THE PROMISE
La Promesa
Dir.: Valeria Luongo
2017 | 19 min
Mexico, UK
Shooting location: Mexico
Mexico has recently been proclaimed the country in the world with the highest consumption of soft drinks. Based on a mix of fiction and reality and realised in collaboration with the characters, the film traces the experience of Omar, “El Jarocho”, and his daughter Brisa. It investigates their relationship with soft drinks and the “strategies” they apply to avoid health problems.
The film is screened in Spanish with English and Latvian subtitles.
Valeria Luongo (1989) is an anthropologist and photographer born in Rome. Since 2012 she has travelled several times to Mexico, country on which she has focused her studies and fieldwork. She is now studying a MA in Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester.
WHO CARES ABOUT CARING?
Dir.: Amaranta Heredia
2017 | 26 min
Estonia
Shooting location: Greece
Northern Greece, summer 2016. The self-organized group Posvasimotita visits Posidi, a camping site by the beach, like they do every year. Prosvasimotita is a grassroots disability group based in Thessaloniki. They are fellow activists on vacation, enacting in their daily practice the type of society they aim to build.
This documentary is about caring, how care makes us family, and how the filmmaker can be part of that process. Disability is not used as a metaphor, but as a tool to re-think normativity and vulnerability, and to create more inclusive communities. In a society where we are constantly expected to be independent, this project advocates for autonomy and interdependency, trust and intimacy.
In Greek with English and Latvian subtitles.
Amaranta is an antifascist activist and an anthropologist who makes films about those things that are closer to them. Being an insider offers insights that are not possible otherwise, and subjectivity is a position that enriches any creation. Their main interests are gender issues, (dis)ability, radical feminism, sexuality, self-organization, migration, and mental health. They hold a master's degree in Audiovisual Ethnography from the University of Talllinn.
TOILET ADVENTURES
Dir.: Bill Callahan
2015 | 15 min
UK
Shooting location: China, Thailand, US, UK, Singapore
It’s bad manners to discuss toilet activities. But the topic often comes up when people recount their first experiences in China. For many, confronting a squat toilet for the first time is a shock.
This fundamental encounter with the unknown can tell us about the relation of purity and danger, public and private space, and the role of the state in China’s rapidly changing society. Such abstract calculations come to life on the toilet according to five stages, starting with shock.
Bill Callahan is professor of international relations at the London School of Economics where he teaches filmmaking for social sciences and Chinese foreign policy. ‘Toilet Adventures’ was shortlisted for a major prize by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. His other films include ‘China Dreams’, which was broadcast on KCET (Los Angeles), and ‘An American in Shanghai’, which examines experiences of China in the 1930s. Callahan’s current book project is ‘Visualizing International Politics’, and he is working on a film about the Great Wall of China as a site of the sublime.
In English and Thai with English subtitles.
There will be Q&A with the director after the screening.