Program 6 features five films: an installation film by the Lawrence Aby Hamdan about the Lebanese war trauma; an experimental investigation into the border areas in Southern Armenia by Pejvak; Cyprien Gaillard’s journey through Soviet underground stations; Ana Vaz’s film immersing the viewer into an archive of drawings made by the indigenous peoples of the Brazilian Amazon; and Russian director Kirill Khacaturov’s witty animation piece.
Once Removed
Historian Bassel Abi Chahine considers himself a reincarnation of a soldier killed in the Lebanese civil war. Standing in front of the projected photographs and documents from his extensive collection, he recalls details of this war, which happened before he was born. The film is about a collective trauma that leaves its mark for years to come.
Dir. Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Lebanon, 2019. 29 min. 18+
Ocean II Ocean
Footage of fossil mollusks, traces of which can be found on the lining of some Soviet underground stations, are edited with an archival video about the flooding of New York subway carriages in the ocean.
Dir. Cyprien Gaillard
USA, 2019. 11 min. 16+
A Passage
A Passage is a hybrid visual investigation generated in the sun-scorched valleys of Southern Armenia’s Meghri region. Not long ago, the legendary railway road connecting Yerevan and Baku was destroyed on this border territory, with a “free economic zone” due to be constructed in its place. Giving equal weight to myth, gossip, and facts, the film explores the processes of rapid militarization and neoliberalization in South Armenia, where historical layers mingle with the uncertainty of the coming future.
Dir. Felix Kalmenson, Rouzbeh Akhbari
Canada, 2019. 17 min. 18+
Apiyemiyekî?
A cinematographic portrait based on the Brazilian philosopher, educator, and indigenous rights militant Egydio Schwade’s archive, which preserves over 3000 drawings made during their first literacy process by the Waimiri-Atroari, a native people of the Brazilian Amazon. The drawings construct a collective visual memory from their learning process, perspective, and territory, while attesting to a series of violent attacks they were submitted to during the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 1970s.
Dir. Ana Vaz
Brazil, France, The Netherlands, Portugal, 2019. 27 min. 18+
Photocorba
Photocorba portrays a fiction world inhabited by average, unremarkable characters. Nothing unusual happens to them in this world. They walk, sit, stand, get bored in the wind, sometimes dance, and buy tea to drink. The witty Kirill Khachaturov animation is a portal to this universe.
Dir. Kirill Khachaturov
Russia, 2019. 7 min. 18+