A ghost ride through Finnish TV archives of the 1960s grazes the moon landing, American TV shows, a war in Africa. But how to connect with the world when dancing is forbidden?!
The anonymous narrator is a kind of web-adventurous flâneuse, neurotic and endlessly curious. A disturbance in the proprioception, which is the ability to sense the position, movement and location of the body and its parts, makes her perceive the world in a new way. Seemingly random anecdotes found on the internet and instructions from her cryptic physiotherapist start to come together in surprising ways. The found material forms a mosaic that reflects a world full of gazes, rules and technologies that separate us. Lines from the present and the distant past take our narrator to the 1960s, where medieval dance bans, televised wars, lost bones, space utopias and American TV stars collide. This film reflects how we can be and live in the world within ourselves and with each other. With those who are near and with those who are far. Along with all this, the film recommends dancing to everyone.
A construction site in the Central African Republic, two career dreams: The double portrait of a native day labourer and a Chinese construction manager becomes a parable of globalisation.
Luan, a Chinese immigrant, is in Bangui, Central African Republic, facing his greatest professional challenge to date: he must oversee the construction of a bank headquarters that is expected to be inaugurated soon by the President of the nation himself. At the opposite end of the same labour chain, Thomas, a local, must dive into the river to get the sand that Luan needs for his building. Both share the same goal: to progress in their careers and give their families a better life. Meanwhile, the erratic and difficult lives of their families manifest themselves at a distance in various ways. Luan receives phone calls from his wife who, living thousands of kilometres away, is feeling abandoned and attempts to commit suicide; while Thomas' wife and girlfriend have both abandoned him, leaving him in charge of all his children. Eat Bitter fluidly and honestly articulates the daily life of both men, revealing the traces of the presence of the large Chinese community in the region, as well as the scars of a country devastated by the experience of a long civil war and poverty for which no one seems to have any answers.
How do you restitute self-images? A lucid, thought-provoking essay about the Congo, the far-reaching dimensions of colonial power and the (re-)privatisation of identity.
The film Lumène is based on in-depth research into photographic archives taken in the heart of the Belgian Congo between 1938 and 1939 by the German ethnographer and anthropologist Hans Himmelheber. These archives are kept at the Rietberg Museum in Zurich.
In this first part, Lumène: Privatisation, director David Shongo, in collaboration with the traditional chiefs of Lusanga, Mukedi and Feshi, analyses how photography was used as a tool of colonial domination and how it contributed to a process of privatisation of the imaginary, images, cultural heritage and spaces. These analyses raise current issues such as restitution, reparation and the domination of knowledge.
After the coup in Uruguay in 1973, thousands of intellectuals and artists fled the country. My father was among them and left for Europe. After his passing three years ago, I came upon some Super 8 movies and audio recordings he had made. Through this archive, I started building a new family story trying to reveal and understand the silent pain of his exile and the fierce will to be a family despite the estrangement.
DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.