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)
Samuel was born and raised in Cameroon. He grew up in a society where everyone believed in the existence of witchcraft. Every tragedy and evil was caused by a supernatural being. His childhood was marked by belief in witchcraft and its practices. After five years of studying film production abroad, he returned to his country, this time not to visit his family but to unveil the mysteries and secrets of witchcraft and his childhood nightmares. 
