Berwick New Cinema: Surge Channel
This programme contains 5 films.
In this Programme:
High cities of bone
Karlon, born in Pedreira dos Húngaros (a slum in the outskirts of Lisbon) and a pioneer of Cape Verdean creole rap, runs away from the housing project to which he had been relocated.
Nights of vigil are spent under a sweltering tropical heat. Among the sugarcanes, a rumour emerges—Karlon hasn’t stopped singing.
High Cities of Bone is a stark, steady and humane exploration of Karlon’s memories and institutional sieges, unearthing stories from a dark time.
“Karlon unearthed secrets in the archeology of an invisible city. Pedreira dos Húngaros, the end of the millennium, a tired Europe, ruins. There’s a poison goin’ on. Eyes that seem made to see in the darkness. Reconstructing the leads. A voice that doesn’t trust History. MEMORY=RESISTANCE. Hip-hop saved a dissident. The rhymes. The beats. Words as bullets to bring back the dead. In the end, silence.”
—João Salaviza
Director
João Salaviza
Production Country
PortugalProduction Year
2017Duration
19 mins
Dialogue Language
CreoleProducer
Print Contact
Pedro Peralta
Camera Threat
Somewhere in the dreary nooks of Mumbai’s film industry, between star-cult, superstition and daily gridlock, Camera Threat explores the ambivalent, sometimes paranoid relationship the Indian film capital has with the moving image.
On a casting couch two actors are trapped in the side effects of a world that no longer bothers to tell facts from fiction.
Camera Threat was created within the constraints of the so-called ‘Masala Formula’ popularly known from Indian cinema.
Director
Bernd Lützeler
Production Countries
Germany IndiaProduction Year
2017Duration
30 mins
Dialogue Languages
English HindiProducer
Print Contact
Bernd Lützeler
You Are Seeing Things
“It is all a dream” she sings, “a hallucination. You are seeing things… estás vendo coisas!” In Estás vendo coisas (You Are Seeing Things), two protagonists of the ‘tecno brega’ music scene stage a musical in which they appear as the stars.
Tecno brega is the name of a music style from the north of Brazil: the music is produced and distributed at low cost and without any regard for copyright law. Music consumers assert themselves as producers, passive is transformed into active. The region characterised by poverty and restructuring has acquired a new and sexy self-confidence. Parties are a part of the distribution process, music videos are another. The pictorial world of the videos, which are largely shot in immediate living environments, is characterised by kitsch texts and depict unattainable dream worlds.
Director
Bárbara Wagner, Benjamin de Burca
Production Country
BrazilProduction Year
2017Duration
17 mins
Print Contact
Benjamin de Burca
DISINTEGRATION 93-96
DISINTEGRATION 93-96 is an essay film about the undocumented Filipino American experience, retracing connections between 90s home movie nostalgia, post-colonial identity, and the disintegration of traditional family models.
A pop-culture meditation on hyper-consumerism and cultural erasure. Filmmaker Miko Revereza problematises the personal questions linked with global implications, specifically the act of recording a film document without the possession of living documents.
Director
Miko Revereza
Production Countries
Philippines United StatesProduction Year
2017Duration
5 mins
Print Contact
Shireen Seno
Year 2017
A walk around the filmmakers’ apartment, assembled with photos of previous residents. Objects are cut out of photographs, objects that have been with the filmmaker for years. they shine red. Narrated by a repeating phrase, the film searches for the past through the eyes of a soul turned backward.
Director
Wojciech Bąkowski
Production Country
PolandProduction Year
2017Duration
6 mins
Print Contact
Wojciech Bąkowski