This short film explores the entan­gle­ments of smoke and pixels, trees and humans, loss and recov­ery. When the film­mak­er dives into a burnt forest in Oregon, U.S.A., memory and place begin to unrav­el. Her voice shares per­son­al reflec­tions on loss while glimpses of bare soil, rock for­ma­tions and moun­tains form new hori­zons. A mon­tage of found footage, Google Maps explo­rations, and mate­r­i­al record­ed during field­work form a new nar­ra­tive. The film plays with ideas of fic­tion and real­i­ty and ques­tions our rela­tion­ship with the on- and offline envi­ron­ments we inhabit.

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

Suzanne Schaaf holds a bach­e­lor in the­atre direct­ing and teach­ing (Ams­ter­dam Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts), and a master’s degree in visual anthro­pol­o­gy (UvA). She has an inter­est in artis­tic research and site spe­cif­ic the­atre. Her work is often con­nect­ed to place­mak­ing, memory, land­scape and tran­si­tion. She prefers to work inter­dis­ci­pli­nary when doing research, where the out­come isn’t fixed on one form or prod­uct but rather depends on the research process. She grew up in the Nether­lands, but has devel­oped a strong con­nec­tion with the United States where most of her family comes from.

Louis Hothothot was born as an ille­gal second child in China, his par­ents got severe­ly pun­ished and had to cope with bitter con­se­quences. After stay­ing for years abroad, the film­mak­er returns to his family and engages in lift­ing and heal­ing sup­pressed feel­ings of guilt and offens­es.  

“Wield­ing his camera with some­times intim­i­dat­ing effect, Louis forces his family to con­front their trau­mat­ic past, one that hides yet anoth­er ordeal. He probes them with sharp ques­tions and remarks to drag them out of a dis­tress­ing past. It’s painful, but nec­es­sary, because “if mem­o­ries are frozen in the past, what can dis­solve the pain?”” (idfa)  

Not just deal­ing with the past, it is also about his own iden­ti­ty between acquired West­ern cul­ture and cling­ing to his Chi­nese upbring­ing.  

Louis Hothothot (Louis Yi Liu) is a film artist, writer, graph­ic design­er. He was born and grew up in China, stud­ied graph­ic design, ani­ma­tion and video art at the China Cen­tral Acad­e­my of Fine Art in Bei­jing. He enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts pro­gram at the Dutch Art Insti­tute in 2012. In 2017, he fin­ished as Master of Film at the Nether­lands Film Acad­e­my. His long fea­ture debut FOUR JOURNEYS opened IDFA 2022. https://louishothothotart.wordpress.com/  

Direc­tor, cin­e­matog­ra­phy: Louis Hothothot
Edit­ing: Chris van Oers, Louis Hothothot, Albert Elings
Music: Harry de Wit
Pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion: Pieter van Huys­tee Films

All over Europe, refugees are being housed in almost aban­doned vil­lages; this is cheap and is intend­ed to coun­ter­act the rural exodus. But how to feel home in a place that others want to leave? TERRA INCOGNITA is part of anthro­pol­o­gist Shirley van der Maarel’s artis­tic research project in the remote Valle di Comino. We meet var­i­ous inhab­i­tants, chil­dren and adults, from Asia and Africa, and also the locals of Valle di Comino, who alto­geth­er, with their multi-facetted back­grounds, gen­er­ate a new life in this half-empty place. TERRA INCOGNITA is more than a doc­u­men­tary, it´s a glimpse into an absurd reality.

Direc­tor, script, cin­e­matog­ra­phy: Shirley van der Maarel
Sound design: Olivi­er Terpstra
Con­tact: hello@shirleyvandermaarel.com
Research project: www.land-unknown.eu

“Mama, I miss you so much,” begins a letter Alima writes to her mother. She is one of count­less Indone­sian women work­ing as a “babu,” or nanny, for a Dutch family in the former Dutch East Indies of the 1940s. The voice of a nar­ra­tor speak­ing to her dead mother floats through this com­pelling and insight­ful piece of cinema, rem­i­nis­cent of home movies and news­reels. In the days of colo­nial rule, it was common for Dutch fam­i­lies to make Super8 or 16mm films for friends and rel­a­tives to show them life in the colony: the chil­dren, the abun­dance of trop­i­cal fruits, the exotic idio­syn­crasies. The maids usu­al­ly played only a mar­gin­al role. From this per­spec­tive of rule and almost 500 pic­ture sources, con­trast­ed with the nar­ra­tion of many maids, Sandra Beerends com­piles her teach­ing tale on topics such as self-deter­mi­na­tion, wom­en’s rights and oppres­sion and expos­es the one-sid­ed­ness of the writ­ing of his­to­ry, as it is still taught in many places today.

Sandra Beerends from the Nether­lands is a screen­writer, pro­duc­er and direc­tor of fea­ture films and doc­u­men­taries. She works for the Dutch TV sta­tion NTR and runs her own film pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny called “Beru­ang”. Her work includes the co-pro­duc­tion and script-edit­ing of KAUWBOY (2012, by Boudewi­jn Koole), and she wrote the script of the short ARIGATO (2012, R: Anielle Web­ster). THEY CALL ME BABU is her debut as a director.

Direc­tor, script: Sandra Beerends
Edit­ing: Ruben van der Hammen
Com­pos­er: Alex Simu
Voice Alima: Denise Aznam
Research: Dorette Schoote­mei­jer, Hans van den Berg
Line-Pro­duc­er: Celine Baggen Production,
dis­tri­b­u­tion: PVH Pieter van Hui­js­tee, Rudolf Kats  - rudolf@pvhfilm.nl

A busy train full of pas­sen­gers rolls through Tan­za­nia from the capi­tol to the provinces for three long days and nights. In third class, we meet a charis­mat­ic Masai named Isaya and his grand­son William, who earns a living in the city’s show busi­ness, some­thing his grand­fa­ther does not under­stand. In second class, we meet the entre­pre­neur Rukia, who was forced to marry as a young girl and whose hus­band later left her with her young son. She has since mus­tered the courage to make a fresh start as a bar owner. In the front of the train, where the first class pas­sen­gers sit, we encounter the enig­mat­ic voice of Peter, who used to be a gang­ster but is now a priest and who talks to his fellow trav­el­ers about their wor­ries, whether they want or not.

This is Tan­za­nia in tran­sit. As the train moves along through the dusty land­scape, the film sketch­es a pic­ture not only of pover­ty, prej­u­dice, and hos­til­i­ty against the Masai, but also of social change, new begin­nings and a hope­ful eye on the future, to wher­ev­er this jour­ney is going.

She cooks bunch­es of sting­ing nettle, blows her nose loudly, can breathe fire when she talks, and was ugly even as a child, Lule says. But then Lule, who is a shep­herd, braids her hair and care­ful­ly puts on her tra­di­tion­al cloth­ing for her trip into town. Lule is a proud Bur­rne­sha, a woman who takes an oath not to marry or have chil­dren. As the youngest daugh­ter of an Alban­ian family of shep­herds, she was expect­ed to marry a much older man, but cir­cum­stances caused her to decide at an early age to live as a man and take over the role of the head of the family. She says it fit her character.
WILD FLOWER is an homage to a dying way of life: not only the tra­di­tion of the sworn virgin, but also of sheep farm­ing. Both are pro­found­ly con­nect­ed in this film. When a lamb Lule has raised her­self fol­lows her around, we see a glimpse of anoth­er world.

Best doc­u­men­tary, Tirana Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val 2016

A busy train full of pas­sen­gers rolls through Tan­za­nia from the capi­tol to the provinces for three long days and nights. In third class, we meet a charis­mat­ic Masai named Isaya and his grand­son William, who earns a living in the city’s show busi­ness, some­thing his grand­fa­ther does not under­stand. In second class, we meet the entre­pre­neur Rukia, who was forced to marry as a young girl and whose hus­band later left her with her young son. She has since mus­tered the courage to make a fresh start as a bar owner. In the front of the train, where the first class pas­sen­gers sit, we encounter the enig­mat­ic voice of Peter, who used to be a gang­ster but is now a priest and who talks to his fellow trav­el­ers about their wor­ries, whether they want or not.

This is Tan­za­nia in tran­sit. As the train moves along through the dusty land­scape, the film sketch­es a pic­ture not only of pover­ty, prej­u­dice, and hos­til­i­ty against the Masai, but also of social change, new begin­nings and a hope­ful eye on the future, to wher­ev­er this jour­ney is going.

No Eng­lish trans­la­tion available.

No Eng­lish trans­la­tion available.

The great Post Road, built last cen­tu­ry by the Dutch set­tlers at the expense of many human lives, covers a thou­sand kilo­me­ters on the island of Java. The camera skims along the road, serv­ing as eyes and ears through­out this jour­ney now for­bid­den to Pramoedya Ananta Toer, one of the most famous con­tem­po­rary Indone­sian writ­ers and former polit­i­cal pris­on­er now under house arrest. Toer man­aged to write an essay about the road for this film. This film is both, the por­trait of a man in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion and a jour­nal of a trip reflect­ing the marks of coloni­sa­tion and the present-day context.