Yihan Shi, Along the River- a Family Story-2018-Image courtesy of the artist

Various
Artists’ Short Film programme 2018

Wednesday 6 June – Sunday 10 June 2018
10:00—16:00

Cinema, Horsebridge Arts Centre

2 hour programme
Screened each day at 10:00, 12:00 and 14:00*

Yihan Shi, Laura Alhach, Therese Henningsen, Camilo Restrepo, Andrea Luka Zimmerman
+ five short interventions, from here and the Bardo, by Schtinter (a gentle flicker warning)

Film descriptions by the artists

Yihan Shi
Along the River: a Family Story
(30m 58s / 2017 / subtitles)
The Yangtze River. Over millennia, the fertile land around it formed through the movement and depositing of alluvial silt. The artists great-grandparents moved onto the fertile land and built a house there in the 1930s. Over eighty years, the house witnessed the lives of the family and the social-historical changes happening in the village. Many changes took place in China, some family members went peacefully through the difficulties, and some were deeply affected. Although living in the same house, each person has their own experience and feelings. In the film, five different stories are chronicled, representing details of individuals’ lives during historic times. Families members talk directly to camera, and through recording and representing their stories, subtle connections are drawn between the stories.

Laura Alhach
Remembering the Taste of Avocados
(12m 48 / 2017 / subtitles)
Remembering the Taste of Avocados recalls the memory of the displacement of the Macayepans in Colombia after armed conflict with guerrillas, paramilitaries and the army. The story takes place during the year of the signing of the Peace Treaty in 2016, and is told through the eyes of the villagers, as witnesses of the violence. The harvest of the avocados and the reconstruction of their homes after the conflict became a central theme that helped reconcile them.

Therese Henningsen
Slow Delay
(17 mins / 2018)
You’ve got something I want. All good comes to he who waits. I always wait… Nothing ever comes my way. My nephew, he’s a millionaire. My sister’s husband’s a millionaire. My other nephew, he’s a millionaire. And my cousin, she’s a millionaire. You know, just because we get older we don’t stop wanting those things.

Camilo Restrepo
Cilaos, 2017
(12m 48 / 2017 / subtitles)
To keep a promise made to her dying mother, a young woman goes off in search of her father, a womaniser she has never met. Along the way, she learns that he is dead. But that doesn’t change her plans, she still intends to find him. Driven by the spell-binding rhythm of the maloya, a ritual chant from Reunion Island, Cilaos explores the deep and murky ties that bind the dead and the living.

Restrepo’s drive to make Cilaos came from an encounter with the Reunionese singer Christine Salem. The stories about Reunion Island that Salem told echoed the South American stories and legends of the artist-filmmaker’s own childhood. These two geographically distant regions of the world share a common colonial past, and the myths, beliefs and rhythms of the African peoples who were transported to each place.

Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Civil Rites
(27m 56 / 2017)
Civil Rites responds to Martin Luther King’s 1967 speech, made on receipt of an honorary doctorate from the University of Newcastle, to explore how racism, poverty and war continue to haunt our lives. The film visits some of the key locations in Newcastle’s history of civil resistance. Some sites have been buried beneath car parks and shopping malls. Others remain on busy streets. Some are publicly marked, others anonymous. Underlying and uniting the range of voices and sites is the ever-present sound of the sea, suggestive of the ‘tide’ in human affairs and the perennial possibilities of a ‘sea change’ in the social order. It also reminds us of the city’s geographical location, industrial history and of the ocean that both divides and joins the American and European continents, the ocean of colonisation, empire and of course slavery, over which King travelled to Newcastle.

Civil Rites was commissioned by Tyneside Cinema.

Visit the Cinema at any point during the times listed above.
Certificate 15. 

Curated by Gareth Evans

*except Sun 3rd when there is an extra screening at 16:00, and Tue 5th when there will only be two screenings, at 10:00 and 12:00

Camilo Restrepo was born in Medellín, Colombia and has lived and worked in Paris, France since 1999. He is a member of L’Abominable, an artist-run film laboratory. His films have been selected for numerous festivals including Toronto and New York and won the Pardino d’Argento in Locarno twice.

Yihan Shi is a Chinese filmmaker. In 2013, she went to South Africa on a teaching project, occasionally taking the students out for field trips. On the road, native teachers would walk in front of their group with a large loudspeaker box, and the students would sometimes dance to the rhythm of the energetic music. This inspired her to make videos of this experience and she later edited a micro-documentary out of the material. In 2017, she studied on UCL’s documentary MA programme in London and made this film as her graduation work.

Laura Alhach is from Cali, Colombia. She studied Anthropology and Photography in Bogotá, and Ethnographic and Documentary Film in London. Whilst experiencing the political context of the peace dialogues between the Colombian government and the FARC group, she worked with NGO development projects to improve the living situations of victims of violence in postconflict regions. She is interested in exploring aesthetic forms of representing collective memory for those who have not had a voice in her country.

Therese Henningsen was born in 1987. She came to filmmaking through anthropology, and lives and works in Copenhagen and London.

Andrea Luka Zimmerman is an artist, cultural activist and filmmaker. She is the co-founder of the artists’ collective Fugitive Images. Exhibitions and projects include Common Ground, for Spike Island, Bristol (2017), Real Estates (with David Roberts), for PEER and LUX, London (2015). Her films include Erase and Forget (2017, 88mins) released in March 2018, and ‘Estate, a Reverie’ (2015, 83mins) which tracks the passing of the Haggerston Estate in East London and the utopian promise of social housing it once offered.

 

Camilo Restrepo was born in Medellín, Colombia and has lived and worked in Paris, France since 1999. He is a member of L’Abominable, an artist-run film laboratory. His films have been selected for numerous festivals including Toronto and New York and won the Pardino d’Argento in Locarno twice.

Yihan Shi is a Chinese filmmaker. In 2013, she went to South Africa on a teaching project, occasionally taking the students out for field trips. On the road, native teachers would walk in front of their group with a large loudspeaker box, and the students would sometimes dance to the rhythm of the energetic music. This inspired her to make videos of this experience and she later edited a micro-documentary out of the material. In 2017, she studied on UCL’s documentary MA programme in London and made this film as her graduation work.

Laura Alhach is from Cali, Colombia. She studied Anthropology and Photography in Bogotá, and Ethnographic and Documentary Film in London. Whilst experiencing the political context of the peace dialogues between the Colombian government and the FARC group, she worked with NGO development projects to improve the living situations of victims of violence in postconflict regions. She is interested in exploring aesthetic forms of representing collective memory for those who have not had a voice in her country.

Therese Henningsen was born in 1987. She came to filmmaking through anthropology, and lives and works in Copenhagen and London.

Andrea Luka Zimmerman is an artist, cultural activist and filmmaker. She is the co-founder of the artists’ collective Fugitive Images. Exhibitions and projects include Common Ground, for Spike Island, Bristol (2017), Real Estates (with David Roberts), for PEER and LUX, London (2015). Her films include Erase and Forget (2017, 88mins) released in March 2018, and ‘Estate, a Reverie’ (2015, 83mins) which tracks the passing of the Haggerston Estate in East London and the utopian promise of social housing it once offered.