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Session III: (Re) Constructing Realities
October 15, 2022 , 13:30 – 15:30
Moderated by Belinda Casparis & Katerina Vesela
What is it that shapes and provides for our everyday living? These three films examine through a critical lens what it takes to adapt to our ever-changing, consumption-driven society. Three different perspectives on the facts and consequences of societal challenges encourage the viewer to engage with (re)constructing realities.
Bulgarian Melons (8 min)
Switzerland, 2021, No Dialogue
Directed by Léon Huesler
Sand from Nassau, asparagus grown on the Schwägalp and Bulgarian melons. Are they real in the economic paradise called Switzerland – and who produces them? A calm look at the relations of production.
«Putting the sounds into words is difficult, as are the images. With Bulgarian Melons Huesler has succeeded in capturing a diffuse feeling through image and sound, although one wonders where the melons have gone…»
— Sarah Wacker on Bulgarian Melons
«As a combination of essayistic and artistic short film, Léon Huesler shows us his critical perspective on the production of food and sets it in contrast with small excerpts from scenes of everyday life in Switzerland. There is no escaping the irritating squeaking of trains, the constant whirring of irrigation systems or the annoying high-pitched beeping of transport ships. And yet it is precisely these monotonous sounds that force us to engage with the matter of the film’s subject.»
— Belinda Casparis on Bulgarian Melons
Léon Huesler studies video at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
Falken / Falcons (9 min)
Switzerland, 2022, Swiss German / English sub.
Directed by Damiana Rudolphi, Ladina Braun, Lea Studer and Jana Schlegel
In Zurich, after a hundred years, the waste incineration plant on Josefstrasse is being demolished. A huge construction site is now in the middle of the city. While work on the construction site goes on, the place is revealed more and more through telephone conversations.
«In the Anthropocene, the new geochronological era, humanity turned into an agent of change on many planetary levels. The human being as an individual remains rather unimportant in this time. With “Falcons”, the four students from the University of Bern turn a construction site in Zurich into the main protagonist of their movie. The shots of the Josefstrasse construction site are accompanied by off-screen voices from telephone conversations with various people involved in the construction site. […] The camera, however, always remains far away from the action, which is atypical/untypical for observational cinema. The distance that is created, leads to the construction site itself becoming the object of observation as a non-human actor. […] This film is an anthropological portrait of an urban place that is currently in the midst of transformation.»
— Katerina Vesela on Falcons
Damiana Rudolphi, Ladina Braun, Lea Studer and Jana Schlegel are students from the University of Bern and realized this project as a term assignment.
Not Just Roads (70 min)
Switzerland / India, 2020, Hindi / English sub.
Directed by Nitin Bathla and Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou
A massive urban transformation is underway in India. Highways are being constructed at an unprecedented rate of 23 kilometres per day under the Indian government’s Bharatmala (‘Garland of Limitless Roads’) programme, which aims to open up new territories for the emerging Indian middle class. Currently, the area is inhabited by villages, working class communities, and nomadic herders. It is criss-crossed by native trails and vital ecological commons. This film captures the story of one such highway outside Delhi, from the perspective of human and non-human actors.
Nitin Bathla studied Architecture for his BA followed by a MA on Advanced Studies in Urban Design at ETH Zurich. His work focuses on labour migration, land ecology, and housing in the extended urban region of Delhi.
Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou is a Greek/Mexican filmmaker interested in ethnography as a filmmaking methodology. He is currently based in Zürich, where he teaches ethnographic filmmaking at the urban scale at the ETHZ.
