We look for and collect histories of our families in the stories of our parents and grandparents, family photos, archival documents. Some of us even manage to capture our way home.
A selection of films made by people whose families decided to migrate a long time ago. Today these directors tell about their parents' homes, reflect on their identities and ties with already distant home places.
Curated by Lena Syrbu
GALINAS FLORAL DRESSES
Maria Beierbach
Switzerland, Kazakhstan | 2020, 34 min
Born in Kazakhstan, the director experienced the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union as a child and emigrated with her family to Germany. Stepnogorsk, the small town of her childhood, which is not more than 120km from the Kazakh capital Nur-Sultan, remains her homeland. Mascha visits this place annually because Galina lives there. For social and political reasons, Galina also emigrated to the so-called "City of Hope" in the early 1970’s, which was notorious for its prosperity and the best working conditions at the uranium factory. Through conversations and archive material, the filmmaker learnt more about this mysterious place and this woman who is her grandmother. Through observations, she takes part in the happiness and suffering of the residents of Stepnogorsk, where time seems to stand still. Nothing changes, only Galina grows older and more forgetful. She lives alone, looks after herself and her dacha, the so-called allotment garden of theEast, which is her love and her life. They can only survive together. Galina's motto in life: "Take things as they come and prepare yourself well for death".
EATING SOIL
Laura Weissenberger
Austria, Colombia | 2021, 26 min
Eating soil is an essay film that deals with the stories of Colombian women originating from director Laura Weissenberger’s memories and projections on her home country. It is exploring Colombian narrative culture based on the stories of a fictional family, which metaphorically represent a society rather than individual fates. Structured like a memory itself, the viewer encounters topics involving migration, hopes, regrets and approaches to life.
COMRADE TITO, I INHERIT
Olga Kosanović
Serbia, Germany | 2021, 27 min
A mountain slope, an orchard, a house. Idyllic pictures in southern Serbia. Three generations under the roof of the house that is being prepared for its transmission.
An approach to history that becomes part of one’s own. Home is complicated, inheriting may be a burden and Tito becomes a symbol for something that has been - a filmic examination of what remains.
WHERE HE WAS BORN
Laura Fong Prosper
Germany, China | 2020, 26 min
Documentary that follows the search of my roots and the finding of lost relatives in the house where my grandfather was born near Zhongshan, China.
In this film I touch subjects of life, death and identity. Being always a foreigner, even in my hometown, I never felt connected to any place or culture. I was always everything and nothing at the same time. Now, after this experience, I am starting to finally understand who I am and where I come from.
(OTHER) FOUNDATIONS
Aline Motta
Brazil | 2019, 16 min
(Other) Foundations (2017-2019) is the last installment of a trilogy that began in 2017 with "Bridges over the Abyss", followed by "If the sea had balconies". The film talks about the consequences of the journey that the artist undertook in search of her roots and questions the sense of belonging to a place that might not acknowledge its seemly evident kinship. It brings together Lagos in Nigeria, Cachoeira in Bahia and her home state Rio de Janeiro in Brazil through the waters and bridges that connect the three cities and their common ancestral background.
AT HOME BUT NOT AT HOME
Suneil Sanzgiri
India, USA | 2019, 11 min
Sanzgiri's father was 18 when India ousted the last remaining Portuguese colonizers from Goa in 1961. Combining 16mm with drone footage, desktop screenshots, and Skype interviews with his father, Sanzgiri utilizes various modes of seeing at a distance to question identity, the construction of memory and anti-colonial solidarity across continents.