Pangea United - film screening in Łodz
An event accompanying the cooperation exhibition "Pangea United"
Thursday, 23 May 2019, 6 pm
Muzeum Sztuki ms2, Ogrodowa 19, 91-065 Łódź, Poland
Curated and introduced by Marcel Schwierin
Two award-winning documentaries that combine high-tech scrap collecting with religious practices.
One was shot in the far north of Siberia, the other one in Ghana.
An evening on the Anthropocene as well as documentary and dystopian science fiction.
On the Third Planet from the Sun directed by Pavel Medvedev (2006, 32 min). This documentary is set in Archangel, in northern Russia, where nuclear tests were held for decades. The local population has now started collecting what is known as 'space refuse' from the neighbouring marshes to sell as scrap iron or to use in everyday life. Now pilgrims walk through the bushes and marshes. The beautifully photographed hardships become tangible for the viewer. It is a modern post-apocalyptic story.
Lettres du Voyant directed by Louis Henderson (2013, 40 min). Lettres du Voyant is a documentary-fiction about spiritism and technology in contemporary Ghana that attempts to uncover some truths about a mysterious practice called “Sakawa” – internet scams mixed with voodoo magic. Tracing back the scammers’ stories to the times of Ghanaian independence, the film proposes Sakawa as a form of anti-neocolonial resistance. The film takes the form of a voyage through a network of digitised mine shafts that lead the viewer to each of the film’s locations ; a gold mine, an e-waste dump, a voodoo ritual or a discotheque for example. A character recounts a story through reading a series of letters that he has written to the film’s author – letters that speak about the colonial history of Ghana, of gold, of technology.
Pavel Medvedev – Russian documentary filmmaker born in 1963 in Orenburg. He graduated in 1990 from the Leningrad State Culture Institute named after Krupskaya in the Department "Cinema/Photo". In 1992 he graduated from the Higher School for TV directors (workshop of Sarukhanov). From 1993 to 2000 he worked as a TV director in St. Petersburg. Since 2000 he is a film director at the St. Petersburg Documentary Film Studio. His documentary "From the Third Planet of the Sun" won the Grand Prix at Oberhausen Film Festival in 2007. "The Unseen" won the FIPRESCI award there in 2008.
Louis Henderson – English filmmaker born in 1983 in Norwich. His works investigate connections between colonialism, technology, capitalism and history. Henderson graduated from London College of Communication with a first class BA honours in 2007, from Le Fresnoy – studio national des arts contemporains with a special mention of the jury in 2013, and in 2016 completed a Superior Diploma in Research in Art from the European School of Visual Arts. His research seeks to formulate an archaeological method within film practice reflecting on animistic materialism.
The screening of On the Third Planet from the Sun takes place thanks to the courtesy of the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and Archive Film.