OUR GROUND
Hungary, 2011, 8 min
H. Synková, R. K. Ranjan, J.V. Asis
28.01.2012 14:45
The process of rehabilitation and gentrification in the Eight District of Budapest, Hungary has led to the shrinkage of space especially for children’s play. Set against the backdrop of the world famous novel The Paul Street Boys (Molnár Ferenc, 1906) this film depicts the widening gap between social classes and the reconstruction of the ideas of play, security and leisure.
Ram Krishna Ranjan is a Delhi based freelance documentary filmmaker. He completed masters in Media and Cultural Studies. Currently he is working as a consultant for the Digital Empowerment Foundation, where he documents development projects across India.
Jonnabelle V. Asis is a Erasmus Mundus doctoral exchange student in the Universita' degli Studi di Padova and a Ph.D. Sociology student from the University of the Philippines Diliman. She was assistant professor of the Department of Sociology, University of the Philippines Diliman, where she taught courses on Sociology of Mass Communication and Visual Sociology.
Hana Synková is an assistant professor at the department of Social Sciences at Pardubice University and research coordinator at the Agency for Social Inclusion of the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic. Her research focuses on institutions active in “social integration”.
Directors: H. Synková, R.K. Ranjan, J.V. Asis
Production: Cenral European Univesity, Hungary
Language of dialogues: Hungarian, English
Language of subtitles: English
A decade since Sierra Leone's devastating civil war, from the ashes rises a new dawn of creativity in audio-visual media. Inspired by Jean Rouch's ‘shared anthropology’ and ‘ethno-fiction’, Shooting Freetown follows three people forging their way in film and music in the nation's capital, facing the constant struggles with vision and resourcefulness. By incorporating collaborative video projects, their stories give a fresh image of post-war Freetown - presented to the world through their own lens.
This film narrates the meeting with Sara Marielle Gaup and Lawra Somby, two young performers of joik (Sami chanting technique), born in the north and the south of Sápmi (the cultural nationhood of Sami people in North Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia). They have come together through a creative musical project called “Adjágas” which in Sami means “the state between sleep and awakening”. In this peculiar state one can unveil reality and tune into the most profound and original joiks. Adjágas, in this way bring the musical-lyrical practice of joik toward the international musical scene by performing with musicians of different horizons, and adapting its performances to the context of reception. The protagonists express different ways of life and concerns, relating also to what it means to be young artists with an indigenous background, having to work a way into the musical industry. It is also a film about what in the waves of the past is worth struggling for understanding, and how joik brings together everyday life, politics and spirituality and becomes a language healing the pain from the colonial history of the past.
