Documentary Educational Resources - Filmmaker / Fruzzetti, Lina / All Films

Fishers of Dar

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

Samaki wa Dar es Salaam/Fishers of Dar is an ethnographic film about the fishermen and women of downtown Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It explores the continuity and integrity of traditional fishing practices in new, contemporary settings. Dar es Salaam is a metropolis of 3 million people yet the city's demand for fish is entirely met by equipment, methods and tools that have been used here for hundreds of years.

This film takes the viewer to the central fish market and pier in the city harbor, and to a small fishing community away from the market. It is structured between two sunrises and two sunsets: the story begins before dawn, with small lanteen sailed boats (ngawaalas) and bigger mashua boats (a diesel engine replacing the sail) leaving for fishing grounds close by or further out to sea, and continues with fishing at sea; coming back to unload and sell fish at the market; auctions and retail sales; fast food preparation and sale at the market; home-based work and leisure activities in the fishing community.

Eschewing commentary and voice-over explanation — similar to Forest of Bliss — the film shows the many hands the fish pass through before reaching customers. Hundreds of people make a living in the process. We see fishermen and women, boat builders, boat crews, auctioneers, laborers, vendors and market people of all kinds. Not the least are women who come with buckets, buy and clean small fish and then go back home by bus to sell fried fish in the hundreds of smaller markets of the city.

The film reveals how traditional methods articulate with modern demands. There are problems: a brief text at the end of the film points out that the market was recently demolished to make way for expansion of the harbor. The age old process continues but under difficult new conditions.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Best Documentary, Athens Ohio Film Festival, 2003

Juror's Choice, Black Maria Film Festival, 2003

Golden Dhow, Director's Choice, Zanzibar Int'l Film Festival, 2002

Best Cinematography, Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2002

Northwest Folk Life Film Festival, Seattle, 2003

Rakumi Arts Film Festival, Seattle Museum of Art, 2003

Rhode Island Int'l Film Festival, Providence, 2003

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In My Mother's House

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:44:00 GMT

In My Mother's House
Buy Now: $320.00

One day in 2005, Lina Fruzzetti receives a startling email that reads, "If this is your father, we are cousins." There follows a decade-long quest to learn more about her Italian father who died young in Italian ruled Eritrea and her Eritrean mother who does not dwell on the past. Above all, Fruzzetti strives to understand her far-flung African, European, and American family against the backdrop of colonial rule, worlds at war, migration, grief, diasporas, and the global world in which we all live.

In My Mother's House presents the longue durée of Euro-Atlantic, and African societies and histories, from unique points of view, indirectly, in the light of particular events and encounters of a large diasporic American-Eritrean-Italian family. These encounters are intimate and direct so that the viewer feels intrigued while being challenged to learn more. The attention is to individuals and conversations in actual, spontaneous, unrehearsed settings.

The story unfolds chronologically, making the viewer privy to the filmmakers' knowledge. Building on each previous scene unexpected new development occurs in every subsequent segment. From Providence, USA to Carrara (Italy) and Asmara (Eritrea) the scenario turns from conversations in cramped living rooms and events surrounding everyday life in villages and towns, family memories to details of history and politics.

The dramatic ending completes the story but does not resolve the initial puzzle. The film shifts attention from mother to father, to daughter, and in the end to the daughter's quest to find the hidden histories of her large, scattered family with an eye to understanding the meaning of events and the pattern of individual lives. Lina is both protagonist and observer, and through her efforts, we succeed in seeing individual fates play out against a broad canvas of different societies and histories. A spare and often poetic narration does not merely clarify but complements the visual detail and synchronous sound, highlighting the protagonists' experience.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Brown University, 2015

Wesleyan University, 2015

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2016

Ambedkar University, Delhi, 2016

St Anthony's College, Oxford, 2016

SOAS, University of London, 2016

University of Cardiff, 2016

ISCTE, University of Lisbon, 2016

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Khalfan and Zanzibar

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:13:00 GMT

Khalfan and Zanzibar
Buy Now: $295.00

Khalfan and Zanzibar is an anthropological documentary shot on digital video — a new departure for the filmmakers, who previously worked exclusively with 16-mm film. Three separate topics are woven together in this innovative project: 1) the life and work of Khalfan Hemed Khalfan, founder of Zanzibar's Association of the Disabled; 2) scenes from the lives of Zanzibar's disabled — job skill training, a class for deaf children, a soccer scrimmage; 3) the history and culture of Zanzibar.

This video is a study of Mr. Khalfan Hamid Khalfan and the handicapped people's organization Mr. Khalfan founded and continues to run. Mr. Khalfan, a charismatic figure well known in Zanzibar, is himself wheelchair-bound and oversees the tasks of representing, training, and helping handicapped people throughout the island state. Mr. Khalfan coordinates the efforts of donor agencies, state and federal governments, politicians and development experts, but he is not paid by the government and does not belong to any political party. For many years a high school principal, he looks on his work as primarily an educational one, "raising consciousness" about the needs and potential contributions of people with handicaps.

Not a portrait film pure and simple, Khalfan and Zanzibar's differentiation is to place the protagonist in Zanzibar culture, history, ethnicity, religion and everyday life. It intersperses interviews, scenes of Mr. Khalfan's daily chores at work and at home, handicapped people at work and leisure activities, and footage of Zanzibar (with innovative use of superimposed texts discussing history, ethnicity, politics, and Islam). The challenge of the video is to integrate, through visual form and style, the diverse materials mentioned above, in a single unfolding film structure.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Certificate of Merit, INTERCOM Competitions of the Chicago International Film Festival, 2000

Best International Documentary, Brooklyn Film Festival, 2000

Academic Look International Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal

Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival, New York, 2000

Center for Cross Cultural Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 2000

Seagull Media Centre, Kolkata, India, 2001

Dialektus Film Festival, Budapest, Hungary, 2002

5th World Congress of Anthropological Sciences, Florence, Italy, 2003

Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London

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Seed and Earth

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:46:00 GMT

Seed and Earth
Buy Now: $295.00

Made by a team of distinguished filmmakers/anthropologists, Seed and Earth is a film about everyday life in rural West Bengal, India. It follows the daily schedule of the families of two brothers who live side by side and cooperate in many daily activities. We see how gender and age determine work, ritual and leisure activities.

Janta is a prosperous, multicaste village that derives its livelihood from agriculture. Rice, the main crop, is cultivated in small plots. The working day starts early with men ploughing and women beginning preparations for cooking. The ritual cycle of the village moves from brief daily prayers to big village-wide celebrations lasting several days. Seasonal worship of the gods and numerous life cycle rituals complete the sacred year. Eating, washing, gossiping, visiting — the fabric of daily life is captured eloquently on film with no intrusive narration.

This DVD features a secondary audio track containing ethnographic notes written & spoken by Lina & Ákos over relevant sequences.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Honorable Mention, Society of Visual Anthropology Film and Video Festival, Washington, 1995

award of merit, Sinking Creek Film and Video Festival, 1996

Director's Choice, Black Maria Film Festival, 1996

Prix Planet Cable, Bilan du Film Ethnographique, Paris, 1996

Best of Festival, Windy City International Documentary film Festival, Chicago, 1996

Director's Choice Award, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, 1996

Finalist, National Short Film and Video Competition, USA Film Festival, Dallas, 1996

Bronze Apple Award, National Educational Media Network Competition, 1996

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Singing Pictures

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:46:00 GMT

Singing Pictures
Buy Now: $295.00

For generations, Patua (Chitrakar) communities of West Bengal, India have been painters and singers of stories depicted in scrolls. The Patuas tell the stories of Muslim saints (pirs and fakirs) as well as Hindu Gods and Goddesses, and offer devotion to saints at Muslim shrines. In the past they used to wander from village to village, receiving rice, vegetables and coins for their recital. They would unroll a scroll, a frame at a time, and sing their own compositions. But competition from other media eroded this way of life and now the Patuas are trying to adapt to changing conditions.

In response to this cultural crisis and as a means to make extra money, recently a group of women from Naya village near Calcutta formed a scroll painters' collaborative. The film follows their daily lives as they paint, sing, cook, tend to their children and meet with the cooperative. They discuss the problems and rewards of practicing their art, and speak freely about the social, religious, and political changes in the village and the world beyond. Their wisdom, artistry, and good humor amidst many difficulties illuminate the lives around them.

Scrolls cover a variety of themes: mythological and religious, social and especially women's issues, contemporary local and world news. The more recent themes are communal (Hindu Muslim) harmony, Joy Bangla (the birth of Bangladesh as a country), the battle of Kargil (Kashmir conflict), and the September 11 events in New York. Women painters have also developed the figure of Satya Pir (revered by Muslim and Hindu alike) demonstrating how two communities can live in religious harmony despite mounting tensions in the rest of the country.

The women candidly discuss issues of Islam and birth control, victimization of women, female education, poverty and work, religious tolerance and intolerance, and depict some of these ideas in the scrolls themselves. Women painters want to tell their own stories in songs and pictures, illustrating their lives of hardship and endurance. These stories attest to what it means to be a woman in Bengal and India today, demonstrating how a small group of determined women can empower themselves by adapting an ancient art to new conditions.

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Songs of a Sorrowful Man

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:46:00 GMT

Songs of a Sorrowful Man
Buy Now: $295.00

Lina Fruzzetti and Ákos Östör began a major film project in 2001, documenting the revival of an ancient tradition in India: scroll painting and the singing of stories depicted in the scrolls. The result was the award winning film Singing Pictures, released in 2006.

The current film is a follow-up to the previous one and deals with the life and work of a painter, composer, singer, well known in rural West Bengal, as a poet and mystic of legendary proportions.

Dukhushyam is a charismatic figure, one who has departed from convention in many ways, most importantly in encouraging women to take up the traditional craft of scroll painting and musical composition pursued almost exclusively by men before. Singing Pictures was about the trials and ultimate triumph of 15 women in the village of Naya, all of them his students, who formed a cooperative to practice the ancient craft of painting scrolls, composing and performing the songs accompanying the scrolls.

In a series of edited sequences the new film chronicles Dukhushyam's vision of the decline and rebirth of his art; his tolerant Sufi Muslim spirituality; his engagement with Hindus, Muslims and the modern world; his encyclopedic knowledge of changing musical and painting histories and techniques; the influence of his beliefs on his way of life, and his teachings for future generations of painters and singers in his community.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Worldfilm - Tartu Festival of Visual Culture, Estonia, 2010

International Ethnographic Film Festival of Quebec (FIFEQ), Canada, 2010

Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany, 2010

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