Europe
Beautiful Dachau
Alan Marcus, 2006, 30 mins
Beautiful Dachau is an observational documentary without interviews, commentary or dialogue which investigates the way people interact with an iconic site, transfiguring past events with their presence. It explores the spatial relationship and integration of the well-known SS concentration camp within the fabric of the picturesque Bavarian town, Dachau, and its larger neighbour Munich. The name of the film was taken from a tourism poster on a bus shelter outside the camp, which read: Beautiful Dachau: things to see and do. The slogan encapsulates the difficulties of branding and crossover tourism.
GVideo installation, TRANS exhibition, Madison, WI (2006), invited screenings, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Bryn Mawr, MEICAM 'Constructions of Conflict' conference (2007). Alan Marcus is a Reader in Film and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen.
Growing Pains
Cecilie Øien, 2006, 41 mins
Júlia is a young Angolan woman who lives in a poor neighbourhood of Lisbon, together with her daughter Magui. The story of how she arrived in Portugal and what happen to her afterwards is dramatic, and we follow her as she tries to make sense out of her life. As much as being a portrait of Júlia, the film highlights ambivalences that are common to many migrants in: feelings of belonging, the importance of intergenerational relations and the relation between the past, the present and the future. The film focuses on Júlia's story and her daughter's future. It explores some of the challenges they face everyday, and the importance of the wider community to her life.
This film was shot during doctoral fieldwork
11a Mostra, Rio de Janeiro 2006
Into the Field
Alyssa Grossman, 2005,
28 mins
Into the Field follows the everyday “secular” lives of nuns in a Romanian Orthodox monastery. Documenting the nuns’ activities, relationships and roles within their community, the film also incorporates sequences of stop-motion animation to depict some of the anthropologist’s own challenges of working in the field.
New Directions Film Festival, Manchester, UK: October 2005; Tartu Festival of Visual Culture, Tartu, Estonia: March 2006; Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, Iowa City, USA. April 2006; Student Prize, Gottingen International Film Festival, Gottingen, Germany May 2006; Beeld voor Beeld Film Festival, Amsterdam, Netherlands. June 2006. "The Student Award of Excellence", SVA/AAA Film, Video and Multimedia Festival, San Jose, California. TVR Award for Student Film, Astra Film Festival, October 2006.
Distributed in the USA by Documentary Educational Resources, see www.der.org
Smell the Roses
Julie Milling, 2003, 28 mins
Christiania is a self-governing community in the heart of Copenhagen set up by squatters at the height of 1970s idealism. Faced with extinction or urban redevelopment, residents struggle to redefine a fading ideology.
NAFA, Tartu 2004; Commended, Göttingen 2004; Münster 2004; Astra, Sibiu 2004
All That Glitters
Irene Petropoulou, 2003, 32 mins
For the people of Olympos, a small mountain village on the Greek island of Carpathos, preserving tradition is of great importance, not least as a source of income. The parading 'brides' of the Virgin Mary festival, dressed up in their glittering costumes to attract grooms, are now just as keen to attract tourist photographers. But the visitors bring change as well as money and the young women to whom the village looks to preserve its traditions are increasingly reluctant to do so.
Göttingen 2004; Sheffield 2004; Astra, Sibiu 2004; Festival dei Populi, Florence 2004
In Our Blood
Steven Vella, 2003, 26 mins
In Malta, devotion to the Virgin Mary is very fervent, particularly in the village of Naxxar, where the most important annual feast, taking place over several days, is dedicated to her honour. But beside the religious celebration, there are also more secular festivities, based on traditional local rivalries, which are conducted with a similar intensity.
The Dream of Mćlen
Eirik Ingstad Sandberg, 2003, 25 mins.
Arne Bakke Mćlen lives alone on the small family farm he inherited on the edge of a Norwegian fjord. The farm is no longer viable economically and, like many small farmers, he has not found a woman to share this life. But for Arne, the landscape is suffused with memory and he does not wish to leave. Instead he dreams of making a living as a wood sculptor, distilling the intensity of his feelings into works of art.
Sweet Life And All That Goes With It
Anne Schiltz, 2002, 29 mins
Although the Saxons arrived in Translyvania, Romania over 800 years ago, they have retained a strong sense of their distinctive identity and still speak German. After the Revolution of 1989, most Saxons left the country. But Rosi and her father have stayed behind, determined to live in harmony with the Romanians and Gypsies who have moved into the formerly Saxon villages.
Beeld, Amsterdam 2003; Student Prize, Astra, Sibiu 2004. WorldFilm Festival, Tartu 2005. Also screened on RTL Television (Luxembourg), 2004.
Holding the Tradition
Matthew Fassnidge, 2002, 28 mins
The annual regatta on the island of Malta has been passionately contested for over 200 years by a number of local rowing clubs. Marsamxett has been dismissed by the others as being a club for 'old men'. But its members are determined to prove the detractors wrong.
They Say We're All Winners
Mari Finnestad, 2002, 32 mins.
The Zimbabwean girls' team comes to Norway to take part in the world's largest kids' football tournament. The film questions the outcome of this well-intentioned cultural exchange because some of the girls begin to wish that they were white.
Screened on the Norwegian television channel NRK, 2003
Rock 'n' Pray
Fotini Stefani, 2001, 24 mins
The monks from the monastery of Saints Augustine and Serapheim Sarow
on mainland Greece have found modern ways to appeal to young people.
The film explores how their traditional life co-exists with their popular
means of bringing people closer to God.
Not yet available: consents still pending
In Search of Home
Julie Moggan, 2000, 30 mins.
The Shabani family have been living in Manchester as refugees and are homesick for Albania. Feeling increasingly unwelcome in Britain, they return to Kosovo to confront the nightmares of their recent past, and discover that home is not quite the place that they imagine it to be.
Göttingen 2002
Domov
Rosie Read, 2000, 28 mins (Hi-8)
This film was shot during doctoral fieldwork
This film looks at the Czech meaning of 'home' through the eyes of two women - one an old woman trying to assert her right to return home from an old person's residence, and the second, a prisoner in the same facility, returning home at the end of a prison sentence.
Commendations, RAI London 2000 and AAA Washington 2001; EASA Working Images, Lisbon 2001; University of Texas FF, 2001; Student Prize, Göttingen 2002.
André and Nándi
Charlotte Grégoire, 2000, 30 mins. (Hi8)
Hungarian-born André Reinitz only discovered his Jewish identity when he moved to Brussels at the age of ten. Since then, in spite of the silence of his parents, he has become involved in the Jewish community as a Klezmer musician. This film follows him, torn between Brussels and Budapest, as he tries to learn more about his cultural and family roots.
Astra Festival, Sibiu, Romania.
Round Trip
Angela Torresan, 1999, 36 mins. (Hi-8)
This film was shot during doctoral fieldwork
Angela Torresan is now Lecturer in Visual Anthropology, Granada Centre
Portrait of a Brazilian woman and her friends, now living in Lisbon, exploring the basis of their sense of identity in the context of a transnational way of life.
Göttingen 2000
Harpoons and Heartache
Bessie Morris, 1998, 30 mins (Hi-8)
An exploration of the relationships between female tourists and local Greek men, focusing on the personal story of Vassilis, a young bartender in the tourist resort of Hania, Crete. These relationships are often said to be exploitative, but who is exploiting whom?
Student Prize, Exposures, Manchester 1998; Mostra, Rio de Janeiro 1999; Sheffield 1999.
Those Who Don't Work Don't Make Love
Cristina Grasseni, 1998, 30 mins. (Hi-8)
This film was shot during doctoral fieldwork
An observational documentary about dairy farmers in the Italian Alps Caught between pride for tradition and the pressure for modernisation, the story of one family is told through the eyes of teenager Sara, full of hopes and doubts, and of her grandmother, tired and frustrated after a life of hard work.
Göttingen 2000; Commended, AAA, Chicago 1999.
Easy Life
Amelia Hann, 1996, 30 mins. (SVHS)
The story of a Breton woman and her family, their vision of life, and their clash with the French state which marked them as 'terrorists'.
RAI, London 1998.
Staging a Return
Jakob Hogel, 1994, 30 mins (SVHS)
The Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic are a Danish dependency and for generations, young people have gone to Denmark to complete their studies. When they return for the summer, there is a tradition to put on a satirical theatrical revue. Through following the preparation and performance of the revue at a time of severe economic crisis, this film reveals what young Faroese feel about their identity and their relationship to Denmark.
Swings and Roundabouts
Helen Pratt, 1994, 30 mins (SVHS)
Five years after the downfall of Ceausescu and Romania still receives an influx of Western European aid workers to help with rural orphanage projects. Temporary and full-time volunteers at an orphanage in Ionaseni have different ideas about how to improve the situation.
Out of Place
Peter Lutz, 1993, 40 mins (SVHS)
The Bosnian war drove Nerma and Haris from their homes. Having found refuge in Sweden, they reassess their values in learning to cope with a whole new life.
Göttingen 1994
Going Back Home
Catarina Alves Costa, 1992, 35 mins (Hi-8)
For those who live in the city, the summer is about going back to Arga, the village in northern Portugal which they left to find work. For the few who have stayed behind, their return brings back memories of what village life used to be like before urban migration deprived the community of most of its young people.
Student Prize, Göttingen 1994