LUMBUNG FILMS — THE BUDAPEST SCREENING. A selection from the lumbung Film collection
LUMBUNG FILMS — THE BUDAPEST SCREENING. A selection from the lumbung Film collection
Date: May 24 – June 3, 2023
Wednesday – Saturday, 4:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Venue: Nyolcésfél, Budapest 1084, Német u. 16.; 7 th floor
lumbung Film is a common pot of film and video works created by lumbung members and lumbung artists. It functions as an online database accessible for the lumbung community who can curate and present their own film selections in their respective countries. Aiming to pool resources together, lumbung Film is one of the manifestations of the lumbung practice and a way to keep using this “sharing resources, knowledge and working-method”—approach beyond the duration of documenta fifteen. Within the framework of the film programme lumbung Films – The Budapest Screening, the works selected by OFF-Biennale Budapest will be presented in four sections and screened consecutively over 8 days.
lumbung Film was developed by lumbung members in the framework of documenta fifteen. The screening programme is part of THE SEASON OF DARKNESS: Being Civil in an Uncivil Society symposium.
- Modus Operandi: lumbung working methods in practice
The lumbung experience or method—adopted by ruangrupa on the path towards documenta fifteen in 2022 and beyond—is an operative approach based on such values as collectivity, generosity, sustainability, mutual help, trust, solidarity, and interdependence. It tests alternative economic and cooperation models that prioritizes shared resource building and equitable distribution on the local level. It emphasizes the social role of art and promotes a radically different, broader, and more inclusive understanding of art than the practice currently consensual in Western Europe. The works featured in this section give an insight into the specific ecosystems and working methods of a handful lumbung members who were part of the collectively driven journey throughout documenta fifteen. The majority of these lumbung-interlokal participants are spread around the Global South, with their own contextual realities and vulnerabilities requiring different operational routines, often perceived as a survival strategy.
The House of Red Monkey & Taring Padi: Art, Activism, Rocknroll, 2002, 26 min
Agus Nur Amal PMTOH: Jatiwangi Art Factory, 2021, 11 min
Sebastián Díaz Morales: Smashing Monuments, 2022, 50 min
Atis Rezistans: The Ghetto Biennale, 2015, 3 min
Atis Rezistans / John Cussans: The Tele Geto Sign Painting Video: 2012, 14 min
Wajukuu Art Project: Wakija kwetu, 2022, 29 min
El Warcha: A Blast from the Past, 2021, 8 min
Project Art Works: Modus Operandi, 2015, 10 min
- The cycle of women’s rites: films by DAVRA collective
DAVRA is a collective of 19 young artists from Central Asia created by filmmaker Saodat Ismailova, exploring the common cultural heritage of the region. The word “davra” is of Persian origin and it means circle. “A circle can mean a circle of people, a place to gather, or a group of people with whom you gather. In the Central Asian region, the people understood the universe and the world around them as round.” The films in this section by four members of the collective are about female rituals: the cyclicality of the female body which reflects a human presence on earth, where life and death are also in a continuous cycle.
Rituals revolve around the spirits of the chilltan, a sacred and invisible collective of powerful female entities at the centre of animist spirituality in Central Asia. The elements of fairytales and daily living rituals are intertwined in the films as well as the historical past and the ancestral heritage are linked to everyday reality.
The common female experiences create a sense of belongingness that either can be manifested in a physical place, such as a home, a house, or a shelter (that is created by a female protectress to protect women who have been subjected to violence), or it can be imagined in a warm and protective pregnant female body with the reproductive capabilities of nature.
Aida Adilbek: Köbelek, 2023, 2.25 min
Saodat Ismailova: Bibi Seshanbe, 2022, 52 min
Nazira Karimi: Maiday Isin Shygaru, 2021, 3.18 min
Nazilya Nagimova: Chulpan – The Mother, 2022, 11 min
- Songs of displacement and resistance
The power of music as survival strategy in the face of persecution, resistance, displacement, and migration are the common topics shared by all three films represented in this section. The documentary-based films collect the traces and tell the tragic stories of a Yazidi community from the border region between Turkey and Syria, of a former multicultural town Müküs on Turkey’s border with Iran, as well as of a Kurdish-Iranian refugee seeking asylum in Australia. The act of documenting all the suffering, hardship, trauma, love, and sorrow in song texts, singing them out loud accompanied by heavy music is an immensely powerful testimony of the witnesses (be it a single person or a whole community, a religious or cultural minority), who stay forever haunting in these films.
Shero Hinde (Komîna Fîlm a Rojava): Love in the Face of Genocide, 2020, 52 min
Pınar Öğrenci: Asit, 2022, 60 min
Safdar Ahmed: Border Farce, 2022, 15.55 min
- I wanted the screen to flip: methods of refusal and support by Sada [regroup]
Sada is an art community and self-organised art school active between 2011-15 in Baghdad, initiated by Rijin Sahakian with the aim of providing an artistic platform that in addition to recording shared experiences, witnessing, and resistance offers professional and human support, the saving power of community in the midst of years of war, armed conflicts, US occupation, international sanctions and total political instability. The group disbanded after four years, but several members re-joined to produce new works—compiled as one experimental, interconnected anthology film—for documenta fifteen, providing a unique artistic and political representation of Iraq’s recent history, interspersed with personal narratives.
Sajjad Abbas: Water of Life, 2022, 13 min
Ali Eyal: The Blue Ink Pocket, 2022, 11 min
Sarah Munaf: Journey Inside a City, 2022, 10 min
Bassim Al Shaker: Barbershop, 2022, 8 min
Rijin Sahakian: Anthem, 2022, 11 min