LOOKING AT THEMSELVES: BABALUDA LUDA
Romania, 2012, 33 min
Mihai Andrei Leaha
26.01.2013 18:35
The film is an attempt to question the ways in which the visual narrative is constructed when using the feedback method. The feedback provided by the people involved (the young performers but also the elders) in the Babaluda Feast, turned out to be very important in offering an insight to the ways in which the Feast was depicted by the visual ethnographer. By recoding the shared visual ethnography, that was arranged in big groups in a large screening rooms, but also in small groups in private houses, the film will try to experiment the ways in which the visual narrative is constructed by looking at, the looked at. The montage method of the film will use a chronotopic montage technique (Bakhtin), in which the time and space unity will be enacted in a visual ethnographic present.
Mihai Andrei Leaha is PhD Student in Philology. European Studies Faculty, “Babeş-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, România. Thesis: Visual Ethnography. Restructuring Anthropological Knowledge. Video Researching Romanian Traditional Customs.
Director: Mihai Andrei Leaha
Producton: Triba Film
Language of dialogues: Romanian
Language of subtitles: English, Czech
Launching of film, awards:
The film won the Student award in Goettingen International Ethnographic Film Festival.
It also entered the official selection of Film festivals in Sofia (IFEF 2012), Athens (Ethno Fest 2012) and Ho Chi Minh City ( AnthroFilmFestival 2012)
Voroneț is one of the best known and the most visited monastery`s in Romania, especially because of church Saint George. On the wall, it has preserved a lot of frescos (murals) from the 15th century with intensive and not so faded colors. Cultural importance of this place has been appreciated by UNESCO as well, when it has added it to its heritage list. The surrealistic image is created by 6 days observations of the place of monastery and surrounded market place, which are crossed real and symbolic ways of people. Intensive perception of the most fascinating mural of Last Judgement creates mosaic confrontation with the mirror of ideas, visions, watched and listened. Voroneț symbolically conceptualizes the way of life, we believe in.
This film focuses how people share a collective sense of history through the auditory experience. dehong Tai people embrace Theravada Budhism. In ordes to live better in this world and the next, they perform dignified rituals and acquire "merit". For the rituals they spend years and save money, then they do a good deed like contribution of Budhist statues and building the bridges. chief donators commission an intellectual to write historical scriptures to hand down the good deed to posterity. It is called "Lik Yaat" in Tai and written with beautiful words and rhyme. After the cultural revolution, only a few intellectuals can create and chant "Lik Yaat" now. There is a woman, Wan Xiand-ya, who strives for the tradition of "Lik Yaat". She should be their first and last female intellectual who can write "Lik Yaat" in Tai history.
