As part of an ongoing effort to reframe how its collection is activated and interpreted, RAI FILM invited KONTEKST Collective to develop an independent curatorial response to its film catalogue.
This invitation reflects RAI’s commitment to creating space for practices that question established frameworks and foster dialogue around how ethnographic film is interpreted, challenged and reimaged today. The Transparent “I” – named as a nod to critical theorist Denise Ferreira da Silva – brings together films that interrogate authority and authorship in ethnographic representation.
The programme curated by KONTEKST Collective will feature the shorts Wási(2017), All Eyez on Me! (2021), A Family Portrait (2022), and Making Worlds Otherwise (2020). Through reflexive approaches and formal experimentation, these films invite us to think over the processes in which they were produced, asking who gets to make films in the first place as well as who exactly they are made for.
This lineup comes together to highlight how contemporary tendencies in ethnographic filmmaking contrast conventional approaches by embracing subjectivity and playing with form, leading the audience to reflect on and look beyond common perspectives within the discipline.
The screening will be followed by a conversation with KONTEKST’s Arti Siudem, Ishy Pryce-Parchment and Sarah Khan, moderated by Lee Douglas (Centre for Visual Anthropology, Goldsmiths). The panel will contextualise the films within visual ethnographic tradition and raise questions surrounding agency and collaboration, therefore unpacking the power of images to create and transform knowledge.
The event is a product of KONTEKST’s ethos to reject hierarchical, expert-driven structures of “truth-making,” instead embracing decolonial and anti-expert ways of working and creating. It was programmed by Arti Siudem, Beatriz de Almeida, Emelie Victoria, Ishy Pryce-Parchment, Rosa Koivunoro, Sam McNeil and Sarah Khan.
Tickets: £12 solidarity (please select this if you’re able to) / £10 general admission / £6 concession admission and KONTEKST members / FREE for those who need (please email film@therai.org.uk)
Doors open: 18:00; Films start 18:30; Finish by 21:00.
FILMS:
(programme total duration: 83min.)
Wási | Ver Dir. Amado Villafaña Chaparro & Sebastián Gómez Ruiz, 2017, Colombia, 16min.
As the sun rises over a village in northern Colombia, we glimpse its inhabitants as they begin their day. Emerging from the darkness, a voiceover reflects on the nature of sight. It is the voice of Arhuaco filmmaker Amado Villafaña Chaparro. He shares his thoughts on anthropologists like Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff and Robert Gardner, and the (mis)representations they have produced. In doing so, both he and the film affirm the power Indigenous people can claim by taking up the camera themselves – becoming authors of their own image and, in turn, authors of knowledge.
All Eyez on Me! Dir. Robert Weijs, Kenya / Netherlands, 2021, 34min.
For more than fifteen years, the director Robert has been returning to the Loita Maasai in Kenya, forming a close bond with the brothers Lenaai and Matinkoi. Aware of how the Maasai are perceived and portrayed by the outside world, Lenaai observes that “thinking about the Maasai can sometimes become really dangerous.” Composed of three short works that together examine how visibility is produced, negotiated, and contested, All Eyez on Me! is a cinematic reflection on representation and the power of the gaze, questioning what it means to look – and to be looked at – within unequal structures of visibility.
A Family Portrait Dir. Shubham Sharma, 2022, India / Germany, 5min.
After finding a family portrait on their phone one evening in Germany, the filmmaker is struck by a sudden longing for their hometown – and wants to make a film about it. But how can one speak about a family portrait without also speaking about the world that surrounds it? After all, we are shaped by the people and places we come from. Drawing on archival footage from back home, the film takes the audience on a journey through the filmmaker’s town, its people, its economy, its traffic, a neighbourhood… all leading to a house where that family portrait exists.
Making Worlds Otherwise Dir. Enid Guruŋulmiwuy, James Ganambarr, Jennifer Deger, Kayleen Djingadjingawuy, Meredith Balanydjarrk, Paul Gurrumuruwuy, Sebastian Lowe, Victoria Baskin Coffey and Warren Balpatji, 2020, Australia, 28min.
An exuberant experiment in the ethnographic art of remix, this film gives new form to Miyarrka Media’s project of yuṯa, or “new,” anthropology. Through sound, images, colour, light, and deeply felt patterns of kinship and connection, the work draws once-separate worlds into relationship. Rather than attempting to explain Yolngu aesthetics, the film lets them unfold and ignite on screen.
Access
The films will be screened with subtitles in English.
Level access on the ground floor.
Lift to upper floor.
Accessible toilet on the ground floor.
Parking
Cycle parking provided. Limited car parking available by arrangement. The Museum is within the Congestion Charging zone.