Film screenings organised by Visual Cultural Studies (UiT – The Arctic University of Norway) at and with Verdensteatret celebrating the University’s 50th anniversary.
The Nordic Eye – UiT and NAFA
Presented by Peter I. Crawford, Professor of Visual Anthropology, UiT.
In Stockholm in 1975, UiT was one of the founding members of the Nordic Anthropological Film Association (NAFA), the oldest of its kind in the world, and the organiser of the annual NAFA international ethnographic film festival, the oldest such festival in Europe, organised since 1979. This evening’s film screenings consist of two of the Nordic contributions to the 38th NAFA festival, held in Cluj-Napoca in Romania, 11-15 September 2018.
Norway 2018 | 25 mins. | Directors: Frode Storaas & Knut Christian Myhre | Producers: University Museum of Bergen
On the rural slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, a young man takes his own life, leaving a wife and several small children behind. On the third day after his burial, a ceremony is conducted to cool or cleanse the homestead - ihora kaa. Such ceremonies are conducted for every death to allow its inhabitants to resume their everyday lives. However, it requires particular care and attention in the case of a suicide. The film follows each step to document the ceremony, and thus demonstrates how the camera can serve as a tool for ethnographic data collection.
Frode Storaas is a professor in visual anthropology at the University Museum of Bergen, Norway. His research has mainly been based on fieldwork in East Africa. As a filmmaker he has worked in several countries. Among his award-winning films are 'Tama Gaun – the Copper Village', Nepal, (together with Dipesh Kharel), Making Rain, Mozambique, (together with Liivo Niglas), Our Courtyard, China, (together with He Yuan Wang), Fish On!, USA, (together with Liivo Niglas).
Knut Christian Myhre is a social anthropologist with long-term research experience from both rural and urban areas of Tanzania. He trained at the University of Oxford and has published on a range of topics that include kinship, witchcraft, ritual, exchange, forms of knowledge, and cross-cultural comparison. Myhre has held positions at various institutions in the Nordic countries and currently works as a researcher at the Museum of Cultural History in the University of Oslo.
Denmark 2018 | 57 mins. | Director: Anne Sofie Askholm | Producer: Eye & Mind Visual Anthropology Program, Aarhus University
The public and media representation of rural life in Denmark has been criticized for its lack of nuance and marginalizing descriptions, which contribute to the increasing distance, inequality and misunderstandings between rural and city life. In 2015 the Danish national newspaper Politiken published a photographic essay of the Danish island Langeland. At the time it was the poorest municipality in the country and the essay created a story of the island and its inhabitants replicating the stereotypical story of the "outskirts of Denmark". It described them as belonging to a lower social class, backwards and removed from civilization. This film seeks to explore and understand the landscape of identities and social worlds on the island, using film as way of creating a reflective and dialogical space where identities and discourses unfold.
Anne Sofie Askholm (b. 1987) grew up in a farming family in the countryside of Jutland, Denmark, and early on got interested in the relations between city life and life in the countryside, and the perceptions and misrepresentation of rural life. She studied theology and religion, photography and has an MA degree in visual anthropology from Aarhus University. She is currently working on different research and exhibition projects. The glasses we wear was part of her MA thesis project in visual anthropology.
The filmmakers will be present at the screenings.
Free admittance | Gratis inngang