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2013, Documentary Educational Resources
"Best Documentary Feature," Berlin Independent Film Festival (February 2015) “Special Student Film Award," Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival (May 2014) A film by Christian Suhr, Persona Film, 75 min, Nov. 2013 SYNOPSIS Islamic exorcism or psychotropic medication? "Descending with Angels" explores two different solutions to the same problem: namely Danish Muslims who are possessed by invisible spirits, called jinn. A Palestinian refugee living in the city of Aarhus has been committed to psychiatric treatment after a severe case of jinn possession which caused him to destroy the interior of a mosque, crash several cars, and insult a number of people. He sees no point in psychotropic medication since his illness has already been treated with Quranic incantations. A psychiatrist and nurse try to understand his point of view but find that even further medication is needed. In the meantime a local imam battles a stubborn jinn-spirit of Iraqi origin and tries to explain the Muslims of Aarhus that they should stop worrying so much about jinn, magic, and other mundane affairs since nothing can harm anyone except by the permission of God. The film compares two systems of treatment that despite vast differences both share a view of healing as operating through submission of faith to an external non-human agency—namely God or biomedicine. FESTIVAL SCREENINGS • SIEF Zagreb (June 2015) • Trento Film Festival, EURORAMA (May 2015) • Ethnocineca (Vienna, May 2015) • International Festival of Ethnographic Film (Sofia, May 2015) • Ethnografilm (Paris, April 2015) • World Film Festival (Tartu, March 2015) • Days of Ethnographic Film (Ljubljana, March 2015) • Berlin Independent Film Festival (February 2015) • SVA Film and Media Festival (AAA, Washington, Dec 2014) • American Academy of Religion – Screening at the Annual Meeting (San Diego, November 2014) • Athens Ethnographic Film Festival (November 2014) • Munich International Ethnographic Film Festival (November 2014) • Sardinia International Ethnographic Film Festival (Nuoro, Italy, September 2014) • Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival (May 2014) • Beeld voor Beeld (Amsterdam, Dec 2013) • CPH:DOX (Copenhagen, Nov. 2013) • NAFA Film Festival (Bilbao, October 2013). • RAI International Ethnographic Film Festival (Edinburgh, June 2013) ADDITIONAL SCREENINGS • University of California, Berkeley, USA • University of California, Santa Cruz, USA • University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA • University of Manchester, UK • University of Heidelberg, Germany • Freie Universität Berlin, Germany • KU Leuven, Belgium • Atlas Stad Antwerpen, Free Hands, Belgium • James Cook University, Cairns, Australia • Aarhus University, Denmark • Anatomisk Teater in Oslo, Norway • A number of psychiatric hospitals and cultural centers in Europe Directed, filmed, and edited by: Christian Suhr Produced by Persona Film (November 2013) Distribution: Documentary Educational Resources (DER, Watertown) Running time: 75 min Orginal format: XDCAM 1080p Screening format: DCP / Blu-ray / ProRes / Mpeg4 / DVD / DV SP Languages: Arabic, Danish, English Subtitles: English
What do you see when you look at the world around you? Which story do you choose to see and which story do you miss when you make that choice? For some, the blink of an eye happens in a fraction of a second, while this can be longer for others. While one person`s attention is captivated by the symmetrical structure of a honeycomb, another person focuses on a human tragedy occurring in the Mediterranean. One might be intrigued by the imagination of archives while another is concerned with the future of our fragile ecologies, our healers or our souls. After almost one year, the EthnoKino collective is pleased to finally welcome you back to the cinema. During our first Film Festival, we invite you to direct your focus towards, and then beyond, these asymmetries to truly see, think and feel. While asymmetries in the world are not inherently problematic, asymmetric power relations are generally troublesome. Through these exceptional films, we will engage with fundamental issues of knowledge and power addressing mental health, mobility, ecology, and much more. Our intention is to visibilize the invisible and showcase each artist's vision for humanity through film and interactive discourse. This years festival program includes 9 film screenings, EthnoKino Shorts, two Masters in Bern (Tala Hadid and Rama Mani), Vision Talks, two concerts (Prorok Karpo and Çiçek Taksi) and a Panel Discussion on archive films at the Lichtspiel / Kinemathek Bern. EthnoKino is an ethnographic and documentary film program run by a collective of students and Bern-based anthropologist. Established in 2017 at the University of Bern we have since curated a regular program with over 50 screenings with Q&A's and other film related events in our home cinema Kino der Reitschule. Our aim is to make aspects of ethnographic filmmaking accessible to a wider public, its topics ranging from human labour, political activism, spirit possession and much more. More than just “documenting the real” visual anthropology makes full – and sometimes experimental – use of the medium film’s potential on a quest to frame and experience manifestations of life from different cultural and political contexts around the world. Over the years we have hosted many internationally acknowledged filmmakers and created a transformative space for dialogue at the intersections of science, cinema and society. EthnoKino brings together diverse communities via catalytic platforms: Ethnographic Film Screening Seasons, Masters in Bern, EthnoKino Shorts, Vision Talks and now our first Film Festival from 17 - 20 June 2021. You can find more general Infos here: www.ethnokino.com
Visuel Arkivering
Possession and Psychosis: Five Supplications that Guided the Production of the Ethnographic Documentary ‘Descending with Angels’ (DER 2013, 75 min)2017 •
From: “Al-Ghayb: The Poetics and Politics of the Unseen in Islam.” Contemporary Islam, Special issue, edited by Nils Bubandt, Mikkel Rytter, and Christian Suhr. In press.
Islamic exorcism and the Cinema Fist: Analyzing exorcism among Danish Muslims through the prism of filmIn this article I apply film theory as an analytic prism through which to examine the ritual mechanisms of a particular kind of Islamic exorcism (al-ruqya al-sharʿiyya). I show how these exorcisms operate as a ritual montage that conjures the absent presence of al-ghayb—a hidden world of power that only God can see in its totality and to which the possessed patients and the jinn spirits must succumb. These exorcisms thus provide healing, not in the sense of immediate "well-being" or "relief from pain" but in the sense of moral witnessing, an opportunity to testify to the limits of human seeing and action and to the ways in which invisible and divine forces give shape to the tangible world.
The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video
Ethnographic Film Festivals2020 •
This chapter describes the role that the anthropological film festival plays in the production and reproduction of anthropological knowledge. I will show how the anthropological film festival has been the site where the network, practises, and discourses associated with anthropological cinema are produced and reproduced. At the same time, the anthropological film festival is also the site for the interrogation and deconstruction of “anthropological cinema”. I intend to offer a historical and theoretical context to this complexity. I will make the case for film-festivals as reflexive and generative events that are produced through trans-disciplinary approaches. I will be drawing from my readings on "film festival studies" and my experiences in being part of the curating and networking team of the Riga Pasaules Film Festival.
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