Session VI: Spaces of Care

Moderated by Milena Fischer & Fabiana Merz Enriquez

These three films tend to physical, emotional and social spaces, where healing, support and connection occur, hence, to spaces of care. They explore the many ways care is embodied, practiced, and experienced within different environments throughout everyday life, and how we create and navigate these spaces.

Babini Devetini (39 min)

Bulgaria, 2024, Bulgarian / English sub.
Directed by Daniell Tahor, Ana-Mariya Georgieva

Remembering the past with the elderly residents of a Northwestern village in Bulgaria entails a generational contemplation of the future. Following the pace of everyday practices and conversations, this film observes local, visible and invisible, political, social and environmental changes. Seeking to bridge the gap between the city and the village, the modern and traditional, the local and the global, two friends apply hope to the act of storytelling.

‘Babini Devetini is a must-see. It reminds us of life’s incredible worth and its profound fragility in the age of multiple societal and environmental crises, climate change being only one of them. But especially it calls for the recognition of how important it is to feel deeply rooted in our surroundings, because after all, they not only constitute our means of existence but also our home. Once you’ve seen the film, I can guarantee that you’ll tend to what is most precious to you’ – Fabiana Merz Enriquez.

Daniell Tahor studied at the University of Amsterdam where she filmed Babini Devetini as part of her Master’s thesis in November 2024, together with her friend Ana-Mariya Georgieva.

Crossroads (17 min)

Chile, 2024, Spanish / English sub.
Directed by Laura Heinig, Karla Riebartsch, Lion Durst, Leonie Morgenstern

Street vendors in Valparaíso, Chile, break through the hustle and bustle with their stories. Adelina and Juan have been there for decades. They offer their goods, shouting passionately. Retirement is not possible. Fear and warmth, stark political views alongside loyalty. A portrait of four graceful people who enliven and rhythmize a street corner. A microscopic image of an intersection offering an insight into Chile that inspires us to look at every street corner.

‘These crossroads stories capture the essence of these people’s spaces through film. Crossroads intertwines the themes of care, work, and infrastructure, and lets the audience delve into intergenerational spaces that bind together various temporalities – past, present, and future. Some elderly street vendors have been in this area for decades, so they become a part of the place or, eventually, the place itself. Their stories are testimonies, windows into broader societal and political change in Chile’ – Milena Fischer.

Laura Heinig (directing class), Karla Riebartsch (animation), Leonie Morgenstern (journalistic film)and Lion Durst (script writing) directed the film as a team. They are all students at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. During the ‘Miradas Cruzadas’ exchange programme, they had the chance to travel to Valparaíso, Chile.

Content warning:dead animals.

Our Co-Blind (38 min)

Philippines, 2023, English / English sub.
Directed by Masato Ushimaru

This ethnographic film explores the logic of care in visually-impaired communities in Baguio, the Northern Philippines. The film critically rethinks the dichotomy of caregiver and care receiver that is assumed and discussed by traditional academia. It illustrates how the process of care emerges as generative and variable relationships of reciprocal help between individuals, and as the form of numerous communities that overlap and entangle with each other in complex ways at the organizational level.

Masato Ushimaru holds a Bachelor’s of Social Sciences from Hitotsubashi, Japan, and a Master of Science in Visual Anthropology from Aarhus, Denmark. Our Co-Blind is part of his Master’s thesis.