The Fall 2018 Ethnographic Film Series will sweep from India’s most holy city to armed conflicts in Colombia; delve into New York City’s LGBTQ kiki culture, and examine the battle for the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.
The series explores politics, folktales, challenges, and tolerance through film. Discussions organized by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology will follow several of the films. The series is co-sponsored by Latin American Latino/a Studies and MECCPAC—a Dean of Students Diversity Initiative.
The series is free and open to the public. For additional information, contact Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology Liv Stone at 438-5850.
Films in the series include:
September 18
Forest of Bliss (Gardner 1986, 90 minutes)—7 p.m. at Normal Theater
Presented with introduction and followed by Q&A with Professor Livia K. Stone
This controversial sensory film is an unsparing, yet redemptive, account of the inevitable griefs, religious passions, and frequent happiness that punctuate daily life in Benares, India’s most holy city.
September 25
Summer Pasture (True, Walker and Perlo 2010, 86 minutes)—7 p.m. at Moulton Hall, room 208
Filmed in the high grasslands of eastern Tibet, Summer Pasture offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a young nomad couple and their infant daughter.
October 2
Chocolate of Peace/Chocolate de Paz (Burnyeat & Mejía Trujillo 2016, 55 minutes)—7 p.m. at Normal Theater
Screening followed by Q&A with Eunice Gibson, advocate for San José de Apartadó
The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó is an emblematic group of victims of the armed conflict in Colombia who have formed an agrarian community based on peace, non-violence, and cultivating cocoa.
October 8
Kiki (Pucci Garçon & Jordenö 2016, 94 minutes)—7 p.m. at Normal Theater
Screening followed by Q&A with Gia Love
In New York City, LGBTQ youth of color gather out on the Christopher Street Pier, practicing a performance-based artform, Ballroom, which was made famous in the early 1990s by Madonna’s music video “Vogue” and the documentary “Paris Is Burning.” Twenty-five years after these cultural touchstones, a new and very different generation of LGBTQ youth has formed an artistic activist subculture, named the Kiki Scene.
October 16
Manakamana (Spray & Velez 2013, 118 minutes)—7 p.m. at Normal Theater
Screening followed by Q&A with Professor Livia K. Stone
Filmed entirely inside the narrow confines of a cable car, high above a jungle in Nepal that transports villagers to an ancient mountaintop temple, Manakamana is an acute ethnographic investigation into culture, religion, technology, and modernity.
October 23
Whose Streets? (Folayan & Davis 2017, 102 minutes)—6:30 p.m. at Normal Theater
Screening followed by a Q&A with film director, artist, and activist Damon Davis
The activists and leaders who live and breathe this movement for justice bring Whose Streets?, a documentary about the Ferguson uprising. For this generation, the battle is not for civil rights but for the right to live.
October 30
The Maibor Uprising (Razsa & Guillén 2017, 100 minutes)—7 p.m. at Normal Theater
This participatory film experience will be “conducted” by filmmaker Milton Guillén. In the once-prosperous industrial city of Maribor, Slovenia, anger over political corruption became unruly revolt. Like those who joined the actual uprisings, audiences in the theater must decide whether to listen to organizers and remain with those committed to nonviolent protest on Freedom Square or to follow rowdy crowds toward City Hall and almost certain conflict.
November 6
I Am the People: The Struggle for Democracy in Egypt (Anna Rousillon 2014, 117 minutes)—7 p.m. at Moulton Hall, room 208
As the Egyptian people rise up in Tahrir Square, a rural community in the Nile valley follows the revolution on TV, radio, and in the newspapers.
November 13
Motherland (Díaz 2016, 95 minutes)—7 p.m. at Moulton Hall, room 208
Motherland takes the viewer into the heart of the planet’s busiest maternity hospital in one of the world’s poorest and most populous countries: the Philippines. Three women emerge to share their stories with other mothers, their families, doctors, and social workers.
December 4
ISU Visual Anthropology Short Films—7 p.m. at Moulton Hall, room 208
Explore the work of Illinois State University students in Professor Livia K. Stone’s classes, who created works where the medium is the message. Students delve into various topics from a visual anthropology class.
