SCREENING ROOM SATURDAY
Screenings on Saturday 27th October (running order):
the Voice of God
Directed by: Bernd Luetzeler
Scottish Premiere, United Kingdom premiere
Running time: 00:09:35
Year: 2011
Country: India
Synopsis:
If God would come down to earth and try to earn a living in Bombay, most probably he would very soon become successful as a voice over artiste, lending his voice to thousands of hindi movies and even more documentaries and public service films in India.
A melo-dramatic docu-drama with voice-over in stop-motion and long-time exposure.
Bernd Luetzeler was born in 1967 in Duesseldorf. He graduated at University of the Arts, Berlin in 1998. Since 2001 he’s been living and working as a filmmaker and artist between Berlin and Bombay, where he recently staged a multimedia theatre project based on a Franz Kafka story.
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Filmography:
Rapid Eye Love - 2005, experimental film, Super-8, 3min
True Love is just Filmi - 2003, experimental video, 15min
The Suspect Usual - Spirale des Verbrechens - 1998, experimental video, 18min
Eternal Showdown - 1998, film loop, Super-8, 43 m
Schallmann - 1996, radio play, 6 min
Loop-o-Rama - 1995-2000, film installation, various Super-8 film loops in panoramic projection
Rauschlitanei - 1993, experimental video loop, S-VHS, 1 min
Artist's Website: http://www.nomasala.com
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 10am
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
Post- Fordlândia
Directed by: Megs Morley & Tom Flanagan
Scottish Premiere, United Kingdom premiere
Running time: 00:20:00
Year: 2011
Country: Brazil
Synopsis:
‘Fordlândia’, a white-picket town constructed by Ford in 1928 in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest. Fordlândia, a now abandoned American town and rubber plantation exists as the most poignant existing monument to Ford’s attempt to export his puritanical model of capitalism “Fordism” and the American way of life into other parts of the world. Whilst Ford’s vision was at once protecting even parental, it was utterly totalitarian, and as industrialised processes became increasingly global, the flaws in Ford’s logic began to erode the fabric of his utopian dream. While the native workers were provided with medical care, white picket fenced housing, square dancing lessons and American movies and radio and food, they resented the regulation of every aspect of their lives and eventually rioted in1930, resisting “being turned into 365 day machines” and smashing all of the factory time clocks, as a symbolic act against western industrialisation. Despite the growing signs of inevitable and utter failure of the project, Ford continued to pour millions of dollars into Fordlândia. Interestingly, as the ensuing disasters mounted, Ford’s aims for Fordlândia became increasingly obsessed by idealism, as if he sensed that the growing failure of Fordlândia was some sort of apocalyptic premonition threatening to destroy his vision of the world saved by capitalism.
Post- Fordlândia explores the ruins of Fordlândia, through an other- worldly protagonist, referencing the writings of the early explorers of the Amazonian jungle, the indigenous myths relating to the rubber tree and Ford’s own vision for Fordlândia. Ultimately, the work contemplates this physical and ideological failure of the exportation of the capitalist dream into one of the most complex ecological and cultural places on the planet.
Megs Morley and Tom Flanagan's collaborative practice is primarily concerned with the exploration of cultural and political contexts and sites through the expanded use of artists cinema, cinematic space, documentary, fiction and experimental film.
Morley and Flanagan both studied Fine Art Sculpture in LSAD before completing Masters in Visual Arts Practices in IADT, 2008. Their work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally in both gallery and film festival contexts. Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Galway Arts Centre, June 2011(Solo), Rencontres Internationales: Paris: Centre Pompidou November 2011. “A Series of Navigations” curated by Seamus Kealy, The Model, Sligo. Upcoming: Rencontres Internationales : Berlin - July 2012, Mermaid Arts, Wicklow, (Solo Exhibition) 2013. Public Commissions include “Aughty, a Film in 4 Parts” a feature length film, commissioned by Aughty Public Art Projects and Galway County Council, premiering July 21st 2012.
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 10.15am
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
The Land That Forgot Time
Directed by: Emma Osbourn
Scottish Premiere
Running time: 00:18:24
Year: 2011
Country: United Kingdom
Synopsis:
Using the “The Poetics of Space” by Gaston Bachelard and “The Practice of Everyday Life” by Michel de Certeau as a philosophical foundation, along with a quotation from Flann O’Brien’s “The Third Policeman”, this piece explores the effects of walking in the Lincolnshire Fenland; a landscape not associated with recreational walking.
The video describes the walk from Whaplode to Whaplode Drove, approximately 6 miles; I retraced the steps of herdsmen who would take their animals to pasture. This work is concerned with an experiential exploration of walking within the landscape, and the effects of space on the thought processes. The results are not fully conclusive.
1994 2001
Art Department Technician on Feature Films and TV Films and series
2010-2011
Experimental Short Looped Videos
2011
'Reparation' Alchemy Film Festival
Artist's Website: http://www.emmaosbourn.co.uk
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 10.40am
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
Las Vegas | The Meadows
Directed by: Benjamin R. Taylor
United Kingdom premiere
Running time: 00:33:22
Year: 2011
Country: Canada
Synopsis:
Travelling through the city of Las Vegas and the encircling desert, LAS VEGAS | THE MEADOWS examines the soul of a city both real and unreal. Moving from outside to inside, images of facades and voids reveal an empire of ghosts and electricity. The amusement park-fantasy-frenzy of Las Vegas becomes a psychological landscape of spaces forgotten, people unseen and multiplying kilowatts filling what used to be the meadows of the Nevada desert.
Biography/Filmography:Benjamin R. Taylor is a filmmaker currently living and working in Montréal, Canada. His works use documentary and experimental techniques to focus on geography, architecture and spirituality. He is a graduate of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema and his films and videos have been presented in various festivals and galleries around the world.
Artist's Website: http://www.benjaminrtaylor.com
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 11am
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
Crusts
Directed by: Alexander Stewart
Scottish Premiere, United Kingdom premiere
Running time: 00:12:00
Year: 2011
Country: United States
Synopsis:
Short synopsis
A stoboscopic odyssey. A geologic horror film.
Long synopsis
Crusts is a minimalist psychedelic film that combines searing drone noise with footage of mysterious architectural and natural artifacts. Using a visual composition of objects rotating in a void, the film evolves from meditations on concrete physical textures to a complete stroboscopic transfiguration of the image. The ambiguous footage is accompanied by a crushing, hypnotic onslaught of guitar and electronic noise by White/Light.
Alexander Stewart lives in Chicago. His short films have screened internationally, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Tribeca Film Festival, and ImageForum in Japan. He teaches animation in the School of Cinema and Interactive Media at DePaul University, and curates a monthly screening series at Roots & Culture gallery in Chicago. He is co-director of the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation.
Alexander Stewart filmography:
Errata (2005)
On the Logic of Dubious Historical Accounts (with Peter Miller) (2008)
Very Similar To (with Peter Miller) (2009)
Iceland Spar (2009)
The Battle of the Stand-Stills (2010)
White/Light is Matthew Hale Clark and Jeremy Lemos. Founded in Chicago in 2004, the duo have performed their critically-acclaimed drone music internationally in museums, galleries and music venues. They did an installation and performance residency at the MCA Chicago as part of the 12x12 series, and curated the “Face the Strange” performance series at the same institution.
Artist's Website: http://www.alexanderstewart.org
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 11.40am
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
Spectral Analysis Loops - Threadsuns
Directed by: Tarrl Lightowler
Scottish Premiere, United Kingdom premiere, European premiere, World premiere
Running time: 00:10:00
Year: 2012
Country: United States
Synopsis:
the Spectral Analysis Loops are a series of films by Tarrl Lightowler (image, editing, sound) and Matthew Swiezynski (editing and sound). There are three so far, they can be shown together or separate. The starting off point for this is a quote from Paul Celan "I attempt to render sections from the spectral analysis of things, to show them in many aspects and permutations simultaneously: their relations, sequences and oppositions.
Unfortunately I am unable to observe things from all sides...I consider my so-called abstraction and my actual ambiguity to be moments of realism."
The films are Loops made from animated photographs of Natur taken by Tarrl Lightowler and then generally remixed by Matthew Swiezynski with either new soundtracks, or extended versions of sound from their LP "Fragments of Night". Nature, landscape, poetry, alchemy and perception are very important to this series.
Tarrl Lightowler and Matthew Swiezynski have been making films/videos exclusively dealing with nature for 20 years now and about 15 years together. The collaboration comes from a desire to use abstraction (in image and sound) to deal with Natur directly, in a way not dissimilar from the great Romantics.
Artist's Website: http://invisiblebirds.org
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 12 noon
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
My father is super mega strong
Directed by: Maite Abella
World premiere
Running time: 00:09:26
Year: 2012
Country: Netherlands
Synopsis:
Film about the relationship between a father and a son,
and the different relationship they each have with their environment.
A middle-aged man followed by his son are walking through a forest. The man brings trees down by shaking them loose and pushing them over. At the bus that brings them home, the little boy watches the city pass by through the window and expresses his thoughts about his Sunday "walks" with his father in the forest.
His eyes are focused on the bus drivers: for him they represent the amiable face of the city and of life.
The idea of alchemy and transformation occurs within de heart of the seven-years-old boy: through the innocence of his regard (and the music Agnus Dei) give us hope despite the destruction of the landscape.
Maite Abella, born in Lleida (Spain) 1966. Lives and works in Amsterdam since 1995.
She attended Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Painting.
She also attended Universitat de Belles Arts in Barcelona (Spain). She has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Geography from the Universitat de Barcelona (Spain).
She has exhibited her paintings since 1999 regularly in The Netherlands. Since 2000 Abella makes short films and also she has developed site-speficic projects in the public space.
Artist's Website: http://www.maiteabella.nl
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 12.15am
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
Roaming
Directed by: Lin Li
World premiere
Running time: 00:03:51
Year: 2012
Country: Scotland
Synopsis:
This is an experimental video which combines digital filming with drawing. An unplanned footage was used as the starting point for the observation of a living creature moving across a wild micro-landscape. The observation was recorded in the form of ‘blind’ sketching by the artist on a digital tablet. The filming and the drawing are attempts to contain time and space and both involve a cyclical process of searching, finding and losing. The sound of the sketching process highlights the interaction between the observer and the observed.
Biography/Filmography:Coming from an academic and employment background in Social Sciences and disability service, Lin Li gradually shifted her vocation to fine art. While her art practice focuses on painting, she began to explore video as a medium in 2011. Her enduring passion for singing is reflected in her videos, where she often uses her own voice in the original soundtracks which are as important as the moving images. Her work examines a range of issues; some of the recurrent themes are the ephemeral elements of nature, the transience of human experiences, and the tension between the personal and the social.
Artist's Website: http://www.linli-art.com
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 12.30am
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
Snakegrass
Directed by: Stephen Broomer
World premiere
Running time: 00:01:00
Year: 2012
Country: Canada
Synopsis:
Snake grass lines a forest path. The camera passes toward the entrance to the woods. It staggers and repeats as the scene is saturated in colour.
Biography/Filmography:Stephen Broomer is a filmmaker, poet, and film preservationist based in Toronto, Canada. He has presented his restorations of experimental Canadian student films at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Canadian Film Institute.
Venue:
Screening date:
Screening time:
Tickets:
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
Walking Holiday in Grindelwald
Directed by: David Theobald
Scottish Premiere, United Kingdom premiere, European premiere, World premiere
Running time: 00:03:26
Year: 2012
Country: United Kingdom
Synopsis:
Experience the sights, sounds and smells of an invigorating vacation in Switzerland.
A mediation on the increasing separation between ourselves and the ‘natural world’ created by contemporary society. At its heart lies some kind of false promise/belief within current technology development that we can build a virtual substitute for individual experience - the multi-sensory experience of actually being in a particular place at a particular time.
Biography/Filmography:David Theobald is a video artist born in the UK. Recent exhibitions include Tenderflix 2011, Re: Animate at the Oriel Davies Gallery, Wales, ev+a in Limerick, Ireland, the Cube Open 2010, the Celeste Art Prize 09 in Berlin, Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2008, ArtSway Open 08 and Open 07. David’s work was also included in Figuring Landscapes, a touring exhibition of film and video that showed at major art venues throughout the UK and Australia. David is also an Associate Lecturer at Wimbledon College of Art, part of University of the Arts.
Artist's Website: http://davidtheobald.com
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 12.38am
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
Particle Progress
Directed by: Teo Ormond-Skeaping
United Kingdom premiere, World premiere
Running time: 00.11.38
Year: 2011
Country: United Kingdom
Synopsis:
Based upon a pictorial representation of a some what Danteanjourney through a disintegrating landscape “Particle Progress” explores the unconsciousdirection of determinist forces toward the attainment of knowledge andpotential transcendence.
Biography/Filmography:Teo Ormond-Skeaping (U.K 1987) lives and works in the UK. His work includes photographic, video, and installation based pieces. His imagery represents his experiential stream of conscience. With an underlying metaphysical theme, pieces explore the potential of a difficult future with human and environmental implications. His installations often combine video and interactive structures which immerse the viewer within the emotive environment of the ambiguous narrative.
Artist's Website: http://www.teoormondskeaping.com
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 12.45am
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
The Search for Norumbega
Directed by: Georg Koszulinski
European premiere
Running time: 00:19:00
Year: 2012
Country: United States
Synopsis:
On the earliest European maps of North America, the unexplored region of present-day Maine was often labeled “Norumbega.” The fabled land was said to be hidden within this vast wilderness, and numerous cartographies placed Norumbega along Maine’s Penobscot River. But did Norumbega ever actually exist, or was it simply a European projection onto an unknown North American landscape—the desire to imagine a space divorced from the problems of European history? If Norumbega was anything more than a mythologized landscape, the limits of knowledge fail to prove its existence. Perhaps the poetic capabilities of the moving image will manifest an alternative future geography—a Norumbega that exists beyond the limits of history, cartography, and nationality.
Biography/Filmography:Georg Koszulinski’s work spans a wide range of forms and styles, from documentary and narrative features to avant-garde films and videos. Upon graduating from the University of Florida in 2003 with a degree in English/Film & Media Studies, his directorial debut, Blood of the Beast (2003), marked one of the earliest "no-budget" feature films to gain international DVD distribution (Alpha New Cinema). Silent Voyeur (2004) followed, premiering at the historic Anthology Film Archives in NYC. His experimental works, Desinformatsia (2002), America in Pictures (2007), Road to Katahdin (2008) and Fragments from an Endless War (2008) have screened at museums, festivals and microncinemas worldwide, earning numerous awards and accolades along the way. His documentary features, Cracker Crazy (2007) and Immokalee U.S.A. (2008) garnered numerous awards including a "Notable Video of the Year" nomination from the American Library Association, and top honors from numerous international film festivals. Both documentaries air regularly on the Documentary Channel.
Artist's Website: http://www.substreamfilms.com
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 1pm
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
The ground is moving
Directed by: Christoph Oertli
Scottish Premiere, United Kingdom premiere
Running time: 00:10:30
Year: 2010
Country: Switzerland
Synopsis:
The camera pans across façades and greenery in slow horizontal
movements. It’s like an extended moment in the summer at sunset, when a strong light is hitting the scenery almost horizontally and dividing everything in light and dark zones. People traverse from light to dark, appearing or disappearing from further away, from the depth of an undefined black space. The urban landscape is interspersed with time- and spaceless gaps, where humans come from and go back into.
1962* Winterthur/Switzerland, lives and works in Basel/Switzerland and Brussels/Belgium
HGK Zürich, Graphic design; Swiss Television Zürich, stage design; HGK Basel, audiovisual design.
videotapes, video installations, documentary videos. Works 1995-97 on cruise-ships around the world, lives
1998-2000 in Montréal/Canada and 2002-07 in Paris, then moves to Brussels.
2000-02 lecturer for video Fachhochschule Vorarlberg/Austria. 2004/06/11/12 guest lecturer HGK Lucerne/CH.
Artist's Website: http://www.christophoertli.ch
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 1.30pm
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
The Mystic
Directed by: Lyra Hill
World premiere
Running time: 00:07:44
Year: 2011
Country: United States
Synopsis:
The Mystic is sitting across from himself and gazing into a crystal ball. The Mystic is an exercise in the perils of hypnotism. The Mystic is a brutally experiential joke about the narcissism of divination. The Mystic is a film that was created in-camera, with rigorous technical finesse.
Biography/Filmography:Lyra Hill is a filmmaker and comic artist. She works exclusively with 16mm and S8, and is especially interested in analog special effects and optical printing. She also runs a performative comix reading series called Brain Frame. Lyra is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and likes to make work about dreams, sex, gross-out humor, and the overwhelming experience of unconscious drives.
Artist's Website: http://www.lyrahill.com
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 1.45pm
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
Wind Over Lake
Directed by: Jeorge Elkin
Not a premiere
Running time: 00:34:00
Year: 2011
Country: Scotland
Synopsis:
This film did not set out to be about anything in particular, but it is about something. Most probably it is about the people that feature in the film and the man that made it.
Biography/Filmography:Jeorge Elkin is a filmmaker and gentleman emigrated from the North,
currently residing in Scotland, UK. He has studied film and now he has
made a film.
Artist's Website: http://www.facebook.com/windoverlake
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 2pm
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
106 River Road
Directed by: Josh Weissbach
European premiere
Running time: 00:05:53
Year: 2011
Country: United States
Synopsis:
106 River Road connects the recorded document to the generated artifact, which move together upon a two-way timeline between the literal and the abstract.
Biography/Filmography:Josh Weissbach is currently getting his MFA in Film / Video Production at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has exhibited his work domestically and internationally at festivals such as the 2012 Montreal Underground Film Festival, the 2012 Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, and the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 2.40pm
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
Fictive Landscapes
Directed by: Mixed programme of shorts
Not a premiere
Running time: 01:11:00
Year: 2012
Country: United Kingdom
Synopsis:
Repeat screening of 'Fictive Landscapes' - a mixed shorts programme.
In the telling of stories, these landscapes permeate their narratives, becoming metaphorical, contextual, signifying or emotive. We witness the interplay of nature and guilt played out between two adolescents in a fi eld, while a wild bull-run becomes the landscape for a tale of love and intolerance. One man struggles to maintain love within the encroaching wilderness of 1840’s Canada, while yet others walk in isolation through landscapes layered with fears, memories and dreams.
Biography/Filmography:Please see the main 'Fictive Landscapes' programme entry.
Artist's Website: http://www.alchemyfilmfestival.org.uk/2012/fictive-landscapes/
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 2.50pm
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
The Story of Thomas Edison
Directed by: Aaron Zeghers
European premiere
Running time: 00:05:00
Year: 2011
Country: Canada
Synopsis:
A film about the childhood heroes you so admired and now don't speak to. Optically printed onto 16mm, the Story of Thomas Edison is a mélange of recorded audio bites that form a libelous biography of the famous inventor.
Biography/Filmography:Aaron Zeghers is a DIY filmmaker and musician from Winnipeg, MB. He also runs Cineflyer, Winnipeg’s premiere film, video and motion picture related arts blog. Zeghers’ films have played in Canada (Prairie Scene, WNDX, The 8 Fest, Montreal Underground Film Fest), the US (Milwaukee Underground Film Fest, Strange Beauty, Distilled Motion, Flicker Spokane) and the UK (Leeds Intl. Film Fest, Colour Out of Space).
o BLUEFILM1 | 2012 | 2:23 | experimental animation | HD
o Don’t Look Now | 2012 | 2:23 | experimental animation | HD
o It’s a Tough Job (But Someone’s Got to Do It) | 2011 | 3:20 | experimental | Super 8mm
o I See A Light | 2011 | 1:30 | experimental | 16mm
o The Story of Thomas Edison | 2011 | 4:38 | experimental | 16mm
o Chaos Theory | 2011 | 3:20 | experimental narrative | Super 8mm
Artist's Website: http://cineflyer.wordpress.com/
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 4.10pm
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
JANADHAAR
Directed by: Jade Ajani and David Meek
European premiere
Running time: 01:33:00
Year: 2011
Country: United States
Synopsis:
Janadhaar, which means "grassroots," is set in India’s Garwhal Himalaya and explores the struggle for community-owned ecotourism and sustainable rural development within the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve.
Nanda Devi (7817 meters) is the highest peak entirely within India, and for nearly a century it drew alpinists and hikers from throughout the world. When Nanda Devi was designated as a national park in 1982, however, mountaineering and trekking were prohibited from the area. This ban has negatively affected the economy of the region, causing many people who had been dependent on ecotourism as a source of income to migrate out of the area. Since 1982, the local Bhotiya people in Nanda Devi have been involved in a campaign to win back their right to economic self-determination. In 2006, formed their own ecotourism organization, the Mountain Shepherds, which now offers a variety of alternative tourism options. The group’s first trip, a trek involving local residents hiking alongside women from both India and Western countries, took place in the fall of 2006. This film documents the Bhotiya’s nearly thirty year struggle and recent success through interviews with the local women, international participants, activists, government officials and villagers as the trek proceeds through the mountains.
Biography/Filmography:Jade Ajani is an award-winning documentary and non-fiction filmmaker based in Portland, OR. A graduate of Bard College’s school for Film and Electronic Arts, he is a producer of both experimental shorts and remixed appropriations as well as original feature-length documentaries, most notably, Growing Awareness.
David Meek is an environmental anthropologist currently working towards a doctorate in Anthropology at the University of Georgia. His current dissertation research focuses on learning and landscape change within a settlement of the Brazilian Landless Worker's Movement (MST). He maintains the Placing Culture blog, about the intersections of culture and place, with a focus on the role geospatial technologies and methods.
Artist's Website: http://www.lasercave.biz/janadhaar/
Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 4.20pm
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday
