­so­r­i­al ethnog­ra­phy aims to gain insights into the melan­cholic feel­ings under­neath and the pro­tag­o­nist’s psy­chic life. 

SHE, HERSELF is a purely obser­va­tion­al film about Iran­ian female non­con­for­mi­ty in the dias­po­ra, which does not talk much, but simply shows. The film was devel­oped in scope of direc­tor Navid Ghadimi’s three year­long grad­u­a­tion research on “Iran­ian Gender lim­i­nal­i­ty in Dias­po­ra” 

ONE OF US NOW

ONE OF US NOW is a film by and with Maya Stein­berg. Being her­self a sec­u­lar and fem­i­nist Israeli, Maya’s lifestyle devi­ates a lot from the one of her father, who had a late reli­gious awak­en­ing. Maya has a strong long­ing to know more about her father’s world, but also tries to find out if this world pro­vides space for women and queer people. By vis­it­ing the gravesite of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Galilee, which is an impor­tant place for Maya’s father, the film­mak­er tries to grasp this ultra-ortho­dox reality. 

The film wit­ness­es the fas­ci­nat­ing encounter between a place and its people, medi­at­ed and facil­i­tat­ed through the expe­ri­ence of Maya and the rela­tion­ships which unfold. ONE OF US NOW enables us to feel the strong field of ten­sion in a con­text where the pos­si­b­li­ty of social inclu­sion and exclu­sion fol­lows highly rigid rules and tra­di­tions.  

KIBONUMWE / METEORITE

- “I can only describe it from what I’ve seen on tele­vi­sion. A huge pointy ele­ment that pierced the ground. And the earth around it… [makes ges­tures] fell every­where. Dis­turb­ing the peace, dis­turb­ing the status quo, the way things are.” 

KIBONUMWE / METEROITE by visual artist Simon Rittmeier is an unusu­al, exper­i­men­tal short film that explores the phe­nom­e­non of the mete­orite and raises epis­te­mo­log­i­cal ques­tions. How do we create our real­i­ty from the phe­nom­e­na of the world, where are the limits of the describ­able? 

I AM WOUNDED

Aram and Mihemed are two teenage broth­ers who strug­gle to earn a living for the family by  col­lect­ing recy­cling paper. Their father lost a leg in a ter­ror­ist attack while work­ing for the Amer­i­can army. The boys cruise the streets and high­ways of the now blos­som­ing city of Hewlêr (Arbil) in Kur­dis­tan, Iraq. Depict­ing their every­day strug­gle to make ends meet inter­ject­ed with snap­shots from the “men’s world”, the camera is a bystander in the plight of these wound­ed men – men, these boys are to become.  

Fol­low­ing the lives of two teenage broth­ers in a Kur­dish city of North­ern Iraq, the doc­u­men­tary film BRîN­DARIM  - I AM WOUNDED  depicts the rou­tine of these boys forced to become men in a wound­ed soci­ety. 

This film will be screened simul­ta­ne­ous­ly at Con­flic­to­ri­um as part of our #Junction_Ahmedabad, fol­lowed by a shared discussion.

THE FABRIC

Two sets of cir­cum­stances bound 367 stu­dents to their 25-storey uni­ver­si­ty dorm rooms in Ger­many. The first being the lock­down from the world­wide COVID crisis. And the second, the ren­o­va­tions of their dorm rooms that the lock­down had brought to an unfin­ished abrupt halt. From the out­side, their build­ing might well be aban­doned, except for a piece of fabric cov­er­ing it to con­tain debris in place. From the inside, Iran­ian film­mak­er Iman Behrouzi, as one of the 367, explores the dif­fer­ent ways this piece of fabric with a little gap here, a little fold there, and a little lift­ing from the wind in anoth­er part, gives the stu­dents tiny glimpses into the world out­side. What does a slice of a view mean when one has been cut off from the out­side world? 

HOME SWEET HOME

The topic of “home” goes beyond the four walls of the house­hold. For queer people, it is often a com­plex enigma. In an effort to decolonise nar­ra­tive film­mak­ing, direc­tor Humad Nisar used par­tic­i­pa­to­ry film­mak­ing meth­ods and col­lab­o­rat­ed with var­i­ous queer par­tic­i­pants in Pak­istan and the dias­po­ra. The result is an unusu­al, exper­i­men­tal col­lage that tries to grasp the com­plex enigma of what “home” means for Pak­istani Queer people. How do they nav­i­gate through inti­ma­cy and belong­ing in order to create a feel­ing of ‘home’ in a coun­try where one’s exis­tence is being ille­gal­ized? 

WITH MY THOUGHTS ON THE SEA

In WITH MY THOUGHTS ON THE SEA we follow Nedo, one of the last inde­pen­dent fish­er­men of Piom­bi­no, Italy. While more and more fish­er­men in the area are eco­nom­i­cal­ly forced to sign on with large fish­ing boats, Nedo remains inde­pen­dent. As we sail with him, he shares his thoughts on the tides, the chang­ing world, and the pow­er­ful, unpre­dictable nature of the sea. Through the lens of Nedo’s life and work, the film offers a con­tem­pla­tive med­i­ta­tion on the rela­tion­ship between humans and envi­ron­ment.