As part of the public program of the LAND public art festival and symposium, Farouk and Nicole Sarmiento curated a set of site-sensitive film screenings of films by Kim Munsamy, Sebástian Porras, Heidi Grunebaum and Mark Kaplan. The films were screened in historic buildings in Cape Town’s Central Business District, which carry within them histories of erasure and palimpsests of pasts that continue to press upon the present, demanding activation and memory work in the present.
In this series of screenings of audiovisual works by local artists and filmmakers, we are invited to consider the way in which land, labour and livelihoods are intertwined – whether in Guatemala, Occupied Palestine, or in the mines of the Northwest. Following Judith Butler’s formulation, these films touch on the unequal distribution of vulnerability, as well as how acts of dispossession and erasure are inscribed in the present, in bodies, landscapes and the built environment. The audience is invited to discussions with the filmmakers following the screenings.
Donde el tiempo se detiene / Where time stands still (Kim Munsamy & Sebástian Porras) 33 minutes
An old military base, a ceremony on top of a mountain, a court hearing, a family in Quiché, thousands of peasants entering Guatemala City. They all get together where time stands still. Four characters lead us through their searches. Places, images, rituals and voices come together in this documentary in an attempt to present the blurred intersection between memory, pervasive conflicts, stories of oppression and resistance.
Give me back that moment (Kim Munsamy & Sebástian Porras) 5 minutes
In 2005 a bombing alert led to the discovery of more than 80 million documents that register 100 years of the now defunct National Police in Guatemala. This documentary follows the life of one of these documents in the Historical Archive of the National Police, which has open access to these records.
Bones don’t lie and don’t forget (Kim Munsamy & Sebástian Porras) 3 minutes
After 2 decades the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) remains dedicated to the work of listening to bones that “don’t lie and don’t forget”. FAFG’s work demands us to not only revisit history, but to interrogate it, to reopen chapters perhaps deemed closed or “resolved”, and to name, one by one, the thousands who were detained and disappeared during the internal armed conflict in Guatemala.
The village under the forest (Heidi Grünebaum & Mark Kaplan) 67 minutes. Where greening is an act of obliteration.
Unfolding as a personal meditation from the Jewish Diaspora, The Village Under The Forest explores the hidden remains of the destroyed Palestinian village of Lubya, which lies under a purposefully cultivated forest plantation called South Africa Forest.
Using the forest and the village ruins as metaphors, the documentary explores themes related to the erasure and persistence of memory and dares to imagine a future in which dignity, acknowledgement and co-habitation become shared possibilities in Israel/Palestine.
Directed by Emmy-winner Mark J Kaplan, The Village Under The Forest is written and narrated by scholar and author Heidi Grünebaum.