This seminar will depart from three main questions that are articulated throughout Marta Rodríguez and Jorge Silva’s film Nuestra voz de tierra, memoria y futuro, while drawing parallels to other films. The question of land back, central to the film, will constitute the main part of our discussion. It will unfold in relation to how cinematic temporality captures the struggle for land, the act of reclaiming land and working it, as well as the question of “trespassing” private property. All of these issues will be looked at from a filmic perspective, in the way they are translated into filmic tools and how the filmic in its turn sits in land struggles. A selection of film excerpts will be discussed in this framework.

23 October 2024, 16:30–18:00
Atelier Art Education / Curatorial Studies, 4.T39
ZHdK, Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, 8005 Zürich

Marwa Arsanios’ practice tackles structural questions using different devices, forms, and strategies. She tries to look at questions of property, law, economy and ecology from specific plots of land. The main protagonists become these lands and the people who work them. In her practice, film becomes a space for connecting struggles in the way that images refer to each other.

Territories of Paranational Cinema is a cooperation between Kulturwissenschaftliche Filmforschung at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the SNSF-funded research project Paranational Cinema – Legacies and Practices at the Department of Film Studies, University of Zurich. The program has been organized by Brigitta Kuster (HU) and Philip Widmann (UZH) and is supported by a strategic partnership grant from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.