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Videoprogramm
The Colonial Dream – Autonomous Zones

Auswahl aus dem OVNI-Festival 2006

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Freitag, 25. Mai 2007

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land
In Limbo
Turbulences

19 – 22:30 Uhr
Programm 1
Global Colonial Strategies

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land, EMF, Bathsheba Ratzkoff, Sut Jhally, USA, 2004, 80‘
This critically acclaimed video exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over news reporting about the Middle East conflict. Combining American and British TV news clips with observations of analysts, journalists and political activists, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides an historical overview, a striking media comparison, and an examination of factors that have distorted U.S. media coverage and, in turn, American public opinion.

In Limbo, Simon Arazi, B, 2001, 43‘
"In Limbo" is a collage edited from American satellite feeds intercepted by the artists Marko Peljhan and Brian Springer between 1990 and 1997. The material comprises unfiltered back-hauls from raw live feeds of news networks (before they are packaged with voice-over, music and commercials), as well as corporate and governmental broadcasts for the employees and trainees of the respective companies and law-enforcement institutions.

Turbulences, Carole Poliquin, CND, 1997, 60‘
What happens when a butterfly flutters its wings? Does the air around it rumble and seethe, creating a hurricane on the other side of the globe? And when blue chip stocks suddenly plummet one day, how many workers lose their jobs or their pensions? The global market is not a neutral territory, but an unprecedented state of interconnections and interdependence.

Samstag, 26. Mai 2007

Cannibal Tours
Political Travel
Holy-days

19:30 – 22 Uhr
Programm 2
Colonial Tourism

Cannibal Tours, Dennis O’Rourke, AUS, 1988, 70’
When tourists journey to the furthermost reaches of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, is it the indigenous tribes people or the white visitors who are the cultural oddity? This film explores the difference (and the surprising similarities) that emerge when "civilized" and "primitive" people meet.

Political Travel
, It’s all Lies, IL, 2003, 14’
Want to see the world from a different perspective? Want to trade a mind-numbing life for a fiery one? Want to plan your rebellious getaway now? Political travel is the address if you are looking for a revolutionary way to travel.

Holy-days, Randi Steinberger, USA, 2002, 50’
An overview of three classic clichés of tourism and pilgrimage: Jerusalem, Florence and Las Vegas. The first is barely coping under pressure, the second suggests a "theme-park" world, while the third....Las Vegas has all the answers. Inspired by the quote from St. Francis of Assisi, "you are what you are seeking," award-winning filmmaker Randi Steinberger set out to document her observations and those of the contemporary traveler. Shot entirely in the three mythic cities of Jerusalem, Florence and Las Vegas, tourists, guides and experts reveal a subtle contradiction between the modern pilgrims? anticipated expectations and their actual experiences. What we seek can be as profound as a religious epiphany, as superficial as a successful shopping spree, or as life changing as winning the big jackpot. Throughout we are subtly reminded that if we journey to seek change, we should remember to pack our sense of humor.

Sonntag, 27. Mai 2007

Bassi Bus, Conservas
El forat
C/GUARDIA 14 BIS 08001 BCN
A Tornallom
Africa 1947, Highlights
Natives
La Forêt
On Translation: Fear

15 – 18:30 Uhr
Programm 3
The hidden city: Barcelona Real State Colonialism & Autonomous
Zones


Bassi Bus, Conservas,
Interven TV, E, 2006, 24’
In July 2005, the comic Leo Bassi took his Bassibus services to the city of Barcelona. In this political-tourism trip we came up close to the very heart of speculation and real estate violence, and met some of its main protagonists. Step right in and see... This tour has been possible thanks to the participation of people and groups who have been fighting for years to defend the territory and the dignity and rights of the people who live in it.

El forat, Jose Maria V. Peña, E, 2004, 75’
Between 2000 and 2003, PROCIVESA, the property development company that is restructuring various areas in the old part of the city, expropriated various housing blocks in Barcelona's La Ribera neighbourhood at a low price. And then demolished them. Local residents named the new empty space that remained where their houses used to be the "Forat de la Vergonya" (the Hole of Shame), as a way of denouncing a situation that they considered degrading for a number of reasons: the public authorities' abandonment of an area that was already problematic, the interminable construction work, the loss of rights of people relocated to new apartments, etc.

C/GUARDIA 14 BIS 08001 BCN, Juan Fernando Lopez, E, 2005, 30’
An old building in Barcelona's historic Barrio Chino is the setting for this documentary. Real estate “mobbing” and the urban rehabilitation of the old city are the narrative thread, the economic machines that drive real estate speculation. They take over the neighbourhood, burying its history and memory.

A Tornallom, Enric Peris, Videohackers, E, 2005, 48‘
A Tornallom is a documentary about the struggle to defend de irrigated area used for cultivation known as La Huerta de Valencia. It shows us images and testimonies of the events that occurred between September 2002 and March 2003, when more than 200 residents of La Punta (in the Huerta area) were evicted from their houses. The villages were demolished and the fields bulldozed to make room for the ZAL (logistics activities zone) of the Port of Valencia, which is planned to take up around 600,000 square meters, most of the area of La Huerta. “A Tornallom", is what the agricultural workers of La Huerta call the way they swap work amongst themselves. For heavy agricultural tasks workers usually help each other, pooling their efforts to do the work on one person’s field and going on to another the next day until all the work is done. That's working ‘a tornallom’: work in exchange for work.


19:30 – 21 Uhr
Programm 4
Colonial Borders


Africa 1947 Highlights, News & Flashes, USA, 1947, 4’
Queen Elizabeth pays homage to Cecil Rhodes on her tour to Africa. Tribes pay tribute to Queen Elizabeth. 

Natives, Jesse Lerner, Scott Sterling, MEX /USA, 1991, 25’
The U.S.-Mexican Border is the site of a disturbing increase in violence and racial intolerance. Along the border there are now a number of 'nativist' groups that have organized with the stated purpose of ending undocumented immigration. "Natives" follows the individuals involved in San Diego's anti-immigration movement. Relying principally on a direct cinema style and an eye for the absurd, the film critiques the nativist position by contrasting their professed love of country with their racist and anti-democratic attitudes. Though the US has long maintained a reputation as a haven for immigrants, there is nonetheless a strong tradition of nativism and xenophobia. In the decade of the 1990s, there was a new surge of anti-immigrant sentiment. This film examines the nativist discourse along the US-Mexico border,
a place that brings issues of nationalism and intolerance into sharp focus.

La Forêt, Colectivo Frontera Sur, E, 2005, 43’
In Benyounes forest, “la foret” as they called their habitants, was the last stage of a long trip for thousands of people coming from Sub-Saharan Africa. Close to the fence that divides Ceuta (Spain) from Morocco, they establish in a variable time, before flank the last obstacle in they way to Europe, looking for a better life. Sometimes running away from wars, politics persecutions, hunger or a precarious economy situation. Lots of times of all of this. In years, the migrants pass across this forest and after some weeks or months they manage to arrive to Ceuta. In finals of 2004, European union start agreements of subcontract Morocco in the control of the Spanish – Moroccan border. The habitants of the forest, started to feel the effects of this agreements: the increase of illegal devolutions, the abuses from the civil police, they install police controls near the forest, they forbid the access to current water, military attacks to the camps in with they made mass arrests and rapes as a war weapon. The border it’s close. Systematic violation of human rights, financed with the tax of the democratic European Union citizens. The migrants organize themselves in spaces like this and construct spaces; support nets in Moroccan territory, confronting and resisting this way the European politics. In the forest of Benyounes, they organized themselves from origin communities. In February of 2005, decided between all the community’s, record this video, to made visible their situation, in with they report the systematic violation of their human rights, the absolutely abandonment from the NGO’s, Associations an Human Rights Institutions, an they demand their citizens condition and they require their rights as human beings.

On Translation: Fear, Antoni Muntadas, MEX/USA, 2005, 30’
On Translation: Fear/Miedo is a televised intervention based on a video production that weaves together interviews with people who experience the tensions of the border zone on a daily basis, archival televised footage that makes reference to the idea of fear on the border between Mexico and the United States, and other documentary and journalistic material. The video aims to reveal how fear is a translated emotion, revealing itself in differing ways on both sides of the border as a cultural/sociological construction based on politics and economics. On Translation: Fear/Miedo was broadcast between August and November 2005 in four distinct locations that connect the centres of power/decision-making with the places where these policies are evident everyday: Tijuana, San Diego, Mexico City and Washington, DC.

Montag, 28. Mai 2007

Mother Dao – The Turtlelike
Oriente Medio, Destacados de 1947
Je vous ai compris
Una cruz en la selva: Guinea
Afrique 50
Les Maîtres Fous

15 – 18 Uhr
Programm 5
Colonial Dream 1


Mother Dao – The Turtlelike, Vincent Monnikendam, NL, 1995, 90’
Unfolding without narration, Mother Dao, the Turtlelike is a spare and elegant film constructed entirely from archival footage... Luminous nitrate images are set against a simple soundtrack of birdcalls, bells and murmuring voices, punctuated occasionally by native poems and songs. The film's careful construction reveals the face of systematic colonization and the effect of economic expansion on a culture. 

Oriente Medio, Destacados de 1947
, News & Flashes, USA, 1947, 12’
The UN votes to partition Palestine. Riots in the face of the partition of Palestine. The Suez Canal is handed over to Egypt after 72 years of Brittish control. Incidents on the Israel-Egypt border. The Egyptian Crisis. Israel withdraws from Sinai. For decades, Movietone was one of the major international news broadcasting agencies. It shaped the collectve imaginary, created by the mass media, of a large cross-section of Americans and Europeans.

Je vous ai compris
, Jean Pierre Gambarotta, no-zone, 2006, 15’
1958 General De Gaulle pronunces -in a very convulse and tragic moment for an Argelia under rigorous represion and torture- its famous and demagogic “Je vous ai Compris” (I understand you). A reading on several audiovisual documents of that time gives to us an opposite meaning to that sentence. “Je vous ai Compris” now means and show us the real sense of the civilizational work of the western powers. Today so enthusiaticly renovated.

Una cruz en la selva: Guinea
, Jean Pierre Gambarotta, no-zone, 2006, 31’
An Archives research and edit on several audiovisual documents from various sources dealing with the old Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea, most of it created for information and educational purposes. Images that illustrate the colonial obsessions of the times: the idyllic image of Spain’s civilizing task, nostalgia for imperial times, the sadistic element in the hunt for wild animals, the work of Christianisation, the militarization of a layer of the population in order to ensure the existence of “loyal natives”, the perpetuation of the African stereotype.


20 – 21:30 Uhr
Programm 6
Colonial Dream 2

Afrique 50, René Vautier, F, 1950, 25’
An anticolonial film about colonial repression on the Ivory coast. A virulent attack on the French colonial system after the second world war that has been banned in France for half a century.

Les Maîtres Fous, Jean Rouch, F, 1954, 35’
Les Maitres Foux is about the ceremony of a religious sect, the Hauka, which was widespread in West Africa from the 1920s to the 1950s. Hauka participants were usually rural migrants from Niger who came to cities such as Accra in Ghana (then Gold Coast), where they found work as labourers in the city's lumber yards, as stevedores at the docks, or in the mines. There were at least 30,000 practicing Hauka in Accra in 1954 when Jean Rouch was asked by a small group to film their annual ceremony During this ritual, which took place on a farm a few hours from the city, the Hauka entered trance and were possessed by various spirits associated with the Western colonial powers: the governor general, the engineer, the doctor's wife, the wicked major, the corporal of the guard.

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