In a large-scale operation, a group of homeless families occupy some wasteland on the outskirts of Santiago in March 1967. When the police attempt to evict them, a little girl, Herminda, dies in her mother’s arms. The eviction is called off, the people are allowed to stay and, without any existing infrastructure, build the settlement that exists to this day: Herminda de la Victoria. “Full of errors and mistakes, [the film] is my first approach to cinema, albeit to a ‘new cinema’, a Latin American cinema marked by underdevelopment. Nonetheless, the cinematic process, editing and sound represent a fully valid experience to me. ‘Herminda de la Victoria’ champions the interests of the homeless in Chile, suffers with them, is both testimony and a ‘document’ that forces you to take sides.” (Douglas Hübner)
Florian Wüst
Thick smoke clouds rise at the horizon. Oil bubbles from the ground. The gills of a dead fish are black. A sonorous voice recites a poem about blood, anger and the oil-contaminated landscape of the Niger Delta. A crowd of people join in for the refrain. Writer and activist Nnimmo Bassey has been protesting for decades again the oil extraction in the south of Nigeria and its consequences for humans, nature and agriculture. The Ogoni, an ethnic minority from the region, are particularly affected, with their whole basis for life under existential threat as a result. In the 1990s, they organised a powerful political movement, which was violently put down by the military government – also in the interest of Western oil concerns. How is it possible to put up political resistance in such circumstances? “Hope Is a Word” is the portrait of a man who believes in the power of poetic language. With his workshops, Nnimmo Bassey manages to mobilise a new generation of rhetorically and literarily gifted activists. When they read, rap or recite, the film puts their words into the frame in demonstrative fashion. Poetry becomes a political tool here. For a call can come from a verse, a call that others then follow.
Jan-Philipp Kohlmann
