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Exposing Homelessness

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Exposing Homelessness
Buy Now: $295.00

Exposing Homelessness is a film that documents the experience of three formerly homeless women who participated in a three-month photography workshop. They were given 35mm cameras and instructed in the art of black and white photography. Drawing from their personal experiences they were asked to use photography to express their insight into the issue of homelessness so that viewers could be exposed to a more intimate and profound analysis of the problem. Diverse in age, race, class and citizenship status, the women succeed in challenging the homeless stereotype and empowering themselves in the process.

The women's technical and artistic skills develop as well as their confidence and kinship. They critique photographs while using them as a way to analyze the problem of homelessness and share their individual stories. The relationship and intimacy that grows between the women over the course of the workshop proves to be a healing and powerful experience for the women and holds a vital message for the viewer.

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Sweet Sorghum

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:47:00 GMT

Sweet Sorghum
Buy Now: $295.00

In Sweet Sorghum we are introduced to the filmmaker's daughter, Rosie, (now in her early twenties) as she reflects on her childhood spent among the Hamar herdsmen, an isolated people of southwestern Ethiopia. The film reveals the intimacy of shared family life and childhood relationships between the Hamar, Rosie and her brother. We learn about the important role sorghum plays in the Hamar diet, how the sorghum is harvested and the different ways it can be prepared. The practicality of the design of cooking utensils is shown. Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall, Rosie's parents, are well known ethnographic filmmakers who have lived with and filmed the Hamar for over twenty years. The films of Jean Lydall form a trilogy most recently seen on the BBC. The Women Who Smile, Two Girls Go Hunting and Our Way Of Loving, depict Hamar life from the perspective of the women. Ivo Strecker has also produced his own trilogy, The Father Of The Goats, Song Of The Hamar Herdsmen and the most recently released Worry And Hope In The Face Of Drought. In this body of work we find a rare opportunity to examine both the male and female perspective of a shared ethnographic experience. This film collaboration between a father and his daughter goes a long way towards helping us all to understand our common humanity no matter where and under what conditions we were born and raised.

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When Visitors Come

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 12:26:00 GMT

When Visitors Come
Buy Now: $295.00

A film about the relationship between anthropologist Rina Sherman and an Omuhimba family with whom she lived for seven years, filming and photographing aspects of their everyday and ritual lives. Halfway through her tenure in the field, Sherman presented a multi-media exhibition, entitled The Ovahimba Years: Work in Progress in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. A group of young people from the community of Etanga traveled to Windhoek to participate in the exhibition.

The film explores the evolution of this relationship that lead to the exhibition, shows the group of young people discovering the presentation of their cultural heritage at the exhibition, holding performances as part of the programme presented, and shows the resulting discussions and consequences of the exhibition, once everyone is back in Ovahimba country. When Visitors Come is a film about an anthropologist in situ, and evokes several notions central to fieldwork, such as the nature of the bond between the observer and the observed, the observed observer, participant-anthropology and emotion as possible vector or hindrance in fieldwork.

Films in the Ovahimba Years series

Keep The Dance Alive

Shake Your Brains

When Visitors Come

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