Ethnofest Projections
The Ethnofest – Athens Ethnographic Film Festival, held annually each November, is an international film festival showcasing humane and insightful socially-minded documentary films from around the globe. Alongside the main programme (Student Films, Panorama, Filmic Experiments), the festival includes special screenings, thematic sections, retrospectives, and has a particular orientation towards films that employ and facilitate an ethnographic approach and sensibility.
The festival, which was established in 2010 and has grown to be one of the most important and original film festivals in Greece, constitutes every year a significant international meeting place for documentary and ethnographic filmmakers. Each year, through numerous timely and lively parallel events, such as seminars, workshops, masterclasses, Q&A’s and exhibitions, the festival constitutes a major intervention in the city’s cultural and social life, as well as it contributes to international contemporary debates about the present and future of documentary film.
Whatever Grandma Says
Three anthropologists enter Grandma’s kitchen to observe how dance moves the aging female body. Grandma Keti refuses to follow and puts on a performance — against language, age and cultural barriers — sharing life stories and love advice. This film is an ode to the magic of the encounter, the in-progress relationships, and the beauty of the fieldwork uncertainty. This film was made during the Athens Summer School in Visual Ethnographic Practices of 2022 organised by Ethnofest – Athens Ethnographic Film Festival in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam.
Jenthe Blockx is a Master’s student in Visual Culture and Film Studies at the University of Antwerp. She has conducted research on transnational, intimate relationships in times of COVID-19, for the completion of her Master’s degree in Social and Cultural anthropology at KULeuven. In future research, she is interested in further exploring visual and sensorial ethnographic practices.
Marianna Panourgia is a contemporary dancer, dance educator and ethnochoreologist based in Piraeus, Greece. She holds a Contemporary Dance Teaching Diploma and a Master of Arts in Ethnochoreology. Currently, she is a PhD candidate with focus on the ethnographic archiving oral traditions of contemporary dance whitin Higher Contemporary Dance Education in Greece.
Melia Weltzien recently obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology at VU Amsterdam. She has conducted research on representation practices and structures of exclusion in both German media and Amsterdam’s Art World. Through ethnographic filmmaking, she will continue questioning the issue of whose stories are being told and heard after all, aiming at more inclusive forms of storytelling.
Original Title: Ό,τι πει η γιαγιά
Directors: Jenthe Blockx, Marianna Panourgia, Melia Weltzien
Country: Greece
Languages: English, Greek
Year: 2022
Subjects: Anthropology, Body, Dance
Running Time: 9′
Festival: 2022
Festival Sections: Initiations: Student Films in Greece
Feeling from Outside
In October 2007 a group of artists of different nationalities took the initiative to set up a flamenco tablao in front of the Cathedral of Seville, claiming the street as a place of work and expression of their feelings. The street becomes their stage and the reception of the people consolidates their presence as a street flamenco group under the name “Son de Afuera”. This short documentary film bears witness, in the context of Andalusian society, to a way of feeling flamenco from “outside”.
Konstantina Bushboura (she/hers) is an independent researcher, anthropologist, filmmaker and human rights activist. Since 2007 she has been researching, directing and producing ethnographic documentaries on dance, politics and activism in Buenos Aires, Seville and Athens (Feeling from Outside, 2008, 18″, ESP / Working Dancers, 2017, 72″, ARG-GR, / 36 Months-Fighting for Zak, 2022, 12″). She is a founding member of the Buenos Aires-based educational and artistic organization ACA and coordinator of the Gender Network at the Greek Department of Amnesty International.
Direction and Research: Konstantina Bousmpoura
Script: Konstantina Bousmpoura / Antonio Rodrigo
Director of photography and editing: Antonio Rodrigo
Original music: Son de Afuera
Production: Danila Scarlino / Konstantina Bousmpoura / Antonio Rodrigo
Graphic design: Fernando Maya
Original Title: El Sentir desde Afuera
Director: Konstantina Bousmpoura
Country: Spain
Language: Spanish
Year: 2008
Subjects: Art, Europe, Music, Performance
Running Time: 18 min.