24 Stunden offen im Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss am 17.09.22. Macucu, Filmpremiere. Foto: Stefanie Loos | Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss
© Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss, Foto: Stefanie Loos
An audience sits in lounge chairs, attentively watching a presentation or performance in a modern space.
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24 Stunden offen im Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss am 17.09.22. Macucu, Filmpremiere. Foto: Stefanie Loos | Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss
© Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss, Foto: Stefanie Loos
Past events
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At this year’s GIEFF (German International Ethnographic Film Festival) film day, films from Puerto Rico, Papua New Guinea, Mexico/Colombia, Germany, Cameroon and others will be shown. The programme includes successful festival films as well as world premieres.

Through the lens of ethnographic cinema, we will embark on a visual journey exploring different mediums and methodological approaches. Themes such as collective memory, intergenerational memory and community memory in various cultural contexts will provide insights into the present and the universal human experience of memory as a tool for knowledge.

A particular highlights of the festival are the World Premiere of the film “Nema” by the Cameroonian filmmaker Augustine Moukodi and the film “Seven Ridges” by Antonio Coello and Valentina Torres a first full-length feature drama to be ever produced in Cmiique Iitom (Seri language). At this year event we will also have a Virtual Reality section that will be accessible during the day.

The filmmakers will be present and introduce their films. The film day will be moderated by prominent film curator Dorothe Wenner.

A detailed programme with descriptions and film trailers will be available here from mid-March.

The Slices of Life film day is a collaboration between the Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss and the German International Ethnographic Film Festival (GIEFF).

Dorothee Wenner (Host) is a freelanced filmmaker, curator and writer based in Berlin.

Since 1990 has been working for Berlin International Filmfestival in various positions, currently as as the delegate for the festival for the Subsahara African region. In 2009, she joined the team of the Dubai International Film Festival as programmer for films from India/Africa/Germany until the festival’s closure. She has been member of the board and jury of the Lagos based African Movie Academy Awards since inception 2005. Her latest work as filmmaker is the webseries www.kinshasa-collection.com. Since 2020 she has been working as a consultant for film/cinema for the Humboldt Forum.

Programme

11.00 a.m.

11:00 Welcome + VR Intro

11.10 a.m.

“El signo vacío” by Kathryn Ramey + film talk

76 min, Puerto Rico, 2023

Spanish and English with English subtitles

appropriate for all ages

 

Mixing a hundred years of found footage – tourism, agricultural and propaganda films – with contemporary portraits of artists and activists this film is a journey through the complex layers of the United States’ occupation of Puerto Rico. Using an experimental and ethnographic approach the film reveals how carefully crafted American fictions of “democracy” and “debt” obscure a capitalist and military domination.

More info about the film


Still from the film "El signo vacio"
© rameyfilms / Kathryn Ann Ramey


Kathryn Ramey is a filmmaker and anthropologist whose work operates at the intersection of experimental film processes and ethnographic research. Her award winning and strongly personal films are characterised by manipulation of the celluloid. Recent work focuses on developing anti-colonial and environmentally friendly photochemical processes utilising indigenous flora in Puerto Rico. AWARDS: the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Creative Capital, the Social Science Research Council on the Arts, LEF New England, Yaddo Artist Colony, Marble House residency and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.


Portrait of the filmmaker Kathryn Ann Ramsey
© Points North Institute / Camden Film Festival
afterwards

Lunch Break

1.00 p.m.

“Ophir” von Alexandre Berman and Olivier Pollet + Film Talk

98 min, Papua Neuguinea, 2020

English and Tok Pisin with English subtitles

appropriate for kids from age six

 

Ophir tells the story of an extraordinary indigenous revolution for life, land and culture, opening up the path for the creation of the world’s newest nation in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. A poetic yet dramatic ode to the indelible thirst for freedom, culture and sovereignty; the film sheds light on a significant conflict of the Pacific, revealing the visible and invisible chains of colonisation and its enduring cycles of physical and psychological warfare.

 

More info about the film



Olivier Pollet is an investigative journalist and award-winning filmmaker, producer and researcher based in the UK. Over the past decade his works have focused on corporate accountability, human rights, environmental issues and colonial legacies, working alongside indigenous communities in the Asia-Pacific region, and especially in Papua New Guinea. His films have been recognized numerous times on the festival scene, including with a nomination for the Albert Londres Prize, the most prestigious journalism award in France. His latest project is the award-winning feature documentary Ophir (2020), alongside its multimedia educational counterpart The Colonial Syndrome.


Portrait of the filmmaker Olivier Pollet
© Arsam International/Fourth World Films

Alexandre Berman is a French documentary filmmaker and editor, based in Paris, France. He co-directed the documentary The Panguna Syndrome with Olivier Pollet and the film was a finalist for Albert Londres Prize 2017 in France. In 2018, his feature documentary Norvège: Les Ombres sur la Mer captured cultural heritage stories in Norway. Part of the relaunch of French “Connaissance du Monde” cinema circuit, it was screened in France and Switzerland for several months across 2018 and 2019.

afterwards

Break

4.00 p.m.

“7 Ridges” by Antonio Coello and Valentina Torres + Film Talk

75 min, Mexico/ Columbia, 2022

Cmiique Iitom (Seri) with English subtitles

appropriate for kids from age twelve

 

Following old traditions, the grandmother asks her granddaughter Margarita to prepare for her initiation into adult life. But the old values have long since succumbed to pressure from outside influences: Water shortages, modern consumer goods and drugs shape the lives of the younger generation. While her older sister loses herself in drug use, Margarita is still searching for her own way.

Sietefilos (7 Ridges), both ethnofiction and rocking coming of age musical, is the first feature film produced in the Seri language Cmiique Iitom. With it, visual anthropologist Antonio Coello contributes to the ongoing process of revitalizing Seri indigenous culture and language.

 

More info about the film


Film poster of "7 Ridges"
© Antonio Coello Rodríguez


Antonio Coello is a Mexican and Colombian filmmaker and visual anthropologist who collaborates as curator with the Dreamspeakers International Film Festival. His short films involve indigenous communities with which he creates collective cinematic stories that have been shown at various festivals and museums like the Guggenheim Museum in New York and ImagineNATIVE at Toronto. His short films have won awards in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, the Czech Republic, India, Spain, Bulgaria, U.S.A., Canada, Belarus, Australia, and Mexico. As a teacher he has taught workshops and courses on screenplay writing and filmmaking in Mexico, Canada, U.S.A., India and Nepal. In his creative work he has benefited from grants from government and private institutions from different countries.

Sietefilos (Seven Ridges) is his first full-length feature film.


Portrait of director Antonio Coello Rodríguez
© Antonio Coello Rodríguez
6.00 p.m.

“Lydia” by Christian Becker + Film Talk

21 min, Germany, 2021

appropriate for kids from age six

 

Lydia – filmed in the late 1970s and written down in diary sketches in 1992, the movie tells the story of the lives of Lydia and Wolfgang B. over two decades.

She, translator of French literature, he, Romance studies professor.

Between life crisis and “joie de vivre”, full of passion and disciplined work, driven by convictions and doubts and the fear of a fatal second tumour, their film recordings and Wolfgang’s diary texts fragmentary report about the beauty and the adversity of a symbiotic marriage and yet at the same time about a whole life.

 

more info about the film


Film poster for "Lydia"
© Christian Becker


Christian Becker (*1971) studied at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany, and at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (eictv), Cuba. He works as a filmmaker, producer and editor in Cologne, Germany.


Portrait of Christian Becker the film maker of "Lydia"
© Christian Becker
afterwards

“Chronicle of a digital funeral” by Sophia Harb + Film Talk

11 min, Palestine, 2022

Arabic and English with English subtitles

appropriate for all ages

 

Chronicle of a Digital Funeral intimately follows Nasser Jaber, a socially motivated chef in New York City, as he navigates the emotional aftermath of his father’s burial in Palestine during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Interweaving live funeral footage with Nasser’s reflections, the film offers an exploration of loss and digital connection amidst distance and grief.



Sophia Harb, is a filmmaker, with a diverse background in the film
industry, working across Palestine and Europe. Her recent projects
include notable productions such as a series for HBO and award-winning
films “It Must Be Heaven” and “In Vitro”.Additionally, she served as a
script advisor and production manager for the first online drama
series “Dandara” in Palestine, produced by BBC Media Action.

Recently, Sophia completed her MA in Visual and Media Anthropology at
the HMKW University of Applied Sciences in Berlin,where she did her
short film Chronicle of Digital Funeral.


Portrait of Sophia Harb
© Sophia Harb
8.00 p.m.

“Nema” by Augustine Moukodi (world premiere) + Film Talk

82 min, Cameroon, 2023

French and Sawa languages (Douala, Pongo, Batang) with English subtitles

appropriate for all ages

 

Tunda is a prominent member of the Kodi community who is fighting to institute the formal teaching of his tradition. His visit to the local chapel turned sour when the priest condemned his tradition in his homily using the text from Jeremiah 10.


Still from "Nema"
© Tina Moukodi


Augustine Moukodi is a Cameroonian author, director and producer. She studied film at the Association of Cinema Professionals in Douala and received her degree in management at the High Technology of Information Institute in Douala, Cameroon. After her studies, she worked for six years as executive producer of the well-known children’s cultural programme Game Over Show in Cameroon. As Secretary General of the Cameroonian branch of the World Association of Cultural Actresses, she deals with gender issues within cultural institutions. She is the coordinator of a programme that promotes the cinematic adaptation of literary works within the Central African sub-region. As an independent researcher in the field of colonial history, she co-authored the Cameroonian historical television series Our Wishes, which focused on the signing of the German-Cameroonian treaty and was produced by the Zili Company, of which she has been president since 2017. She has also made films for the Humboldt Forum in Cameroon for the project In our own Images, in which children film excerpts from their everyday lives. The films are being shown regularly at the Humboldt Forum.


Portrait of Tina Moukodi
© Vivian Anogo/ studio9douala, Foto: Seth Rahman
10.00 p.m.

Closing


VR-Films

11.00 a.m. to 10 p.m.

20 min, Italy, 2022

Italian with English subtitles

 

Affiorare (Surfacing) is a VR experimental documentary set in prison.

Like in a fairy tale, the viewer is immersed in the everyday life of mothers and kids living in special places: prisons and custody institutions for inmates with their children.
360° footage at children’s eye level and animations embark us on a magical journey from the iconic Panopticon system of control, to the most recent confinement centres. Like the hero’s journey, the protagonists tell us – in a deep and poetic way- their first impressions of the prison, the smells, the fears, the challenges.
Their perception of prison as a submerged world is mirrored by illustrations (made in collaboration with mothers and children) depicting their past memories and their dreams for the future. Animations enhance this surreal world using the metaphor of an underwater world where animated animals are free to move and breathe.
A tale of pain but also resilience and hope, at the boundary between reality and imagination, which is able to speak to everyone and connect with personal memories of childhood.

 

More info about the film


Rossella Schillaci

Rossella Schillaci is a filmmaker and a visual anthropologist. After graduating in Manchester, she directed several documentary films, awarded at international festivals and broadcasted at ARTE, RAI, Sky and Al Jazeera. Among her latest films, Les enfants en prison was co-produced and broadcast by Arte and won the Etoile de la Scam, Free Women was distributed by Lab 80 in more than 300 Italian cinemas. She is completing a PhD in Digital Media, working in a research program involving Italian, Portuguese and Texan universities.

25 min, Columbia/ The Netherlands, 2023

Spanish with English subtitles

 

La Piragua (The Dugout Canoe) is an explorable virtual reality application that transgresses the boundary between 360º nonfiction video and a game-like experience. Set somewhere between the real and imagined worlds of Colombia’s Caribbean Coast where magic and realism are part of everyday life, you are tasked to assist the keepers of ancestral knowledge in keeping their memories alive. You control a dugout canoe with which you can freely explore a virtual mangrove swamp where you’ll find the lost objects of the keepers of knowledge. Once you retrieve a lost object, a 360º video is triggered that shows different ancestral crafts of the indigenous Kankuamo community and the farming community of Badillo.

 

More info about the film


Photo by Germán Villalobos
Germán Villalobos

Germán Villalobos is an expert in 360º photography and videography, as well as expanded reality projects. He is a certified Google street-view photographer.

Photo by Andrew Simon Tucker
Andrew Simon Tucker

Andrew Simon Tucker is a documentary filmmaker who is exploring immersive experiential media as a way to break down the viewer-screen boundary, thereby creating unique and non-repeatable immersive nonfiction experiences.

In the Humboldt Forum's foyer there is a 17 meter high media tower, called "cosmograph". It gives visitors comprehensive information about their visit and can transform into an art and light installation.
© SHF / David von Becker

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