SVA/SCA Virtual Otherwise Conference Film Festival
The Virtual Otherwise Conference is a collaboration between Society for Visual Anthropology (SVA) and Society for Cultural Anthropology (SCA). We are the American Anthropological Association’s biennial online Conference, June 2 – 4, 2022.
As a part of the conference, we offer a Film Festival Program: https://web.sas.upenn.edu/virtualotherwise/film-festival-program/
Check the conference program to see when films are screening in your time zone: https://web.sas.upenn.edu/virtualotherwise/program/
June 2
FILM SHORTS: Feminist storytelling: engaging the future through the past
This session features inventive feminist approaches to storytelling by directors from Panama, Egypt, Turkey, and Iran who are experimenting with form in 16mm film, home videos, VR media adapted to 2d video, and animation. Mobilizing media tools of the future, these makers tell stories of the past, exploring themes of feminist representation, state violence, revolutionary movement, domestic intimacy, and intergenerational trauma.
*Be sure to join us on June 2nd at 12:00pm EST for our Live Conversation with director Tamara Shogaolu.
Instruction for How to Make a Film, dir. Nazli Dincel, USA, 2018
She Who Sees the Unknown: Kabous, The Right Witness, and The Left Witness, dir. Morehshin Allahyari, Iran, 2019
Through the lens of Home Movie Stars, dir. Dana Enani, Egypt, 2021
Half a Life, dir. Tamara Shougalu, Egypt, 2017
June 3
FILM SHORTS: Between fact and ethnofiction: the sensorial and the archival
In film and visual media, what makes an ethnographic fact? When do sensorial images produce fictions? This session features films from Cambodia, Egypt, Cyprus/Spain, and England. From Basu’s complication of 20th century West African colonial archives to Achnoistis’ intimate perusal of his personal voice message archive, these projects critique, deploy, and play with sound and image to build sensorial experiences.
*Be sure to join us on June 3rd at 8:00pm EST for our Live Conversation with directors Lily Ekimian & Ahmed T. Ragheb.
Faces Voices, dir Paul Basu, England, 2020
Sunrise in My Mind, dir. Danech San, Cambodia, 2020
Tales of the Marvelous and News of the Strange, dir. Lily Ekimian & Ahmed T. Ragheb, Egypt, USA, 2021
Voice Message, dir. Panayiotis Achniotis, Cyrus, Spain, 2020
Fires, dir. Michael Morris, Egypt, USA, 2013
June 4
FILM SHORTS: Intimacies in virtual and queer time
Through the virtual, what kinds of intimacies become challenging, and what kind of intimacies become possible? These films from Greece, the U.S. and Germany explore themes of power in virtual, queer, and real time. Through a collectivist filmmaking approach, “I Can’t Really Hear You” gestures towards embarrassment and (im)possibility in the omnipresent virtual archive. “Share” follows a Gen Z influencer, showing the kinds of queer intimacy that teenagers seek and fine online. In the anti-romantic comedy, “Beer Beer!,” Popo Fan playfully explores romance, power and racialization in Berlin queer nightlife.
I Can’t Really Hear You, dir. Elena Demetria Chantzis, Theofanis Dalezios, Giannis Delagrammatikas, Joshua Olsthoorn, Ino Varvariti, Greece, 2021
Share, dir. Ellie Wen & Barna Szász, USA, 2019
Beer Beer!, dir. Popo Fan, Germany, 2021
