27.-28.1.2012
INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF MOVIES
WITH ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEMES

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

TENDER KISSES ARE HARD TO FIND

Portugal, Great Britain, 2011, 20 min
Ines Ponte
28.01.2012 20:10

My grandparents have known one another since childhood. Of very different characters, the familiarity underpinning their relationship has been crafted through time. Both by the small episodes of everyday life, as well as by the longer duration of their lives.

Ines Ponte was born in 1979, Lisbon, Portugal. Has a degree in Social Anthropology (Portugal, Netherlands), a post-graduation in documentary direction (Portugal), and presently develops work within visual anthropology (United Kingdom). She has worked also as editor, cameraman, production, research and writing assistant of documentary projects in Portugal.

Director: Ines Ponte
Production: Ines Ponte, Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology - University of Manchester
Language of dialogues: Portuguese
Language of subtitles: English, Czech

MERLEAU - PONTY

USA, 2008, 6 min
Jonathan Taee
27.01.2012 18:05

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French philosopher who died at the young age of 57 in 1961. His work on Phenomenology opened up a new realm in continental philosophy. He managedto get philosophers to think of the body as a required and fundamental element of existence, rather than a simple vessel that carries the mind. He understood the importance of its fleshy boundaries and its ability to perceive the world through a string of immediate moments. Hisphilosophies have gone on to shape and inform many social theories used in Anthropology.

The film explores the body and the way it experiences the world. Each frame represents a moment, the moment before the body's experiences are captured by the consciousness and given cultural or emotional meanings and interpretations. The body does not sense the world through 5 set senses, feeling, seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling. The raw body senses the world as one big sensing organ. It experiences the world in one immediate relationship of body to world. The body has a synaesthetic sense that operates below the consciousness, as one flesh. This sense speaks through the entire body, using every contour and curve to feel the world it moves through. The raw body is immediate in its experiencing of the world, it is fluid and conversational, ever reading, learning and changing to the world around it.

This film honours the work of Merleau-Ponty, and through the mediums of 16mm, high speed digital film and SLR still imaging, it pays homage our most sensuous and intimate relations to the world around us.

Jonathan is a currently conducting field work in Bhutan for his PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. His current research explores the integration of healthcare in Bhutan and its affects on patients’ healing experiences.Concepts of body, experience and phenomenology have been a constant companion to his work, including the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty. This film was made at the University of Virginia while exploring the philosopher’s ideas of flesh and experience as socially contingent phenomena.

Director and production: Jonathan Taee
Language of dialogues: none
Language of subtitles: none

Launching of movie:
Salmagundi Film Festival, University of Virginia, USA
Ivy Film Festival, USA