Archives, as well as the construction of knowledge, memory, and history are often
susceptible to power and authority. Which new forms of a resilient historic memory can be
conceptualized and discussed? Two filmmakers illustrate two perspectives on how to deal with
counter-narratives. Between personal and public archives, they describe paths of a subversive
narration. Both films ask whether a narration and an archive can be reliable sources to feed our
memories, when they originate in a partisan colonial perspective. The program COVERED IN SAND
rethinks personal attitudes and production processes from a feminist, de-colonized, and
socio-critical standpoint. The act of remembrance is also a continuation of biographies - a
creative act that reconsiders histories.
“I look at you and I see your gaze devouring the world, but I have no idea what world is being devoured.” Through the form of a personal yet distant essay film, WEEKS OF SAND, MONTHS OF ASH, YEARS OF DUST introduces Macao, a former Portuguese colony handed over back to China in 1999. Having partly grown up in Macao, the filmmaker Rita Macedo revisits the learned history of this territory from a portuguese perspective, addressing post-imperial forms of disavowed political affect alongside the progressing dementia of her own mother.
Carefully positioning personal loss next to reflections on colonial narratives, the film ponders questions of looking back into a troubled past from the instability of a presently self-erasing memory.… >>>
Premiere:
German Premiere
ONE IMAGE, TWO ACTS unravels the multifaceted and intertwined systems of oil infrastructures spanned across unlikely geographies and material temporalities. Examining the photographic and film archives of British Petroleum (BP) during its operations in Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait, this film traces the visual and media infrastructures through which oil has operated as an agent of power in the colonial episteme. It unpacks BP’s widespread construction of cinemas in the oil towns of South-Western Iran and follows the transformation of this emergent image economy in contouring the nationalization movement and the anti-colonial cinema between 1950-1980 in Iran… >>>
Premiere:
World Premiere
Nominated:
Goldener Key
