27.-28.1.2017
INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF MOVIES
WITH ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEMES

DUST

Nepál, 2016, 61 min
D. Tolange
28.01.2017 17:25

Every year during winter thousands of Nepalis and Indians migrate to various parts of Nepal to work in brick factories. Many of these laborers are children who drop out school, engage in hard labor and never return back to school. DUST is an ethnographic film with the children working in brick kiln areas in Nepal.

Deepak Tolange is a filmmaker, photographer and researcher. Recently he completed M.A in Visual & Media Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Director, camera, script, edit, production: Deepak Tolange
WORLD PREMIERE

Language of dialogues: Nepali, Hindi, Tamang
language of subtitles: English, Czech

MASA

Česká republika, 2017, 32 min
M. Pavlásek, I. Bystřičan
27.01.2017 19:05

The mass is a distillation of human evolution, a parable about the treatment of substance, an image of the control over bodies that are hanged on the world’s tissue, or else disgorged from the ocean mass onto dry land, which is interwoven with bodies and the movement of hunters, gatherers, and vagabonds. Our observation of the various forms of abstracted masses, which we become part of at the same time, creates a platform of eternal presence – an active void if you will, which revolves in a closed circle, as though it had neither beginning nor end. What is left is just the stark presence of the traces of bared lives.

Michal Pavlásek  is social anthropologist, university teacher, freelance journalist and documentarist, Turkish coffee lover, researcher at the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Co-founder of Anthropictures - flexible association of social scientists providing independent field research. In his research focuses on migration and multuculturalism. He is author of movies Searching for the Exit (2016), Another Vojvodovo: thinking in pictures (2013), Time Bows Beneath the Burden of the Grapes. The Past, Czechs and Germans in the Serbian Banat (2012).

Ivo Bystřičan is documentary filmmaker, story-editor and screenwriter. He directed several feature documentary films like Copper Age (2010), My Last 150 000 Cigarettes (2013), Byeway (2014), Mr. Chytil´s Crime (2014), Middle Dusk (2015) and many others. He graduated from sociology at Masaryk University in Brno and documentary filmmaking at FAMU in Prague.

Director, Production, Script: M. Pavlásek, I. Bystřičan
Camera, Edit: I.Bystřičan

Language of Dialogues: English, Greek
Language of subtitles: Czech
 

TAMA GAUN - THE COPPER VILLAGE

Japonsko, Norsko, Nepál, 2015, 89 min
F. Storaas, D. Kharel
28.01.2017 18:55

In Okharbot village of Western Nepal a few persons still know the age-old traditional practise of mining, smelting and casting of copper. The copper has a number of symbolic meanings and economic aspects connected to exchange and healing properties, as well as being the Hindu god Shiva. The complex caste system of Nepal, although abolished, still structures the lives of most people. The untouchable smiths, the Kami, produce one of the purest metals in Hindu cosmology. The film follows Ujir, the foreman, who guides the steps of the mining and smelting. During the smelting work the festival of Dassain took place in the village. The festival is part of the social and cultural context presented in the film along with the traditional smelting process of copper.
 
Dipesh Kharel is an independent documentary filmmaker from Nepal about to finish his PhD research in film and social anthropology at the University of Tokyo in Japan. He received a Master of Philosophy in documentary film studies from the University of Tromsø in Norway.
Frode Storaas is a professor of visual anthropology at the University Museum of Bergen, Norway. His anthropological research has mainly been with pastoralists in Eastern Africa. A theme conveyed in many of his films has been how cultural traditions and ideas influence everyday life. Storaas is gen.sec. of NAFA, a worldwide network for visual anthropology, and the NAFA collection of anthropological films.

Director, camera, script, edit: F. Storaas, D. Kharel
Production: University Museum of Bergen, Norway, Media Help Line, Nepal
Festivals (selection): 2015 Nepal Panorama, Best Documentary; 14th RAI INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM, Watershed in Bristol, England 2015

Language of Subtitles: Nepalese
Language of Dialogues:  English, Czech