In collaboration with the Eye Filmmuseum, the Prince Claus Fund presents a short films programme followed by a panel discussion during Amsterdam Art Week.
Highlighting the filmmakers and artists from the Fund’s network and beyond, Eye meets the Prince Claus Fund in the exploration of what culture means to us today. Artists transcend individual creative expression and emerge as catalysts for social change inspiring us to speak up, to imagine and to never give up hope.In considering the questions of our time, while facing major global challenges, art offers a singular space for diverse ways of knowing, creating the room to question and a space to grow through seeing ourselves in one another at each moment — and reclaiming togetherness in time.The evening will be kicked off by Bregtje van der Haak, Director van Eye Filmmuseum. Host Jesse Gerard Mpango is a storyteller based in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Prince Claus Mentorship Awardee and a founding member of Ajabu Ajabu, a multimedia curatorial collective based in Dar Es Salaam.
Followed by a Q&A with visual artist Newsha Tavakolian. To round off the night, we will continue with drinks and music at the Eye Bar & Restaurant.
PROGRAMME
- TERRA MATER (KANTARAMA GAHIGIRI, CH/RW 2023, 10′) In her film Kantarama asks: what happens when we create trauma to the body of the Land? Who will be harvesting the consequences? What about the ties between colonisation, capitalism and climate change? Is climate justice even possible? The film is talking about land, a vast and complex issue in East Africa, and the continent in general. But it could really be anywhere. There are economical, political and spiritual aspects to the land, and we are part of its ecosystem. Our human bodies depend on the health of the body of the Land. Therefore we need to protect and restore, to repair and honour it, on a global scale.
- ALL THAT PERISHES AT THE EDGE OF LAND (HIRA NABI, PK 2019, 30′) Hira Nabi’s film features Ocean Master, a decommissioned container vessel, entering into a dialogue with several workers at the Gadani yards. The conversation moves between dreams, desires, places that can be called home, and the violence embedded in the act of dismantling a ship at Gadani. As the workers recall the homes and families they left behind, the long workdays mesh indistinguishably into one another, and they are forced to confront the realities of their work in which they are faced with death every day. How may they survive and look towards the future?
- LOS VIEJOS HERALDOS (LUIS ALEJANDRO YERO, CU 2019, 23′) Cuban filmmaker Luis Alejandro Yero explores how political violence is revealed in the most intimate settings and what resistances arise to confront it. In Los viejos heraldos an elderly couple in their nineties live a plain and solitary life in the Cuban countryside. Their everyday routine unfolds in rituals celebrating the small things. Building a traditional charcoal oven; keeping it hot, while a storm approaches. The groundbreaking news concerning the country’s political scene reaches them through a dilapidated TV set. A documentary with beautiful black and white imagery that observes how personal stories roll in the flow of History.
- FOR THE SAKE OF CALMNESS (NEWSHA TAVAKOLIAN, IR 2020, 20’) An experimental take on a reality intensified by the emotional flare of PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome). Iranian photographer and visual artist Newsha Tavakolian explores how does one visualise an amorphous idea, PMS, one that has become abstract to the point of obscurity? Landscape, real and imagined, provides the backdrop for a visual narrative, while sound, intertwined with a self-narrated monologue, adds a third dimension to this specific portrayal. Newsha Tavakolian is detached from the real world and yet achingly affected by it.
The programme is in English, and all the films are subtitled in English.
EYE on Art 