Av Festival 14: Spectres + Q&A
Part of the Av Festival 14: Extraction
| Director: | Sven Augustijnen |
|---|---|
| Certificate: | Unknown |
| Length: | |
| Format: | Unknown |
| Language: | French |
| Country: | Belgium |
Fifty years after his assassination, Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the newly independent Congo, is back to haunt Belgium. Through commemorations, encounters and a return visit, a top-ranking Belgian civil servant who was in Elisabethville on that tragic day of 17 January 1961 attempts to exorcise the ghosts of the past. To the sound of St John Passion by J.S. Bach, Spectres plunges us into one of the blackest days of the Belgian Congo’s decolonisation. This feature-length film by artist Sven Augustijnen exposes the fine line separating legitimation and historiography and the traumatic question of responsibility and debt. The artist-filmmaker is present at the screening to introduce and discuss the film. Regional Premiere. 2011.
Sven Augustijnen studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. His work concentrates on the boundaries between fiction and reality, using a hybrid of genres to disorienting effect. His films have been included in exhibitions and festivals in Athens, Basel, San Sebastián, Rotterdam, Tel Aviv, Tokyo and Vilnius, among others.
Curated by AV Festival as part of the Postcolonial Cinema Weekend. Part of AV Festival 14: Extraction, www.avfestival.co.uk
£5/£3.50. Tickets available on the door
Postcolonial Cinema Weekend Pass: £30 / £20. The pass includes all screenings on Sat 8 and Sun 9 March only. Subject to availability. BUY PASS
Sight & Sound are media partner for AV Festival 14: Extraction
Other films in the Av Festival 14: Extraction:
01
Film: Av Festival 14: La Région Centrale
1 Mar 2014, 1:30 p.m.
Michael Snow's 1971 masterpiece of experimental cinema presents the landscape in a way never before seen by the human eye. Filmed with a mechanised camera able to move in every direction imaginable.
04
Film: Av Festival 14: Double Bill - Coal Money/Man With No Name
4 Mar 2014, 7:30 p.m.
A double bill of films by Wang Bing. Coal Money follows a convoy of coal trucks encountering roadside criminals and corrupt policemen. Man with No Name shows man reduced to his most rudimentary elements living in an underground cave.
06
Film: Av Festival 14: Schuss!
6 Mar 2014, 7:30 p.m.
Nicolas Rey's 16mm film powerfully recalls two phases of industrial history in the French mountains, the white gold of aluminium in the 1960s and its subsequent replacement by ski resort tourism.
08
Film: Av Festival 14: Palacios De Pena (Palaces Of Pity) + Q&A
8 Mar 2014, 11:30 a.m.
In a parable on guilt and oppression, which alludes to aspects of Portuguese colonial history, two cousins are potential heirs to their grandmother’s fortune. This artist-filmmaker is present to discuss his approach to postcolonial cinema. Part of Postcolonial Cinema Weekend.
08
Film: Av Festival 14: It For Others /Les Statues Meurent Aussi + Q&A
8 Mar 2014, 5 p.m.
Duncan Campbell has taken Marker and Resnais’ 1953 film Les Statues meurent aussi (Statues also Die) as both source and artefact, to pursue a meditation on the life, death and value of objects. The artist is present to discuss the work. Part of Postcolonial Cinema Weekend.
08
Film: Av Festival 14: Images Of The East, Barbaric Tourism + Q&A
8 Mar 2014, 9 p.m.
AV Festival is delighted to welcome filmmakers Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi in person. This film uses footage shot in India by tourists in the 1920s to illustrate the elitist attitudes of Westerners toward the Far East. Part of Postcolonial Cinema Weekend.
09
Film: Av Festival 14: A History Of Mutual Respect, Liberdade, Ornithes + Q&A
9 Mar 2014, 11 a.m.
Three short films by Gabriel Abrantes, focus on the new identities and relations forged through globalisation. Each was shot in a postcolonial context in Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Angola and Haiti, and will be introduced by the filmmaker. Part of Postcolonial Cinema Weekend.
09
Film: Av Festival 14: Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc With Will Rose: Africa Addio
9 Mar 2014, 2 p.m.
Having caused considerable controversy upon its release, Africa Addio is presented here as an illustrated screening by artist Mathieu Kleyebe Abbonenc and curator Will Rose, to consider the social and political implications of watching and showing such a film. Part of Postcolonial Cinema Weekend.
09
Film: Av Festival 14: Electric Fragments Nos. 4, 5: Asia-Africa + Q&A
9 Mar 2014, 5:30 p.m.
The filmmakers Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi are present in person at the screening. Electric Fragments consists of archival material from the 1970s revealing social problems in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Burma, Indonesia, Dahomey, Ivory Coast, and Senegal. Part of Postcolonial Cinema Weekend.
09
Film: Av Festival 14: From The Pole To The Equator + Q&A
9 Mar 2014, 8:30 p.m.
The filmmakers will discuss their landmark work from 1986, which re-defined the documentary form. This film is drawn from the 1910 archives of Luca Comerio, a pioneering Italian documentary filmmaker who photographed ‘exotic’ peoples from the North Pole to the Equator. Part of Postcolonial Cinema Weekend.
10
Film: Av Festival 14: The Radiant
10 Mar 2014, 7:30 p.m.
The Radiant invokes both the historical promise of nuclear energy and the future threat of radiation that converges on the illuminated cities and evacuated villages of Japan, following the 2011 tsunami.
17
Film: Av Festival 14: Yumen
17 Mar 2014, 7:30 p.m.
Yumen is a once-thriving, oil-rich town that has been left derelict and abandoned by Chinese socialism. This ghostly film takes us through its desolate spaces inhabited by restless, hungry souls.
18
Film: Av Festival 14: Losers And Winners
18 Mar 2014, 7:30 p.m.
This subtly observed documentary reveals cultural and economic strain on both sides when, in Germany's Ruhr Valley, 400 Chinese workers dismantled and shipped the most modern coke factory in the world to China.
24
Film: Av Festival 14: The Devil's Miner
24 Mar 2014, 7:30 p.m.
This documentary follows two brothers as they work in the Bolivian silver mines, a place believed to be the exclusive province of El Tio, the devil, who is both protector and destroyer.
25
Film: Av Festival 14: Fiebres
25 Mar 2014, 7:30 p.m.
Set on the Amazonian plateaus, Fiebres follows the journey of Pierre, a Franco-Venezuelen doctor, as he travels through the forests to treat gold and diamond miners afflicted with a mystical unnamed fever.